The Scaffolding Generation Part 1
Something is happening with early-career employees, and most organizations don’t see the writing on the wall.
72% of Gen Z report burnout symptoms. 48% are experiencing significant financial insecurity. 77% report anxiety about the future of the world, higher than any other generation.
The instinct is to call this a Gen Z problem. A motivation problem. A resilience problem.
It isn't. The cohort entering your organization right now, those who were 17 to 25 during 2020 through 2022, came of age during the most significant developmental disruption in modern history. The pandemic didn't just stress them out. It arrived during the precise window in which social confidence, professional identity, and resilience are actively built through lived experience.
And it interrupted that process for an entire generation simultaneously.
What we're observing in the workplace today isn't a character deficit. It's the downstream consequence of missing out on the formative experiences through which confidence and professional competence are normally built, a kind of developmental scaffolding.
The question isn't how to fix this generation. It's how to build the conditions in which they can develop now.
Emerge EQ has been researching this, and we put it all together in our new white paper: The Scaffolding Generation.
Post 2 coming soon: What specifically was disrupted and why it matters for how you lead. To learn more about Emerge EQ and the work we do, contact us here.