“Internet, irreverence, immediacy and uncertainly helps us to understand Generation Z”. This was one of the main conclusions of the presentation on the report Generation Z: The latest generational gap elaborated by ATREVIA, global communications consultancy with Latin spirit No. 1 in Spain, and Deusto Business School, business school from the University of Deusto and dean of business schools which celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2016. The report was presented this morning in the ESADEFORUM in Barcelona.
The authors of the report Núria Vilanova, founder and president of ATREVIA, and Iñaki Ortega, director of Deusto Business School in Madrid was in charge of carrying out this event. It also held the participation of Eugenia Bieto, Director General of ESADE and the lecturer Iván Bofarull, Director of Global Intelligence & Strategic Initiatives of ESADE. All of them recognized the importance of being committed to this type of research which leads the fields of innovation and knowledge.
The report Generation Z: The latest generational gap revealed the key aspects in order to define and analyze the so called Generation Z, the group of young people born between 1994 and 2009 that conforms to this new type of consumer, worker and citizen.
Núria Vilanova highlighted that “the young people from Generation Z are self-educated, creative, overexposed to information, innovative and entrepreneurs. Their consumption dynamics and behaviors are very different to previous generations. The digital environment which has forged their personality implies that reacting in real time when interacting with them is essential. We should be capable of adapting resources and systems to their new needs: job positions, communication channels, learning models and dialogue should be altered so that Generation Z feels integrated into society”.
Iñaki Ortega, for his part, added in respect to the Young Z’s “those that thought that millennials already covered this sense of wonder, were wrong and they will have to continue learning from the members of Generation Z”. The doctor in Economics stated that “what defines them is that there was never before a generation as educated and socialized with the internet in their pockets. This makes them irreverent towards questions that previously were directed towards parents, teachers and bosses, but they do have higher capacity empathize, make friends, be early entrepreneurs and more socially implicated than ever before. The world would be better with them if the rest of the generations were capable of making the changes that they demand”.
La Generation Z, driver for education and labor change
The conclusions of the report highlight that the members of Generation Z are characterized by being self-educated and creative. They seem to be the first generation that has incorporated the internet in the early phases of their learning and socialization. In addition, their personality was conformed within a liquid, diverse and in crisis society.
Generation Z is defined for their great networking ability, with different cultures and in positions related to creativity and innovation. Another conclusion that the report extracted is that the most valuable professionals in the future will not be those who are very specialized in a specific area but instead they will be well-educated and can hybridize knowledge from different fields.
Are organizations prepared for this new type of consumer and worker? Some of the worries of the Young Z’s are not finding a job available that suits their personality, not having professional growth opportunities and not reaching the goals in their career. In addition, their preference for independence within the labor environment has led many millennials to become entrepreneurs even before having their first job which is something that we can see in their heirs: 55% of 50,000 adolescents surveyed by Universum in 45 countries stated their interested to launch a startup. In Spain, the percentage lowers until 39% but this does not stop being very relevant.
Young Z’s as consumers and independent workers
The report Generation Z: The latest generation gap discovers the essential characteristics of this new generation which brands are starting to realize: Young Z’s are already the consumers of some of the initiatives born in the collaborative economy framework, a phenomenon that this generation understands, supports and accepts as something natural. Many of its members will be joining this emerging reality, for its quality of users as well as the quality of entrepreneurs and services suppliers.
The gig economy is quite related to the opportunities that the digital collaborative environment provides and the new generations will be a main player in this. This manifestation reflects the step of an economy where the work was unstable, for employees and employers, to one that trends to be temporary, independent and for various employees throughout their professional career. Generation Z will link more projects, which in the future will generate a large network of independent jobs that are linked between them by undertaking powerful initiatives.
