Generation Z was the focus for the latest Gazette roundtable. As Gen Z’s aspiring lawyers enter the workplace, the intention was to cut through stereotypes like the ‘snowflake’ label to ask how Gen Z’s priorities, skills and needs have developed and changed compared to those who came before.
There are a number of surprises when you start to delve into generational ‘differences’ and traits. The first is the academic studies that set out different characteristics for, by turns: Boomers (1 and 2); Generation X; Millennials; and Generation Z.
For all of these, the attributes identified are positive.
My own Gen X are self-reliant, self-directed and individualistic. That comes from independence given at a young age. And we value family.
Millennials are socially aware, challenge hierarchy and the status quo. They are technology-minded and adaptive to change, value flexibility and work life balance, and have a passion for learning.
And Gen Z? They are financially minded, value travel, and shape culture through social media. Gaming is more than a hobby for them. They are collaborative, pragmatic, un-hierarchical and value diversity and flexibility. Anxiety is also a feature of their world.
The discussion convinced me that we can discount the ‘snowflake’ label straight away. This generation has not been ‘coddled’. They have known the severity of online bullying, climate emergency and a rising cost of living. And as the Junior Solicitors Network’s (JSN) vice chair Rebekah Sutcliffe pointed out at the roundtable: Gen Z ‘have been guinea pigs in a lot of ways. They've had the SQE, they've had Covid, they've had working from home.’
Gen Z’s student debts appear off the scale compared to my own (around £600 plus a modest overdraft at graduation).
There are other ways in which Gen Z has had it rougher than those who came before. They are qualifying as solicitors later in life. They have to pass SQE 1 – which with its fail-rate of 47% is quite something. Gen Xers never entered for exams where the fail rate was so high.
Oh, and there are endless headlines telling them lawyers are going to be replaced by AI. Anxiety seems quite a small word to cover all that.
It is possible, relatively easy even, to find senior lawyers who wonder where ‘all this mental health and wellbeing stuff has come from’.
The very credible answer, provided by another JSN committee member, Nusrat Siddique, is that the focus on wellbeing and mental health originates with senior lawyers. From a position of relative security, a growing number have been open and honest about their own experience of challenges they have faced, from burnout to depression. That signalled permission to other lawyers at all levels to talk about their own experience and their own needs.
I find it hard to see how a desire to survive the professional course is ‘snowflake’ behaviour. Many a Gen X lawyer with problems was simply lost to the profession.
Other things occurred to me as the discussion went on. If hierarchy is less respected by Gen Z, the answer probably isn’t just complaining that they ‘don’t do what they are told’. Maybe managing Gen Z should feel more like a collaboration.
The idea that Gen Z ‘isn’t interested in partnership’ was also dispatched. It is an enterprising and entrepreneurial generation - why wouldn’t its members want partnership? They do, was the conclusion, but maybe the path to it needs to be different – more transparent, and involving different life compromises than is traditionally the case.
I have to confess I have, if not a dog, a daughter in this race. My eldest Gen Z daughter graduates in a couple of weeks. She’s been at the same university as I was, and I think I’ve been hard to keep away. It’s shrunk the years between my student time and now, and led both of us to consider, sometimes sat in a pub that’s barely changed in 30 years, the continuity and change represented by our respective experiences. (That’s what happens when a historian and a social anthropologist walk into a bar.)
Debt and tech are big changes over that time. My diminutive £600 debt at graduation, and the availability of cheaper rents, meant I could take a succession of badly paid jobs that offered brilliant and formative experience. She will have, by necessity, to be more assertive about pay than I was. And yes, I don’t really get the appeal of TikTok and abhor the QR code the nice pub we are in now suggests I use too pay.
But there is an awful lot in common.
For their part, a revival of 1990s music and fashion is having an elongated moment for Gen Z.
I’ve read Gen Z essays and the standard is very high. The cohort that finished its A levels through lockdowns, with reduced supervision and teaching, I find academically tough.
My daughter and her friends are keen to get the rest of their lives started. Maybe the question isn’t, are Gen Z ready to fit in – but instead: are we ready for them?
Read the full roundtable discussion, sponsored by Dye & Durham
No comments yet