Crocs and quiet exits: What employers get wrong about GenZs

The younger employees have become a headache in offices; they take unofficial leaves without asking, skip job interviews they had already confirmed, and in some cases, quit after three months of work. This, after a company has spent hours training them. They come to workplaces, only to earn money, just enough to buy an iPhone. After that, back to zero. No shame. No second thoughts.

Rewriting the rulebook

The big question employers and parents are asking is, are these young people tearing up the workplace rulebook, or are they just rewriting their own rules?

Chris Sakwa is an HR practitioner, a co-founder and co-director of HRD Ingenuity, and a lecturer at the College of Human Resource Management. He has seen it from every angle, as a consultant, a trainer, and as someone who has had to sit has seen it from every angle, as a consultant, a trainer, and as someone who has had to sit across the table from both frustrated managers and unbothered younger employees.

His first point is that this is not a simple problem with a simple answer.

“Trying to choose one side would be an injustice,” he says. “The young ones have a different approach to life, and they are challenging the status quo. And yes, the older generation is struggling with it.”

He sees it as two realities sitting side by side, not one cancelling the other out.

“What makes Gen Z workers different from every generation that came before them is the speed at which they expect things to happen. They want results now. They are not interested in waiting for a promotion that might come in five years. They are not interested in loyalty to a company that has not yet proven it is loyal to them. When something is not working, they leave. Not next month. Now,” says Chris.

Need to explain the 'why'

Every office has rules, so what about the rules?

Gen Z tends to treat them as suggestions. Chris says this comes down to two things. The first is that employers have not done enough to explain why the rules exist.

“When you do not explain the why behind a rule, they take it lightly,” he says. “A policy document dropped on someone’s desk without context will feel random to someone who has grown up questioning everything. Gen Z wants to understand the reasoning. Without it, they see no reason to comply.”

The second explanation is harder for managers to hear.

Chris says the older generation has not always walked the talk. The young ones will do what they see being done. If you preach integrity but do not live it, they are watching.

“When a manager bends the rules for themselves but enforces them on everyone else, Gen Z clocks it. They say nothing. But they remember. And eventually they stop taking the rules seriously because the people making the rules clearly do not.”

The parenting factor

Then comes the question of where all this behaviour really starts. Chris does not hesitate. He points to the parents.

“We are talking about Gen Zs as if they fell from some other planet. Yet the truth is, they are our monsters. We created them. Many Gen Z employees grew up in homes where parents worked hard to make sure their children never went without. Struggle was something that happened to other people. The word 'no' was almost never said.

“They were taught to go after what they want and cut off anything that did not serve them. So, when they arrive at a job and are told the pay is lower than expected, or that they have to sit at a desk for eight hours even after finishing all their work, it does not make sense to them. It has never made sense in their world before.”

“They do not know that no, full stop, is a complete and acceptable sentence,” Chris says. So when they hear it at work, they do not adjust. They walk.

Productivity vs presence

There is also the Gen Z view of time and presence. The old model was clear: come in at eight, leave at five, be seen, be loyal, wait your turn. Gen Zs have thrown that model out. Their argument is straightforward. If the work is done, why does it matter when or where it was done? Chris sums up their logic.

“You want something done? Tell me what it is. I will finish it in two hours and leave. Did I deliver? Yes. Was the work good? Yes. So what is the problem?”

He admits it is hard to argue with that.

Covid-19 gave them their biggest proof yet. When the pandemic sent everyone home, the world did not stop. Work got done. In many places, it got done better. That handed Gen Zs a very strong card to play. Remote work, flexible hours, and hybrid setups are no longer strange requests.

Many organisations have already agreed to them, partly because Gen Zs pushed and partly because the pandemic showed it was possible.

Read: The tool you need to onboard Gen Z workers into your firm's organisational culture

But Chris is not here to defend everything Gen Zs do. He says it's clear that they need to develop patience, emotional intelligence, and a genuine willingness to learn from people who have been in the game longer.

“If they push away the older generation, they are missing the mark,” he says. “The older generation carries institutional memory and experience that cannot be downloaded overnight. Ignoring that is not boldness. It is a gap.”

From boardroom suits to crocs

Now, once the bigger rules conversation has been had, there is another one waiting quietly in the corner. The dress code.

Gen Z employees are walking into offices in sneakers, hoodies, crocs, ripped jeans, and braids styled in ways no 1990s boardroom would have recognised. Some managers take one look and see disrespect. But Chris slows that conversation down quickly.

“When boomers were young, they had bell-bottoms, high-heeled shoes for men, too, and big afros. Their parents had issues with them. When Gen Xers came in, there were strange hairstyles. Locs, boxes and slopes. When millennials arrived, people said the same things.”

His point is direct. Every generation in their youth has clashed with the one before it over how they look. Gen Z is not an alien species. They are just next in line.

The solution, he says, is not a ban. It is a conversation. Explain to them why clients from a different generation might interpret certain looks differently. Give them room where it is possible, a dress-down Friday, a casual day at the end of the month. Let them come in with the crocs and the hoodies when there are no client meetings. And be clear about where the line is and why it exists.

“Do not just say this is how it is done. Explain the why. When you get them to understand the why, they will probably treat it as a rule,” Chris says.

Why companies must act

On whether managers should even bother hiring someone who might walk out after a month, Chris says yes, but with a clear head.

“I would have both the loyalist and the rebellious Gen Z. The loyalist gives me stability and institutional memory. Gen Z gives me fast results. The question is how I manage each one.”

He believes in mentorship that goes both ways. Managers learning from Gen Zs. Gen Zs learning from managers. Not one side doing all the teaching.

What he is pushing for, at the end of all of it, is for organisations to stop pretending the old playbook still works and to update their HR policies to match the workforce that is actually showing up.

Gen Z is growing as a share of that workforce every year. They are not going anywhere. And the Alphas, the generation coming right after them, are already close behind.

“Work ethic is being challenged,” Chris says. “It is no longer about being present and being seen. It is about delivering value. We need to reconsider what we have termed work ethic, because the world is moving.”

Nobody has figured out what the Alphas will bring. But if the Gen Z conversation has taught us anything, it is that the next one will arrive whether we are ready or not.

→ [email protected]

Follow ourWhatsApp channel for the latest business and markets updates.