Episode 72 Transcript

Banoo Behboodi: Hello, everyone.It’s great to have you here.Welcome to the Professional Services Pursuit, a podcast featuring expert advice and insights on the professional services industry.

I’m Banoo, and I’ve been working with our production team on a few podcast series that we’re going to have.These series are related to a topic that is close to my heart because I have three Gen Z daughters who are in the process of looking for jobs.I’ve been watching and experiencing their journey in that world.They are all in professional services in various fields, so it’s been fascinating.

I’ve been looking into what one does to be able to attract Gen Z and what one does to retain Gen Z.In that process, I’ve been researching and trying to find thought leaders.

My guest today is Tessa Misiaszek.She is the head of research at the Korn Ferry Institute, as well as an author, speaker, and host of the Happy at Work podcast, which I have listened to.I’ve listened to a couple of the sessions specifically related to Gen Z, and I loved them, so I recommend those of you who are interested to join that as well.

This is the first session of three that we’re going to start today, and I wanted to welcome you.Tessa, thank you for making time and joining us.

Tessa Misiaszek: Thank you, Banoo.I'm thrilled to be here. Like you, I have two Gen Z boys, so I really love this topic and looking forward to the conversation.

Banoo Behboodi: Fantastic.Let’s start, if we can, Tessa, I would love to get some background.I'm sure listeners would like to learn more about you and where you've been and a little bit more about your role at Korn Ferry.

Tessa Misiaszek: My career has toggled between the academic world and the commercial worlds.I spent the first half of my career working for a couple of different startups, as well as some large companies like General Mills and Johnson & Johnson.About 15 to 16 years into my career, I was able to get into consulting and worked at Korn Ferry as a consultant for a couple of years, primarily in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, doing consulting for large health care systems.

However, I had the opportunity to join another startup and then later become a full - time marketing professor.I was in academia for about eight or nine years as a marketing professor, which was probably my dream job up until the pandemic.We started doing all sorts of creative things, like teaching students in the classroom while simultaneously teaching them online, and all that came with teaching during the pandemic for the better part of two or three years.

At the end of that period, while I love teaching and teaching is at the heart of what I love to do, I must say, I love this generation.I taught primarily MBA students in their 20s and really just love this age, this next generation that’s coming up.I’ve been quite enamored with them for quite some time, beyond the fact that I have two boys in this generation.Primarily because I find them so interesting in the way that they were brought up, the way they learn, and how hypercognitive they are with the way they can use technology.I really enjoyed my time.

I had an opportunity to return back to Korn Ferry in a new role as the head of research with the Korn Ferry Institute.What this has allowed me to do is basically to take all the experience I’ve accumulated over the course of 25 years of my career, from the academic research side to the commercial side, and also looking at things like marketing and branding and people, and combining that with human capital and employee engagement.

I really see how an organization can truly be authentic if they actually espouse and operate the values that they put into their marketing, put into their branding that they might hang on their wall or on the website, and really that they can integrate those values in the way they not just market their products and services, but the way they treat their people.

In doing this type of research and this type of work, I really spent a lot of time looking at the multi - generational workplace and more specifically, how organizations are not just dealing with this new generation, which every generation that comes into a workplace offers new opportunities for the company to grow and to expand and to think differently, but what’s truly different about this particular generation in comparison to millennials and Gen X and baby boomers ?

What’s really special about this particular generation and how might companies think about that as they move into the future ?

Banoo Behboodi: I’m so excited.I’m really looking forward to our conversation because obviously, you have the experience to engage in this discussion.However, our audience is focused on professional services.Their resources or talent are their business.It’s critical to understand what you need to do to retain and recruit the right resources.

We all need to face the fact that we’re going to have Generation Z in our workforce, and we’re going to have to recruit and retain them.Having some tools in our pocket to address this topic is going to be really important for everyone.

As I was researching, I was looking at some of your articles.You mentioned in one of your articles a comparison that was very interesting to me.It was between the Greatest Generation, which is the generation coming out of World War II and the Great Recession, and then Gen Z.You speak to the resilience and a lot of other similarities that these generations have.

Can you take us through that ? That would be very interesting.

Tessa Misiaszek: Absolutely.There are a lot of comparisons and parallels between the Greatest Generation or the Silent Generation and Gen Z.If you look at the presidential candidates in North America right now, one of them is of the Silent Generation, of the Greatest Generation.So theoretically, they’re still in the workplace, although likely moving into retirement.

Let’s look at their experiences versus Gen Z.Gen Z right now is upwards of about 29 years old at the older end, down to about 10 to 12 years old.If we make a comparison between the two, first of all, the Greatest Generation, as you mentioned, came out of World War I and World War II.They were part of a great recession.They were incredibly resilient.They were transformative as a workforce, coming out of the war and back into the industry.They really did transform and usher in a new age within that particular industry.They had to be resilient.They saw a lot of change over time.

If you make that comparison to what we’re saying about Gen Z, they too are a generation that has had to be incredibly resilient.They are, first of all, a global generation.They are far more diverse.They are far more resilient also because they have lived through a massive world event similar to a world war, being the global pandemic, during a time of their formative years.

Coming out of that experience and really thinking about the types of opportunities and the way they think is quite similar, I think, to the Greatest Generation.But I also make the comparison because I truly believe that this next generation, Generation Z moving into Gen Alpha, will be a great generation.That is because, again, they have come into the world, they’ve never known a world without technology.They’ve never known the world without the internet.They are what we call hypercognitive.They have the ability to use multiple forms of technology and find answers very quickly.

As I mentioned before, they are a global generation.Because of social media and access to technology, they have this ability to really understand what’s happening around the world and to really connect with individuals on the other side of the world and other cultures that are very similar in age.Honestly, they’re able to connect based on their similar experiences as well as learn about those differences as well.

Because of that, this is a really amazing opportunity to really connect with a generation that is confronted right now with a lot of change, a lot of geopolitical tension.Climate change is on the forefront.They’ve lived through a global pandemic.I really believe that they are the generation that’s going to have to not just face, but solve those challenges for the world.

I think it’s a really big opportunity for companies to harness these characteristics of this generation and to really learn how to leverage and make the most of that as they incorporate these young people in early careers into their employee workforce.

Banoo Behboodi: I love that.A lot of the ways that we, previous generations, had boundaries that were limiting to us, I think, to your point, maybe those boundaries are now broken, which opens up the world in a very different way.

Considering that, what do Generation Z value as employees within a company and what inspires them, in your opinion ?

Tessa Misiaszek: What’s really fascinating is what led us to this research.Primarily, we were hearing from our clients at Korn Ferry.We had clients coming to us saying that all the old tricks they wanted to use, the compensation and benefits, and all the different types of packages that worked for previous generations were not working the same with Generation Z.

In fact, for large professional services firms, they were losing a high number of Gen Z employees every single month within their first year of hire.This is devastating for a large company because, again, in professional services, oftentimes, your early careerists, obviously they’re not going to be at the same pay rate, but they work really hard, so they’re very profitable employees for you to have as well.

They really wanted to understand, if it’s not just about pay, which traditionally, if you’re a high paying professional services firm, you usually can attract and keep top talent, what is it ? What is it that Gen Z is seeking ?

What was interesting was that while I think we hear a lot in media and we see a lot around the fact that they want work - life balance, they want to work remotely, they want lots of vacation or whatever the case may be, we actually found that in our research, looking both at employee engagement data as well as doing survey work and doing a lot of qualitative research, we actually found that there were other aspects that Gen Z was really connected to, one being purpose.

When we say purpose, it’s really about not just feeling like their work has purpose in the context of doing social good, but it’s actually, do I have a purpose with the company that I’m working with? Is my work meaningful ? Does it make a difference to what it is that the company is trying to accomplish ?

When we talk about purpose, again, it’s not necessarily in the context of saving humanity or anything big like that.It’s just really about, does my work that I’m doing where I am in this organization make a difference to the organization ? How is that reflected back to me ?

Whether it’s purpose, whether it’s really connecting based on values, values being, how do you make business decisions and are they consistent with the way that we espouse it to the public ? Do we operate in that same way ? To really understanding the needs of this generation ?

It is a learning generation, highly agile, access to technology, so do I have the learning and development opportunities within this particular company ? Are there opportunities not for me just to grow within a certain functional area, but also what are the opportunities across the organization that would allow me to perhaps, if I say, have not just one or two or three jobs, but one or two or three careers within the same company ?

They’re really open to those longer - term plans if the company is really offering them a path, not just a job path, but a learning path, to help them develop those types of opportunities for themselves.We really did learn that they’re incredibly thoughtful about the types of companies they want to work with, but they’re also incredibly thoughtful about looking at their total package, compensation benefits, total rewards package, and making sure that includes things that’s going to help their own self - development, their own learning and development, and eventually their own career path.

Banoo Behboodi: It’s so exciting to get what I’ve been experiencing with my daughters validated and verified as something that is backed by research and tied to their generation.All of what you just explained has been my experience watching my daughters as they’ve been building their careers.It’s important to understand it, and as professionals who are trying to recruit and retain, we need to adapt as such.

That being said, what do you think are the steps that companies need to take with that knowledge to be able to adapt their culture and their values, to be able to now attract and make sure they are retaining beyond hopefully months to years? Obviously, there is a cost to recruiting new employees, so it’s definitely going to go to the bottom line if you’re continuously having turnover.What are those steps?

Tessa Misiaszek: It’s expensive to have a lot of turnover.Again, when it comes to what are those values and how do we integrate those values into our culture, it is also really important.We recently conducted a piece of research that really looked at the investment that companies make as it relates to culture specifically.Do you have a chief culture officer and do you have multiple people who are working on culture ?

But what we actually found, again, is that that’s really good for hiring, getting people in the door, but if they get there and they realize that their managers are nothing like what got described to them from a cultural perspective, if they see that the decisions the company is making are really against that which they espouse and their values publicly, or if they get there and their team experience working with colleagues is nothing related to the adaptiveness or the opportunity or if those opportunities aren’t available to them, then they will leave.

We actually see that unless you are really thinking about not just saying that you are going to invest in culture, but you’re actually operationalizing it, integrating that into your business decision making, into the way that you operate as a team, into the training that goes into your managers so that they can really have these reflective conversations with their teams and help these early careerers and this next generation feel more purposeful in the work that they’re doing, understanding the meaning behind the work they’re doing and how that matters to what the company stands for, that’s what’s going to get people to become loyal to your company.

Just like we think about it from a brand perspective as to what makes people loyal, people feel loyal to a brand, or to a product or a service because it reflects who they are.It tells the world a little bit something about them.They have really positive associations with that product or service.The same can be true for your employer.

We actually found in our engagement survey work that only about 50 % of employees under the age of 40 are proud to recommend their products or services to their family and friends.That’s saying that about half of the workforce is not feeling really great about the companies that they work for, the products or services that they sell or that they market.

You want to understand not just how to help your employee workforce feel really grateful and connected to the work that you’re doing, but also be able to check in with them and have that two - way communication to understand, is there a problem or is there a reason why there might be a disconnect and to address that issue as soon as possible.

Banoo Behboodi: I know you mentioned authenticity.I think this all comes back to having a well - defined, intentional culture and value, but being authentic about it, meaning that every action reflects the culture.It's not just lip service, but it's actually reflected.I think this generation catches on very quickly to authenticity.Is what I'm being exposed to authentic and real? Would you agree in terms of the significance of being authentic about it all?

Tessa Misiaszek: Yes, because they grew up on social media, they know when someone’s trying to pander to them.They have been trained to see these images through social media and to know whether it’s real or not.That’s why we have seen in the marketing world influencers really take off with this generation versus celebrity spokespeople for companies and things like that.Influencers to this generation feel more authentic.They’re talking about their lives and their experiences, and they connect to them more authentically.

The same is true for when this generation goes into the workplace.Do they feel like their manager really authentically cares about them ? Do they feel like the company is really representing their values in an authentic way ? They can tell very quickly when they’re being pandered to, and that’s probably the absolute worst thing that can happen because they will hit the road.

The last thing they want is to feel like someone is just telling them one thing and then acting another way.They really want to feel like whatever they’re doing, saying, whatever it is, that they feel authentically connected and they feel good about their work.

Banoo Behboodi: Now, to unleash their creativity, I would imagine the way managers need to think about conversations or leading them or helping with unleashing that creativity has to be a different approach than what we’ve historically been used to.Meaning, instead of saying, “Here’s the process, this is what you need to do,” it’s more about being open to saying, “This is the outcome we’re going after, what is it that you suggest we do?” Or “How would you approach that ?”

I’m just curious about you sharing some thoughts about how do you approach conversations with Generation Z to be able to unleash their creativity ?

Tessa Misiaszek: That’s a great question.My answer usually raises some eyebrows because when I tell Gen X, my generation, or baby boomer managers that they really have to give their Gen Z employees a little bit more autonomy in the way that they approach their work, they think to themselves, “Autonomy ? What do you mean, they just get to do whatever they want with the work ? There’s a certain way that we do this work, and they should be following that way because it’s tried and tested for the last four years.” That might be true.

However, what we actually found in the research is that most companies are not leveraging upwards of 40 % of the skill sets, the technical skill sets, that their Gen Z employees have.As you can imagine, and I’m sure certainly with my experience, it might have been yours as well, when you’re an early careerer that’s coming into your first job, you’re basically told what to do.You’re coming into this role, this is exactly how you do it, and so forth.We all do it.It’s all part of the onboarding process and so forth.

But what I would suggest to managers is to really maybe just take a step back and say, “I’m just curious, this is how we’ve always done this, but I want you to not tell me now, but give some time and think about how might you approach this work differently, whatever the case might be ?” Maybe it’s selling a product or service to a client.Maybe it’s the way you prepare the presentation.Maybe it’s the way that the research is conducted and the type of data that we’re accessing.

But it’s really about just giving young people the opportunity to show you what they know.Again, because they’re so resourceful in being able to access information globally, certainly with the emergence of AI and new technology, they really do understand it, probably at a far greater rate than most of us who have been in the workforce for 25, 30 years.

Being able to just really open up that opportunity for them to share their ideas at a minimum, will first of all, get them more engaged in the work.They’ll feel like they have more purpose in the work that they’re doing, and guess what ? You might find that they have a more efficient, effective way of getting the job done.

Being able to just give them a little space and room to experiment, to be creative, to really think about how they might do the job a little bit differently than perhaps the way it’s been done in the past can go a long way.

Banoo Behboodi: How do they view, and what do they look for in terms of team work and team environments ?

Tessa Misiaszek: I think it’s important to understand who’s on your team.Oftentimes, we try to apply a one - size - fits - all approach to teams.Certainly, I think values are important.But if you’re not doing some level of assessment as to who’s on your team and what makes people different, I do think that they are an incredibly inclusive generation.They’re incredibly diverse.They recognize diversity beyond race and ethnicity like previous generations.They recognize that there’s neurodiversity, that there are differences in communication, and that there are different skill sets people bring to the table.

I do think if you want to create a very inclusive team environment that allows people to have that psychological safety to be able to express who they are and to be able to share those ideas freely and to create a very innovative environment, you really need to offer the opportunity and the space for people to communicate about who they are, the skills that they have, and to really find out where their complementary skill sets are and where there are opportunities for us to think about growing as a team because we have to actually build new skills.

It’s interesting, when we think about team effectiveness, there’s this great piece of work that my colleagues are doing, that Mike Solomons and Alina Polonskaia at Korn Ferry, around what they call innovating for the edges and inclusive innovation.This is really about not just thinking about the 80 / 20 rule, but it’s really about how do we create innovation that includes everyone.That’s where you actually get that differentiated approach to building new practices, new processes, new services that would be far more inclusive and therefore really serve everyone.

Banoo Behboodi: I’m going to end with asking any last minute thoughts you have around how our professional services leaders can start thinking about adapting their culture organization approaches to be able to recruit, retain for the next two, three, five years, considering a big part of their recruitment is going to be around Gen Z.

Tessa Misiaszek: Do a cultural audit to understand what is the current state of your organization and how much work you have to do to get it to be a place where, again, no matter what the purpose of the company is, it’s just really about how are we most authentically moving forward ?

But what we do think about as we think about over the next 5 to 10 years where the vast majority of the workforce will be Gen Z and younger millennials, is that digital transformation is going to be incredibly important across all industries.Being able to really attract that talent, those skill sets, to your organization, that’s what we’re finding in the research we actually just published on this last week.It’s not just about attracting top digital talent with a high salary, but again, what we found as the lever that really retains and also, by the way, provides for gender diversity for those digital skills, is having a DEI policy and being able to have an inclusive environment.

Really understanding those types of ways in which you can shape a culture and really integrate new practices that will allow younger top talent to really authentically connect with your organization is important.

The last piece I would just quickly say is don’t pander.Don’t come at Gen Z with, “We’re all doing a one - day Habitat for Humanity, and this is our CSR effort and now we’re great.” They will see through that in two seconds.I have nothing against Habitat for Humanity; it’s a very worthy cause.But it’s really about, do I have a process where I can help all employees really understand why they matter, and why they matter to the company, and to give them a voice within the company ?

I think that’s really what leaders of companies should be thinking about.How do we communicate that ? How do we create that inclusive environment ? How do we create that psychological safety so that we can hear from every level of the organization, and they all feel like they have a vested interest in the success of this company ?

Banoo Behboodi: I love that.My last question always, any recommended reading for our listeners ?

Tessa Misiaszek: Besides my own book, “Branding that Means Business,” I will say, it’s really interesting.I was telling your producer I was at a yoga retreat this weekend, and when I think about the fact that perhaps Gen Z might be listening to this podcast, I came across a book that I read this weekend called “Everyday Dharma” by Suneel Gupta that is phenomenal.

I think if you’re someone out there who’s thinking, “What’s my purpose ? What am I supposed to be doing ? I’m in a job and it seems like a dead end and I’m not saving the world,” this is a fantastic book to get you thinking about your current situation, and how do you job craft and how do you think about how to connect in more authentically with the work ? It was a fantastic read, so I highly recommend it.

Banoo Behboodi: Fantastic.Thanks, Tessa.I really appreciate your time and your wisdom.I'm sure that everyone can connect with you on LinkedIn.

Tessa Misiaszek: Absolutely.Also, they can connect at my website, tessamisiaszek.com.

Banoo Behboodi: That’s awesome.Thank you for joining us.To our listeners, as always, I appreciate you being with us.As mentioned at the beginning, this is one of three sessions that we’re going to have, and we will have a second one with another expert and a third one that actually will have a panel of Gen Z and get it firsthand from them.

But thanks, Tessa.To our listeners, thanks again for listening.If you have any questions or any suggestions for topics, as always, please reach out to kantata @podcast.com.Thanks again.

Brent Trimble: If you enjoyed this podcast, let us know by giving the show a five - star review on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a comment.If you haven't already subscribed to the show, you could do so anywhere you get podcasts on any podcast app. To learn more about the power of Kantata’s purpose-built technology, go to kantata.com. Thanks again for listening.