HUGH OSMOND: Most of my staff are Gen-Z snowflakes but it’s not their fault. Blame the universities and schools who fill their heads with nonsense

The world of work is changing. And maybe that’s not all bad. However, as an employer in the catering industry, I still cannot help being surprised when new employees – often just out of school or university – tell me that they would rather not work on Fridays or weekends. “That’s the job, unfortunately,” I have to tell them.

Clearly I’m not the only one who is occasionally baffled by ‘Generation Z’ – those people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s.

Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon raised eyebrows this week by suggesting the latest group of young people are a threat in the workplace because they ‘don’t have the skills to debate’ or ‘the skills to disagree’ .

Research conducted by Channel 4 in 2022 also labeled almost half of Gen Z as ‘Young Illiberal Progressives’ or ‘Yips’ – far more diverse in their sexuality, for example, than previous generations, but paradoxically less tolerant.

Of course, older people have been complaining about the “young people of today” since the fifth century BC, when the Greek philosopher Socrates complained that the youth of Athens were not showing enough respect for their elders.

Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon raised eyebrows this week by suggesting the latest group of young people are a threat in the workplace because they “don’t have the skills to debate” or “the skills to disagree” ‘.

So is this just the same age-old complaint? Or is Gen Z really impossible to work with?

As a businessman I come across many smart, confident and social young people. More than 60 percent of the thousand or so people who work for Diverse Eateries plc, the company I helped found, are under 23 years old.

But I see both the good and the bad – and Alex Mahon has a point. Today’s new generation of start-ups has some serious problems, on a scale that I have never seen in my forty years of business.

When they join, many young waiters and bar staff are unable to use their own initiative or even smile and chat with customers. So now we often have to tutor them in these basic life skills.

And it is certainly true that many – especially those fresh out of university – do not want to listen to views different from their own. Fortunately, there are few safer ways to find people with opinions different from yours than working at a bar or restaurant.

The young people I meet often have a strong and commendable sense of justice, along with a belief that the world should be a fair and logical place. But a few services waiting for the general public tend to change those ideas quite quickly.

I remember a young woman grinning and bearing it after serving a woman her strawberry ice cream, only to be asked why it was pink and told she was a “stupid girl.”

But unfortunately, the customer is always right, even if he clearly isn’t. And to someone who is used to the idea of ​​undiluted justice, that is an abomination.

One of the most remarkable things I’ve noticed in recent years is how few of the young people who come to work for us have ever had a job of any kind – whether it’s a paper route, working on a Saturday to serve in a shop or to do menial work. during the university holidays.

They have never had any real-world experience to temper the completely unrealistic view of life that they were given at school – and especially at university.

Certainly, schools and universities have a duty to build students’ self-confidence and self-esteem. But in a society where too many teachers operate in fear of debate or being fired, and where ‘self-care’ is prioritized, this too often seems like coddling.

As a result, people are now coming to work with the idea that they can dictate their own terms. That’s not how life works, and it never has.

Everyone from a bartender and a bricklayer to a lawyer and a brain surgeon have to start at the bottom, which usually means doing the simplest of tasks.

Certainly, schools and universities have a duty to build students’ self-confidence and self-esteem. But in a society where too many teachers operate in fear of debate or being fired, and where ‘self-care’ is prioritized, this all too often seems like coddling.

More generally, we must ask why the British university system now so often clearly fails to provide so many graduates with good, realistic preparation for adult life and the labor market.

They must serve their time and earn their stripes by gaining the respect of their peers. That’s the way of life as an adult.

However, time and time again we see young people come in for interviews and pretend to be interviewing us; as if our company exists solely to meet their needs for pay, hours, responsibilities, and flexible work from home.

And they often expect everything at once. A survey this year found that 52 percent of people aged 18 to 24 expect an annual promotion, meaning bosses have to come up with new titles to keep them happy.

Yet it is certainly a mistake to demonize young people for their shortcomings for which we, the older generation, must bear much of the blame.

For example, it is not the fault of young people that they have lost important years of socialization due to the Covid lockdowns and the switch to online teaching that followed. (And there are plenty of young people who are bitter about giving up such key years of their lives to protect the more vulnerable older generations — just because those people turn around and call them “snowflakes.”)

But what’s worse, in my opinion, is that they are told a lot of nonsense about what to expect in the working world – and the blame for that cannot be placed on them either.

Nevertheless, amid all the gloom surrounding Generation Z, all is not lost.

In just a few months, I’ve seen countless examples of people initially struggling with social skills. I’ve seen young people who initially avoided the busiest evening shifts soon start volunteering for them after realizing that they are the most fun and productive.

I have seen many quickly learn that clients can hold many views that they themselves do not agree with – and come to accept this as a crucial lesson for adult life.

Very importantly, they learn not to take any opposing opinion, or even unnecessary rudeness, as a personal insult.

Young people seem to complain a lot about generational inequality. But it hasn’t been easy for them. For example, the housing rental market has become highly dysfunctional and stratospherically expensive, leaving in many cases little choice but to continue living at home. This, in turn, gives them less incentive to find full-time employment and take responsibility as self-sufficient adults.

So I think Alex Mahon’s comments about Generation Z should be taken seriously, but not so much by them as by us, the Baby Boomer generation who have made so many decisions that have shaped their lives.

We need to solve the housing problem so that young people have reasonable housing at reasonable rents.

We need to gradually introduce them to the working world so that they can learn the social skills that years of lockdown and online learning have prevented them from acquiring.

But above all, we must ask ourselves two things.

First, why do 50 to 60 percent of college students study for a degree that does nothing for their employment prospects?

Second, why do they – far more so, in my experience, than people who start working straight out of school – have wildly unrealistic ideas about the workplace and ridiculously inflated impressions of the value of their qualifications?

More broadly, we must ask why the British university system now so often clearly fails to provide so many graduates with good, realistic preparation for adult life and the labor market.

That all has to do with the older generations, not theirs. And if all this were put right, the youth of Generation Z might not be in for such a painful wake-up call.

• Hugh Osmond is director of the hospitality group Diverse Eateries plc.