The Laziest Workforce in History? I Do Not Buy It.

Gen Z: brilliant, energetic and who care deeply about their work

Scroll through any business publication, sit in enough boardrooms, or spend five minutes on LinkedIn, and you will encounter a version of the same complaint. Gen Z are lazy. They are entitled. They want trophies for turning up and cannot cope with being told what to do. They job-hop, they quiet quit, and they dare to talk about wellbeing in a meeting.

I have been working with and engaging Gen Z and Millennials for years. And I have to be honest with you, the definition does not resonate.

Who I have met, consistently and without exception, is altogether different: brilliant, energetic, passionate young people who care deeply about their work, their future, and the world they are inheriting. People who arrive with ideas, with drive, and with a genuine desire to contribute something meaningful.

So where is the disconnect? Let me tell you what I think is really going on.

The Wrong Question

Recently, while delivering an Engagement Pulse Diagnostic for a leadership team, I encountered this tension firsthand. The organisation was experiencing what its leaders described as disengagement; younger employees who seemed switched off, uncommitted, and hard to motivate. The leadership team had tried various interventions. None had worked.

What the diagnostic revealed was not a workforce problem. It was a leadership model problem.

The answers to their challenges were not complicated. They were not expensive. They did not require a significant business transformation or a new HR strategy. They required something far simpler and, for some leaders, far more confronting: letting their people contribute rather than expecting them to comply.

When that shift happened, when younger team members were brought into problem-solving conversations instead of being handed down decisions, the energy in the room changed visibly. Engagement did not inch upward. It surged. Because it turns out that people who feel heard, involved, and trusted tend to behave like people who feel heard, involved, and trusted.

A Generation Misread

Here is what I think is actually happening. Business leaders, many of whom built their careers inside hierarchical structures, top-down management models, and cultures where you paid your dues and waited your turn, are trying to apply those same frameworks to a generation for whom they were never designed.

Gen Z and Millennials do not want to wait for their turn. They want a seat at the table, and they want it now; not because they are arrogant, but because they have something to offer and they know it. They expect to have a voice in decisions that affect them. They want to understand the why, not just the what. They want to co-create, not just execute.

In a million ways, that is how I operate, too. Collaboration and co-creation are at the core of everything Scarlet Kites Strategy does; not as a methodology borrowed from a business book, but as a genuine belief that the best thinking happens when the right people are in the room, and where everyone's contribution counts. Perhaps that is why I have always enjoyed working with and mentoring younger colleagues. We are, it turns out, working from the same instincts.

Purpose Is Not a Perk

There is something else worth naming directly. This generation watched their parents prioritise work above everything else, and in many cases watched it cost them their health, their relationships, and their sense of self. They have drawn a very deliberate conclusion from that observation. They do not want to burn out. They want flexibility. They want purpose. They want to be paid fairly for the value they bring. And they want their wellbeing to matter to the organisation they give their time to.

The data backs this up comprehensively. Deloitte's 2025 research found that 89% of Gen Z workers and 92% of Millennials consider a sense of purpose very or somewhat important for their job satisfaction and wellbeing, up from 86% and 89% respectively the previous year. The direction of travel is clear, and it is accelerating.

But here is the statistic that should really make business leaders pause. The same research found that 86% of Gen Z and 84% of Millennials are actively seeking mentorship and guidance in the workplace. And 88% of Gen Z and 89% of Millennials highlight on-the-job learning and practical experience as important for their development.

This is not a generation that wants to coast. This is a generation that wants to grow and is asking, directly and in significant numbers, for the investment, the guidance, and the learning opportunities to do so. The question is not whether they are motivated. The question is whether their leaders are listening.

That is not entitlement. That is ambition. And frankly, it is the direction the rest of us should have been heading years ago.

The Leadership Challenge

None of this means managing younger employees is without its challenges. Bridging generational differences in communication styles, feedback preferences, and workplace expectations requires genuine skill and genuine curiosity. But the leaders I have seen struggle most with Gen Z are almost always the ones asking how to make this generation fit their existing model, rather than asking what their existing model might need to change.

The organisations getting this right are not doing anything radical. They are listening, and they are involving. They are creating structures agile enough to accommodate different ways of working while holding firm on outcomes and accountability. They are treating purpose as a strategic asset rather than a soft afterthought.

The Future of Work Is Already Here

Gen Z are not the future workforce. They are the current workforce, and in SMEs and growing organisations, especially, they are often the energy, the creativity, and the commercial instinct that the business most depends on.

Business leaders who acknowledge that, who build cultures where contribution is invited and compliance is not the ceiling, will find themselves with teams that are engaged, loyal, and extraordinarily capable.

This is not a problem to be managed. It is an opportunity to be seized.

And from where I am standing, that is genuinely exciting.

Curious about the engagement levels in your own organisation? The Scarlet Kites Engagement Pulse Diagnostic is designed to surface exactly these dynamics, quickly, clearly, and without the noise.

Find out more scarletkites.com/engagement-pulse