Gen Z, please talk to me: what management works and what does not?
I am an Xer who manages a small but crucial team at my workplace (in an EU country). I had a lady resign last week, and I have another who may be about to resign or I may have to let go due to low engagement. They are both Gen Z. Today it hit me: the five years I've been managing this department, the only people I've lost have been from Gen Z. Clearly I do not know how to manage Gen Z so that they are happy working here. What can I do? I want them to be as happy as my Millennial team members. One detail that might matter is that my team is spread over three European cities.
Happy to provide any clarification if anyone wants it.
Edit. Thanks for all the answers even if a few of them are difficult to hear (and a few were oddly angry?) This has been very helpful for me, much more so than it probably would have been at the Old Place.
Also the second lady I mentioned who might quit or I might have to let go? She quit the day after I posted this giving a week's notice yesterday. My team is fully supportive, but it's going to be a rough couple of months.
Every single job I have left is because I literally couldn't afford to stay. I know you want to pin the phenomena on some obscure difference in generational ideology. It's not that difficult. It's not that obscure. We grew up in places we will never afford. You come from a generation that could pay 100% for college with a summer job, and you turned around and added a requirement for a college degree just to get that summer job which now days doesn't even cover the rent.
Pay has dropped relative to cost of living year over year since the 90s. I couldn't get my employers to give me raises just to match inflation. And still, I hear boomers crowing about how uncommitted millennials and zoomers are from their half a million dollar homes. My gen x coworkers owned boats and I was struggling to make the rent.
The problem here is not that younger generations aren't capable of committing, it's that older generations have grown out of touch with modern day cost. Some boomer rear ended me last year and was furious that I wouldn't take his $150. He laughed when I told him his insurance would give me $2k easily. They paid out $2800. I am honestly still confounded how far out of reality you'd have to be to think that a bumper would only cost $150. You could argue that he was only trying to cheat me but that only proves my point more that us getting royally fucked by older generations is not from our own doing.