Constance LE MONIÈS de SAGAZAN, Student at Sciences Po Grenoble - UGA
Anne BARTEL-RADIC, Professor at Sciences Po Grenoble - UGA and researcher at CERAG, UGA
While the health crisis has profoundly altered the whole population's relationship to work, establishing a number of trends, such as flexibility, young people's relationship to work nevertheless seems to include an undeniable specificity. Indeed, young people from Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2013) are often referred to as "slashers" or "zappers", due to their propensity to leave their company without a second thought, sometimes even shortly after being hired (Gentina et al., 2022). Employers need to be aware of this generation's expectations, so they can better attract and retain them.
Recruiting young people: a key challenge
Generation Z is currently entering the job market. By 2025, it will represent 27% of the working population (Bloomgarden, 2022). Generation Z represents a crucial challenge for human resources professionals.
What's more, with the digital revolution, we have entered a knowledge-based economy where there is increasing competition to recruit highly skilled workers (Ployhart et al., 2017). We are witnessing a growing demand for these profiles, particularly in the technological, scientific and innovation fields. Nevertheless, the supply of workers with the required skills is limited, resulting in a shortage of skilled labor (Zune, 2006). As a result, companies are engaged in a war for talent to attract and retain the best profiles. In this context, because of their ease with new technologies (Schroth, 2019), recruiting Generation Z is part of the solution.
Another argument in favor of hiring Generation Z is the benefits of having a variety of generations in the same workplace. This is the concept of age diversity. Age diversity can boost employees' creativity, problem-solving skills, decision-making quality and productivity (De Meulenaere et al., 2016). An intergenerational workforce that engenders positive interactions and mutual support between more and less experienced workers benefits both employer and employee. However, the benefits of an age-diverse workforce are still relatively unknown, so most companies have not taken specific measures to capitalize on them.
Some sectors, such as the hotel and catering industry and personal services, are particularly hard-pressed to find candidates. Recruitment difficulties in these sectors have increased rapidly in recent years. The proportion of companies reporting recruitment difficulties rose from 36% to 52% between May 2021 and March 2023. As a result, some 350,000 jobs remained unfilled in Q4 2022. There are multiple causes for these matching problems. They may be linked to a mismatch between skills and jobs, difficult working conditions or remuneration deemed insufficient (Himpens & Zuber, 2023).
A questionnaire survey of 555 people
In this context, where companies are seeking to attract and retain talent, it seems essential to understand what young people's expectations are, so as to be able to recruit them more effectively. The aim of our study was therefore to provide recruiters with recommendations on how to attract Generation Z with job offers that match their expectations. But what would these expectations be?
To answer this question, we carried out a quantitative survey using an online questionnaire containing four pairs of fictitious job offers. In other words, the 555 respondents from all generations were given a choice between two job offers on four occasions. These differed according to four criteria: the company's stated values, job security, remuneration and flexible working hours linked to telecommuting.
Generation Z shows a marked preference for values
The survey results show that Generation Z has a preference for values, followed by flexibility, income and finally job security. This is in line with the ethical dimension of work highlighted by Gentina et al. (2022). According to these authors, Generation Z is particularly sensitive to the values and societal commitment of companies. Our study corroborates that having a civic stance in line with their convictions is essential for today's young people. They differ significantly from other generations: while Generation Z emphasizes values, Baby Boomers prefer job security, Generation Y favors work-life balance and Generation X values flexibility.
More generally, we observe that the age of respondents correlates significantly with a lesser attraction to values and a greater emphasis on security and flexibility. These correlations are even stronger with length of work experience.
The importance of gender and household composition
But it's not just work experience and age that have an impact on job expectations. In fact, respondents' expectations differ according to gender. Women prefer flexibility, while men have a penchant for higher pay. Moreover, among women, those with children, whether living alone or in a couple, have an even greater preference for flexibility than women without children. Values are less important. For men, on the other hand, household composition has no statistically significant influence, demonstrating that parenthood does not have the same effect on men as on women. It's worth noting that for Generation Z alone, gender has no impact on preferences - which is clearly linked to the fact that young people are not (yet) parents.
These results are not surprising: we can assume that women's preference for flexibility is linked to their responsibilities in terms of childcare and domestic chores, which are often greater than those of men. Women tend to spend the travel time saved by teleworking on extra household chores rather than leisure (Kurowska, 2020). It is therefore logical to assume that women, especially those with children, seek to reconcile their work obligations with their domestic responsibilities by valuing flexibility in their employment more than men. In sum, our study is in line with previous work that has highlighted the role of gender and parenthood in work expectations and attitudes.
Our results also show that men attach greater importance to income than women, although the difference is not very significant. This confirms the work of Terjesen et al (2007), who showed that Generation Y men attach more importance than women to starting work with a high salary. This is another manifestation of traditional social and cultural norms that assign men the role of breadwinner in the family. This leads them to attach greater importance to high salaries. We note that this trend persists in our study, despite an overall societal shift begun several decades ago towards more egalitarian gender ideologies and the decline of husbands' role as sole breadwinners (Zuo & Tang, 2000).
Age effect or generation effect?
Is it because Generation Z is so different from previous generations that we don't observe any differences between men's and women's expectations? It's equally plausible that this gap in preferences between men and women is an age effect. This would imply that Generation Z women also develop a stronger preference for flexibility once they have children. We must be cautious in our interpretation. Having established correlations between expectations such as flexibility and age, it is not clear whether this is a generational or age effect. Generation Y, more concerned with job flexibility and telecommuting due to growing family responsibilities, may attach more importance to job security in two decades' time - which would indicate an age effect. But if Generation Z is more permanently in favor of telecommuting due to their familiarity with technology and the digital world, then we would be witnessing a generational effect. Only studies surveying this generation again in the future will enable us to conclude this with any certainty.
Managerial implications
Our study shows that human resources management practices need to be adapted to current trends in the job market and to the preferences of today's young people, in order to recruit them more easily. Job offers adapted to this target need to highlight the company's values, as this is the characteristic most sought-after by Generation Z. In our study, these values were focused on protecting the environment, as the fight against global warming is known to be one of the struggles of today's youth (Djafarova & Foots, 2022). However, values can also be oriented towards diversity and inclusion. Diversity includes different dimensions such as age, nationality/ethnicity, gender, psychophysical ability, religion, sexual orientation... Communicating about the diversity present in the company contributes to an employer's attractiveness, especially as Generation Z is more diverse than previous generations in terms of culture, gender and sexual orientation (Hochreiter, 2022).
In addition, telecommuting can be highlighted in job advertisements to enhance their attractiveness to Generation Z. It is also essential to use communication channels adapted to each generation. Today's young people have grown up with new technologies. So it's a good idea to post job offers on the social networks they frequent, to increase the likelihood of reaching them effectively.
This match between expectations and job offers not only makes it easier to attract and retain the target generation, but also to create a work environment that fosters employee satisfaction, commitment and productivity.
References
Hochreiter, I. (2022). Attracting and recruiting generation Z on social networking sites in Upper Austria. Master thesis, Johannes Kepler University Linz. 81p. https://epub.jku.at/obvulihs/download/pdf/8013599?originalFilename=true
Zuo, J., & Tang, S. (2000). Breadwinner status and gender ideologies of men and women regarding family roles. Sociological perspectives, 43(1), 29-43. https://doi.org/10.2307/13897