Companies are axing Gen Z workers just months after hiring them fresh from college, a new report has found.
Six in ten employers had already fired some college graduates they had recruited earlier in the year, a survey conducted by Intelligent.com found.
One in seven the employers said they also might not hire fresh college grads next year after finding a raft of problems with young workers.
Business leaders listed concerns in areas such as communications skills and professionalism that made them wary of hiring Gen Z.
They also said the workers of that age are often unmotivated and need to be constantly told what to do – rather than using their initiative – is another issue.
Business leaders admitted to already firing Gen Z hires they made earlier in the year
‘Many recent college graduates may struggle with entering the workforce for the first time as it can be a huge contrast from what they are used to throughout their education journey,’ Intelligent’s Huy Nguyen wrote in the report.
‘They are often unprepared for a less structured environment, workplace cultural dynamics, and the expectation of autonomous work,’ he explained.
Three-quarters of companies surveyed said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way.
A half said their Gen Z hires had a lack of motivation, making them difficult to work with.
The survey was posted on Reddit under the subject ‘Companies Are Quickly Firing Gen Z Employees’, prompting one user to write: ‘Yeah checks out.
However, HR consultant Bryan Driscoll argues that it is not just young employees presenting a problem, but the education system itself which is not preparing its graduates for the working world.
Another wrote: ‘As a milennial working with Gen Zs I have to admit that I’ve told a couple not to wear their bizarre trendy dirty 90s Filas to work.
‘I literally never thought that would have been appropriate in an office environment as a young person.’
A third person said: ‘They have issues showing up everyday where I work, so it’s mainly attendance problems.’
‘As someone who went through years of education, including law school, I can tell you this: colleges are not preparing students for real-world work,’ Driscoll told Newsweek.
‘Education today emphasizes theory over practice. Sure, learning Greek mythology is fascinating, but unless you’re teaching it, how does that prepare you to communicate effectively in a corporate meeting or demonstrate professionalism? It doesn’t.’
‘Instead of teaching new hires what they want from them, employers are simply firing workers for not being prepared. It’s a cyclical issue that reflects systemic failure on multiple levels,’ he argued.
Nguyen acknowledged that some of the workplace issues were the fault of colleges failing to adequately prepare students.
‘Although they may have some theoretical knowledge from college, they often lack the practical, real-world experience and soft skills required to succeed in the work environment,’ he wrote in the report.
‘Companies are failing workers by not taking responsibility for training and hoping that a college degree can substitute,’ Driscoll concluded.
‘It never has and, in our current system, it never will.’
