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Colgate's CHRO Sally Massey, has come out in support of the beleagured Gen Z workforce, countering the usual narrative about engagement and work ethic to praise their contributions to the workplace.
Massey says Gen Z workers are ambitious, informed, and digitally fluent, and argues that those traits align directly with what large employers need.
“[Gen Z] have grown up with technology. They’ve grown up in a very different way than some of the other generations in the organization,” she said, in an interview with Fortune.
She added that Gen Z workers are catalysts for improvement, and bring fresh perspectives to the workplace: “They bring with them new ideas, new perspectives, curiosity. They’re pushing us to get better and to do things differently - I think it’s great.”
Rethinking how organizations listen to Gen Z workers
Massey acknowledges that integrating multiple generations into the workplace is not friction-free. Colgate-Palmolive employs 34,000 people across four age groups, which puts cross-generational cohesion under pressure.
Her strategy is to flatten hierarchies and accelerate knowledge-sharing.
“We’re not siloed by generation or tenure, the senior leaders at Colgate want to hear ideas and thoughts from the more junior employees,” she says. “It’s how we get better, because as you get more senior, you can get further away.”
Employers chasing Gen Z workers with tech skills
The strategy is also backed by other employers that value Gen Z workers for their technical edge. Stripe’s head of data and AI, Emily Glassberg Sands, says she actively hires graduates because “they have the cutting edge skills, and they come in with fresh ideas.”
Paradigm cofounder Matt Huang describes young hires as occasionally chaotic but uniquely capable. “They create an absurd amount of chaos sometimes and you want to pull your hair out,” he says. “But then you see what they can do and it’s like, holy crap. Nobody else in the world could do that.”
Beyond corporate settings, academics and commentators are also defending Gen Z workers against economic pessimism and social anxiety. NYU professor Suzy Welch says Gen Z faces a very different trajectory than previous generations, arguing they have “no reason to believe that they’re ever going to have economic security.”
Those realities, Welch says, shape expectations and attitudes at work, not laziness or entitlement.
