🎩 Great Expectations: Gen Z in the workplace

Plenty of criticism has been levelled at the new generation in the workplace. But, it’s pretty easy to level criticism at every other generation too. Perhaps a more useful conversation is how we can make intergenerational workforces…. work.

When Rachna mentioned the successes the New Lines Institute* comms team has had co-developing content with Gen Z colleagues—content that delivers both for their institutional brand and for those colleagues’ many thousands of social media followers—that felt like something worth exploring.

The two things I was left pondering after we spoke:

1. ‘Experience’ has a reputation problem. It is too often seen as a blocker to progress, rather than as the creator of it. That is bad for all of us in the policy space.

2. How do we get better at anticipating the outcomes of big societal changes, like working from home, or increased usage of AI?

Let me know what you think.

Tom

* The New Lines Institute is a client.

💡 Forthcoming training

• Generative AI for Policy Communicators, starts 6th Feb 2026

• Communicate to Persuade, starts 26th Feb 2026

Generation “Why?”

Gen Z is very good at asking ‘Why is it this way?’ Or ‘Is there a different way we can do it?’ They believe there is a different way a lot of the time, even if they don't have a clear idea of what that different way is. That is partly a product of being young, but it’s also partly a generational belief in decentralisation. 

Their drive for something better is not focused on institutions or nation states in the way that perhaps older generations were. Instead they are focused on decentralised organisations, networks and people-first approaches to things.

The link between AI and cognitive atrophy

Knowing something and being able to think about it critically are very different things.

I know teenagers who are asking ChatGPT to come up with the text to break up with their boyfriend. It’s a small example, but it demonstrates that they are either not confident in their own thinking, or they think this is the best way to do it. 

I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t use LLMs, but there is a question here on the wider implications of these tools. I’m concerned that the door is closing for this next generation to have creative, individual, and critical thought.

Experience matters

Younger generations sometimes think of experience as this dirty word, like ‘Oh, you're old, you don't have fresh ideas,’ or that you want to unilaterally make decisions or be dictatorial. 

Experience is not just ‘I've been working in this field for 10 years.’ Experience means that you know who to pull in to help inform decisions. It means you know who or where to go to consult. Experience is understanding the context that you are working in, and how to work with it. 

It doesn’t mean you are tired and don’t have new ideas. Quite the opposite–it means you’re much more likely to know where the new ideas will come from.

Are we letting down junior colleagues by WFH?

What I thought were established workplace norms have almost disappeared overnight. For many Gen Z staff, either they are in their first job or their first job was during COVID, so they weren't in the office experiencing professional norms.

So the boundary between what is professional and what is personal, or the idea that you need to have a professional persona, is less important to them–or maybe they don't realise that it is needed. 

I hate to hear myself say this because I love my days working from home, but… socialisation matters. How can we expect Gen Z to pick up these norms if they are only in the office one day a week? 

For example, Gen Z feel empowered to create content–great. But there isn’t always an understanding of why you have peer feedback, strategic direction, and workshopping. There’s a sense of ‘I have this great idea, I'm just going to go record it, do it, and publish it.’

That works for a personal social media account, but that quickly comes undone on corporate platforms. Norms and process are there for a reason.

The key to successful collaboration: guardrails

We’ve had a lot of success with Gen Z colleagues creating content, and leveraging their personal channels and networks to get it out there. Key to making it work is having quality control, some standardisation, and making sure it is additive to the organisational brand.

We look for coherence between what our research focuses on, and the personal brands of our Gen Z colleagues. We’ll think through whether the person is the right fit to talk about that particular policy area, whether their channel is the right fit given the other things they post about, and whether there is any reputation risk to posting New Lines content on that channel.

We let them write the first script for the content, then we iteratively edit it until we get to a point where my Gen Z colleague feels like the content is true to themselves and honest, and the comms team also feels like it’s within the guidelines for New Lines. The video is always posted on our organisational channels first, and then colleagues can share it in the way that they want on their own channels.

We know we need to engage younger audiences with our ideas. And to do that we need to find a way of working with colleagues to speak to those audiences, but without taking away from the analysis. Younger staff have a lot to offer and their contributions are critical. But at the same time, if too much of your content is being produced by people seen to be quite new in the space… you have to be careful about perceptions of credibility and expertise.

Do androids dream of viral tweets?

What’s going to be critical to communications in the future is understanding how digital channels actually work. What is the algorithm secret behind each? 

I'm sure that by 2035 there'll be a hundred new digital channels and digital networks that we'll be engaging in. How does network behaviour on digital channels happen? Which algorithms are being used to promote which types of content over others? And how can we reverse-engineer content so that we maximise reach and engagement on each one? 

It will become more technical, more Game Theory computer science vibe, than the more qualitative gut-feel approach to comms that we are used to.

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