According to Resume Templates' findings, 71% of managers say their Gen Z employees expect to receive praise for performing basic tasks; they require positive reinforcement for meeting the bare minimum, and 6 in 10 employers say Gen Z-ers perform better with more praise.
When they get constructive criticism or negative feedback, 3 in 10 managers say the employees have cried. 38% say Gen Z-ers have called out sick the next day, and 10% were contacted by the workers' parents.
27% of them quit.
Many managers are frustrated by, as one put it, "walking on eggshells."
Campus Reform's Zachary Marschall, who thinks "the criticism is fully deserved," suggests Gen Z "is in a difficult situation" because they were failed by their teachers in K-12, in college, and maybe on some level by their parents "who never instilled those values of hard work determination, grit, in the home."
Still, he believes everyone needs to own up to personal accountability and responsibility.
"You are responsible for your own success and failure," Marschall asserts.
"It's not a black-and-white issue about how much at fault individual Gen Z Americans have with this, but that doesn't negate the truth that they are graduating out of college completely unprepared for adult life," he adds.
Marschall thinks there is more distance between Gen Z and millennials than between millennials and Gen X.
Employers, whether they are millennials or people nearing retirement, do not know what to do with entry level employees who need praise for completing the most basic tasks and need material and positive reinforcement in a way he says no other past generation ever needed.
"When millennials were at this stage in our careers, it was about working smarter, which is a different approach to how you complete tasks in the office with emerging technology, but I think the values and the soft skills when it comes to being in the workforce were very consistent with what Gen X and the Boomers were about," Marschall submits.
The survey, which relays that managers agree Gen Z's craving for a pat on the back marks a generational shift, polled 1,050 U.S. managers.
