Remote work is stunting Gen Z's professional development

As the digital generation, Gen Z has been the poster child for the success of virtual and hybrid work, but the very thing they've excelled at is starting to hurt their careers. 

Forty percent of business leaders believe that Gen Z is unprepared for the workforce, according to a survey from educational insights resource Intelligent.com. Additionally, 88% said this younger generation was less prepared than graduates from more than three years ago, and 94% admitted to avoiding hiring recent grads. 

Part of this issue stems from the lack of professional development opportunities in remote and hybrid work settings. Overall, Gen Z has worked remotely a significant portion of their careers to date due to the pandemic, meaning they have missed out on some experiences that only come with in-person interactions. 

"When the pandemic hit and people went home, people obviously did a good job," says Neil Costa, founder and CEO of recruitment marketing agency HireClix. "But I feel like we've hit the point since where you can tell that there's like a deficit now in employees that's starting to become obvious when we want young people to step up and accept more responsibility and they're missing certain things that were typically developed prior to the pandemic when we're all in the office." 

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Despite being vocal about their preference for flexibility, young talent is aware of the experience gap. In fact, over 80% of Gen Zers said they want to work in person at least some of the time, according to a report from workplace insights platform iHire, with 55.8% wanting an entirely in-person work environment. According to Costa, this evolution in their priorities stems from the simple fact that it's harder to build relationships with colleagues from a distance. 

Although many companies continue to invest in formal mentorship programs, it's the more informal conversations and interactions that happen after meetings or training that really help young people understand their work and find their footing.

"Those opportunities just no longer really exist," Costa says. "You can jump on a Hangout or a follow-up Zoom call where maybe you can talk about it, but it just doesn't happen as consistently — a kind of light, casual, ongoing mentor opportunity that's just for additional context and advice." 

It's up to organizations to build those in-person opportunities for collaboration into their business plans. At HireClix, which has local employees come in three times a week, they make sure to bring in their remote workforce often to run demos and participate in social opportunities both at work and after hours. That way, young employees feel more comfortable asking questions and interacting with leadership than they would in a virtual conference. But virtual and hybrid work isn't going anywhere anytime soon, which means that employers must also have strategies for when their workforce is dispersed geographically. 

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"There's no shortage of online tools that are available for collaboration — like Google suite, Hangouts and Workspaces," Costa says. "But you have to go beyond two dimensional options. For us that has meant encouraging employees to go to conferences or to events where they can learn more and gain some of that camaraderie and build those relationships and bonding moments." 

And while employers may not see the inherent value of investing in these opportunities, refusing to help bolster Gen Z's skills will hurt companies in the future when this generation takes on leadership roles.

"Regardless of the industry you're in, it always comes down to building relationships," Costa says. "It could be a potential Achilles' heel that this generation is going to have to work a little bit harder at to make sure that they keep that in mind. They have to know the balance between being enthusiastic about technology while also focusing on building relationships if they're going to be really valuable workers or leaders at any company."