The New 'Kids Table'
GenZ says companies and campaigns are still not taking them seriously enough
A short mash-up of new research about GenZ and its rising demands for inclusion
CHICAGO—This election year, brands, political parties and some social change organizations are giving more attention, dollars, and jobs to GenZers to capture their curiosity, passion for activism and respect. But is it enough?
No, says GenZ.
According to a new range of research, GenZ is demanding more say at work—and it wants more opportunities to influence how key social impact issues get decided this year by companies, nonprofit organizations and political cause campaigns. GenZ now represents 27% of the nation’s work force, and 40.8 million are now eligible to vote in November. That’s roughly the same number of active citizens as there are registered Boomers.
And that’s not all. GenZ, so far, has been voting at higher rates than previous generations, and a whopping 94% of them, in a new Cone Communications poll on cause marketing, say they believe “companies should be doing even more to help address critical social issues.”
Trouble is, many organizations are still not giving GenZers “a meaningful seat at the table” when work culture projects, policy decisions and social impact campaigns are being decided and deployed, “and they feel stuck at the kid’s table,” says a new GenZ survey by DoSomething Strategic (DSS), one of the world’s most respected polling firms focusing on young adults.
These sentiments also are being expressed globally. In Deloitte’s Global 2024 survey of more than 22,800 respondents in 44 countries, less than half of GenZers and Millennials said they believe business is having a positive impact on society, revealing “a gap between what GenZ and Millennials feel business is capable of doing and what business is delivering.”
John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, says GenZers “are increasingly feeling passed over by brands and by this year’s political campaigns and want to be heard and invited to actively participate; they want their ideas to matter so (organizations) get things right” when communicating with this generation and targeting key influencers.
Della Volpe, the author of the 2022 book, FIGHT: How GenZ is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America, said in a recent interview that the three words, I hear you, “were the three words that millions of GenZers heard from [GenZ’s favorite presidential candidate in 2020] Bernie Sanders. They’re still waiting to see if anyone else is still listening.”
The Context
Of course, every young generation pushes for change, but GenZ has higher expectations. Digital tech has been with them most of their lives, and has given them more agency and organizing tools, helping them to speak up and ask for change, earlier and more often.
GenZers also have been growing up accustomed to getting high-speed response rates for what they’re seeking. It’s not about impatience as much as having the ability to get “near-instant anything” while online. High-speed, digital connectivity also has made collaboration a necessary virtue, if not a requirement.
But traditional work cultures at many organizations are still lagging behind the tech-driven norms GenZ has come to expect, creating some barriers to needed change. In the DoSomething Strategic survey, only 12.4% of GenZ respondents said they feel brands—business, government, nonprofit and university brands— are meeting their expectations, while only 2.2% said these brands are exceeding them. In addition, roughly 23% of GenZers said they are “not being included at all” in shaping a company’s social impact commitments. Some companies, the survey also says, are finding it easier to isolate GenZ workers than “to do all of the heavy lifting” needed to keep them fully engaged. “We have such a large corporation, it’s difficult to really create change,” one brand leader told pollsters. “Additionally, at that size, sometimes it’s better to do nothing at all than ‘take a stance’ for fear of backlash from (other) employees.”
The result? New tensions are growing between what GenZ expects at work and in the political arena and what the leaders of companies, governments, nonprofits and universities believe is adequate, and and less controversial, to engage them—at least for now.
The Disconnect
Here are some additional insights from DoSomething Strategic’s just-released survey of nearly 1,200 GenZers and more than 100 brand leaders in the United States:
While 58% of brand leaders said their organization is meeting or exceeding GenZ’s expectations for demonstrating its commitment to social impact, only 15% of GenZ respondents agree with that assessment.
42% percent of brand leaders said they believe young people “are included enough in the development of social impact efforts” while only 13% of young people agreed. “GenZ is not asking brands to replace their boards but rather is asking organizations … to hear Zoomers out, and to create avenues for dialogue and discussion,” the DSS report says. [Zoomers is a colloquial reference to GenZ.]
There is “significant divergence” in priorities around where young people want to see brands and political campaigns focus their social impact work. For example, while climate change, physical health and gun violence are among the highest concerns cited by GenZ, these issues are ranked lowest in importance by a majority of the brand leaders also polled. More than 83% of GenZ respondents said political campaigns “need to listen more closely to the input of GenZ so as to be more powerful in how their appeals are perceived by all generations.”
A politically diverse representation of GenZ workers (75% ) said they want brands to “do more…just about everywhere.” Funding and empowering local neighborhood initiatives with GenZ’s support would be one type of action GenZ told pollsters they would like brands to pursue the most. “Corporate and organizational support for creating cause awareness campaigns on issues already being backed by organizations needs to be getting less lip service and more authentic action,” one GenZ respondent said.
While GenZers and their employers agree on the importance of work-life balance, the youngest employees repeatedly told DSS that “perks and benefits cannot come at the expense of finding purpose” in their work. For them, says DSS, “it’s all connected. … Young people want to see brands take more risks in addressing social issues.” [For more on the perception gap, check out our recent post, Corporations Cornered, here.]
New Rule
In this moment of social and political turbulence, brands and political parties have a unique opportunity to retire some of their old ways of doing business and enable GenZers to participate in crafting new types of internal strategies and practices needed to improve business, society and some organizational outcomes.
“The younger generation should be at the table where important decisions are being made, which will impact their well-being for the rest of their lives,” Steve Kaagan and John Hagan wrote in a recent Stanford Social Review article. “The solution is not to hand over power to youth but to co-create the future with them. Older generations can more effectively help implement and raise money for co-created, intergenerational ideas.”
Michael Podhorzer, the former political director for the AFL-CIO, puts it more bluntly. “GenZ may still be trying to be active at work or with those of us voting this November, but only if we listen and act on what they’re telling us. It would be worrisome if GenZ should choose to sit out, unhappy and unable to gather more support for what they and we need to move forward.”
What’s your take on the engagement gaps at work between younger and older generations? Share your thoughts here with us and our growing network!
I’m going to speculate that this discussion about GenZ skews towards the college educated demographic. And maybe a portion of that. I’m college educated and, in my 20s, I would have ignored a poll about brands and social issues. Work, dating, playing some basketball and goofing around with my buddies. Brands? What would girls like that I could afford !
I wonder if influencers are the brands that GenZ cares more about than the big companies.
Would be interesting to know more details about the DoSomerthing poll, more than just age