Panellists at the MTN Ghana Business Executive Breakfast have called on businesses to properly profile persons classified as Generation Zoomers (Gen Zs) and create the kind of workspace and work schedule that will make the business get the best out of them.
Gen Zs are classified as persons born between 1995 and 2010 and are used to a digital and individualistic lifestyle, contrary to what traditional workplace culture often presents. They are the first generation to zoom to the internet and so they are used to getting things done online and on-the-go, while keeping their online audience constantly updated on whatever they are doing – be it from home or from the workplace.
Organizational heads often find it difficult putting up with Gen Zs in their offices because the Gen Zs, even though very talented and high-performing, are often not the type you will find present in a physical office space within a specific time period as some businesses require. They are willing to meet work targets, while doing other stuff and from anywhere they find themselves.
A lot of multi-billion-dollar companies around the world ride on the ingenuity of Gen Zs.
Some participants at the MTN Ghana Business Executive Breakfast had asked the panellists for help on how to deal with Gen Zs, who are usually very difficult to manage because of their behavioural patterns.
Executive Director at the Centre for Leadership, Ashesi University, Esi Ansah said the way to get the best out of Gen Zs is to “profile them and you will realise that flexibility, work-life balance, meaningful work, and remote work are important to them.
“This is not the old generation that will take all the work-related stress and die early – this is a generation that will pay attention to self while working for your business,” she said.
Esi Ansah said to get the best out of Gen Zs, businesses would need to make work, productivity and performance very measurable, and that would form the basis of engaging Gen Zs and letting them know the specifics required, within what time frame, no matter where they work from, whether from the office or from home.
According to her, it is important to spell out the organizational culture in terms of what is allowed and not allowed within the workspace and make it clear to the Gen Zs, saying “profile the work culture and paste it on the wall, talk about it regularly, let them know what is acceptable and what is not and then give them the room to bloom and they will.”
Chris Wulff-Ceasar is the Managing Director of Unilever Ghana, and he noted that Gen Zs are not persons who would like to work for so many years for an organization and wait for long-service awards – their definition of a career is to work for an organization for a while with the ultimate aim of doing something for themselves.
“That is where the idea of self-efficacy and what I can achieve to change the world comes in – it is an ‘I’ environment when it comes to the Gen Zs,” he said.
On his part, the Acting Chief Human Resource Officer at MTN Ghana, Abdallah Ibrahim recalled how one Gen Z who was taken on as an intern at MTN documented all their activities at MTN on day one, including even meetings he attended, and posted the video online, potentially risking exposing MTN’s trade secrets.
He noted that MTN has at least four generations of people working there so it becomes difficult to pay attention to just one generation to the detriment of the others, so, what MTN has done is to have a holistic work culture that everybody fits in, in spite of which generation they belong to.
Abdallah Ibrahim also noted that it is important for business executives to go to the level of the Gen Zs and sometimes speak their language – use the terms they use in communicating with them in order to get the best out of them.
“Ultimately we need to be intentional in how to integrate them into the workspace by having policies that ensure that they are able to interact across generations rather than having them as a stand-alone group in the organisation,” he added.
