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It is estimated that the millennials and centennials They will make up 75 percent of the global workforce.
The centennials They represented 32 percent of the world population in 2019 alone.
In Mexico, Generation Z represents 36 percent of the census, according to INEGI.
Office life is a place that has changed in recent years, especially due to the arrival of new generations of employees. Given this, a study published by the LaSalle Network, an employment agency in Chicago and Nashville, revealed how generation Z do not know how to work with an office printer.
Currently, there is a generation gap of more than 40 years in most offices around the world, so working conditions are adapted to the old generations and not to the new ones, creating an environment of non-acceptance and adaptation to the new generations that make up the workforce in the world every day.
In Mexico, according to figures from the 2020 population census of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), the age of people to work (Economically Active Population, PEA) ranges from 15 to 64 years. Where millennials (between 25 and 39 years old) represent 22.6 percent of the entire population; centennials (ages 15-24) are 16.9 percent. Both generations occupy 39.5 percent of the Mexican population.
On the other hand, the youngest of the centennials or Generation Z (between 10 and 14 years old) represent 8.7 percent, and they will join the workforce over the next five years.
The investigation
There are already many investigations that reveal what the workforce of the new generations is like, where it is shown that although they are people who are agile with technology and smartphones, there are some devices that they do not even know or know how to use.
According to a report Posted by LaSalle Networkan employment agency in Chicago and Nashville, nearly half of 2022 college graduates feel “unprepared” for the technical skills needed on the job.
In this sense, according to the research, these new generations do not feel comfortable in traditional office environments, so they are unaware of printers, scanners, fax machines, and desktop computers.
“Whenever I can’t get the printer to work at work, my older colleagues laugh at me with great amusement. She makes me feel silly,” said Megan Whittaker, a 29-year-old social worker from Brooklyn.
Whittaker, who says she “may not be able to work with a printer, but it can calm an emotionally disturbed person,” said she’s frustrated that she wasn’t trained to handle office equipment while she was still at school.
Intergenerational tension is so common that there’s even a term for it: tech shaming. A recent batch of data from Hewlett Packard found that “one in five young office workers feel judged when they experience technology problems.” Young people are also “ten times more likely to feel embarrassed in these scenarios compared to their more mature peers,” according to the computer maker.
“It’s a bit embarrassing: we are the technologically advanced generation. Working with the scanner, I thought, how does that work? How, how do you scan it? I didn’t know how to operate the photocopier either. It’s pretty frustrating,” Jazmyn Castillo, 24, an associate team leader at H&R Block in Garland, Texas, said at the inquest.
For his part, Damien Andrews, 22, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and went to school to learn to code, confessed to feeling equally weak on the basics.
“If you told me you needed a website, I can make you a complete website myself. But if you tell me to fax three documents, I would have to google it. I didn’t even know people were still sending faxes,” he added.
In some cases, the next generation of office drones is having trouble with the most basic tasks. A Reddit user recently regaled the internet with stories of Gen Z coworkers who were so weak on the basics that they had to start labeling the power buttons on office desktop computers to remind everyone how to turn them on.
“I was told Gen Z is supposed to be tech savvy,” user Mowkin wrote.
However, with the addition of younger IT workers, the hopelessly lost find themselves in friendlier hands.
Given this, it cannot be denied that many companies in the world have faced in recent years a fundamental challenge for the survival of any sector, such as successfully achieving the integration of different generations in the same workplace. From work sites, implements, and even hours and benefits, these are resources that many companies are beginning to adapt to the aforementioned generations that increasingly demand better treatment, free of discrimination, exploitation, and even better opportunities to live.
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