• GenZ and its expectations for the workplace were a talking point at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
• Excessive screen time has dulled their creativity and attention span, experts say.
• Some business leaders say it's important to meet employees where they are.

Five generations are working side-by-side in offices for the first time, but the youngest cohort is bringing new expectations and boundaries to the workplace that break with traditional conventions employers are used to.

"There's very widespread dissatisfaction and concern about young employees," Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business and author of "The Anxious Generation," told Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week.

Countless hours of staring at screens have damaged young Gen Z employees' ability to function well in the workplace, he said.

Many young people are almost constantly using social media, Haidt told BI, which often means they "never have a moment to reflect, they don't have time to mull things over, they don't have time to be creative."

Social media has diminished their ability to pay attention and blocked opportunities for growth, he said. "Those people are largely taking themselves out of the game. They're they're much less likely to ever amount to anything. They're less likely to develop social skills, less likely to marry."

Attention deficit

Haidt's book "The Anxious Generation" explores how social media and smartphones have transformed younger generations. Its publication in March 2024 sparked fresh concerns and conversations about the mental health crisis affecting young people.

Haidt told BI that he now thinks he understated the scope of the problem.

"It's not just mental health," he said. "The decimation of human attention around the world might even be a bigger cost to humanity than the mental health and mental illness epidemic."

The NYU business professor previously explained on an episode of "The Tim Ferriss Show" that young people's attention scarcity is proving an issue as they enter professional life. They're not developing well in the workplace, and managers are finding it hard to work with them, he said.

Martin Sorrell echoed Haidt's comments about Gen Z's attention span on a Davos panel chaired by BI's Spriha Srivastava titled "Mass Events, Massive Gains?"

The founder of WPP, one of the world's largest advertising agencies, said events must evolve to appeal to Gen Z consumers who won't tune in for an entire football game or golf tournament.

Sorrell said that "getting them to watch things is totally different because they watch highlights," adding that "they're multitasking even when they're watching highlights."

At Davos, business leaders were focused on how to adapt to the changing culture Gen Z is bringing to offices.

Haidt's biggest piece of advice for employers and managers is to explain the concept of anti-fragility to their Gen Z employees.

Anti-fragility is the idea that "we grow from adversity and effort," Haidt told BI. That means giving employees direct feedback and challenges so they can learn, develop, and address their shortcomings.

Talk and listen

Haidt added that Gen Z is not in denial and are aware of the problem.

"Talk to your new employees and listen to their concerns, and then make it clear that you want them to succeed and you're going to help them succeed," he said.

Ravin Jesuthasan, a prominent future-of-work researcher and author of "The Skills-Powered Organization," told BI that while Gen Z's attention span has shrunk, individuals are not less creative.

"Maybe the traditional things we relied on for creativity are not there, but I think that this next generation have different ways of engendering their creativity," he said, pointing to GenAI as an example.

Their alternative mindset and worldview can also have benefits for intergenerational teams in the workplace, Jesusthasan said.

Whether or not companies are ready to adapt, GenZ's influence on the world of work is only growing.

Gen Z will make up 30% of the workforce by 2030, EY's global chair and CEO Janet Truncale told a Davos panel titled "Gen Z changes the map."

At EY, the pace of generational transformation is even greater, with Gen Z accounting for about 70% of the workforce by 2030, she said.

To adapt to the changing workforce, it's crucial to recognize that Gen Z is "holistically different" in how it learns and communicates.

Truncale said that doesn't mean Zeds are less effective. "I see the same level of work output and ideas and innovation that are coming from that generation as mine. We've got to meet our employees where they are."

She said that means meeting their needs with flexibility, intergenerational collaboration, and an ongoing dialogue about what workers require.

EY recently launched a new employee value proposition with a strong focus on wellness, and the firm has also started running training sessions through social media and podcasts.

"You're going to start to see more and more CEOs talking about strategy and the vision of their companies through videos while they're running or exercising," Truncale said.

There are traditional conventions and company values that are important to pass down to younger employees, she added. "But there's just as much that we can be taking from the younger generations. We shouldn't be living a life of comparison."

• FOBO was the new buzzword floating around Davos this year.
• The term represents employees' fears of being made obsolete by AI advances.
• Reverse mentoring and targeted upskilling can help employees stay relevant, business leaders told BI.

Rapid AI advances present an alluring opportunity for businesses to boost productivity and efficiency.

But while CEOs battle their FOMO and race to adopt the new technology, their employees are experiencing a different side of the AI revolution — FOBO, the fear of becoming obsolete.

It refers to workers' fears that the speed of artificial-intelligence development is outpacing the reskilling of employees, leaving them redundant in the workplace.

Recent Gallup polling indicates FOBO is on the rise. In a survey of US workers, 22% of respondents said they were worried their jobs would become obsolete because of technology, up from 15% in 2021.

FOBO is a buzzword that kept popping up last week around this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In a panel titled "Closing the Jobs Gap," Singapore's president, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, said a global jobs crisis was looming and called for governments and employers to continually invest in workers to increase the chances that AI complements their skills instead of rendering them obsolete.

Business leaders should be just as interested in doubling down on upskilling initiatives as they are in purchasing the latest AI tools, Ravin Jesuthasan, a renowned future-of-work expert and author of "The Skills-Powered Organization," told Business Insider.

There's a return-on-investment incentive to ensure their workers don't get left behind, he said.

"Just giving people access to ChatGPT won't get you a return," Jesuthasan said. Adoption rates tend to be low when workers are just handed a tool, he said.

First, companies should make all training mandatory and set aside time for learning during the workday to encourage engagement, Jesuthasan said. But they should also be strategic in how they train the workforce, he added.

Where you really get the ROI, Jesuthasan said, is by identifying exactly what work is going to be substituted by AI. Employers can then take workers who have been freed up, assess what new skills they need, and retrain and deploy them with those skills to drive growth, he said.

Rafee Tarafdar, the chief technology officer of Infosys, an Indian tech giant, also said that his company was seeing great success with its in-house learning platform.

Infosys has updated the system with generative-AI courses and created an incentive program that rewards employees when they complete modules. Employees are spending an average of 30 minutes a day learning on the platform, Tarafdar said.

The platform's on-the-go nature was a big draw, he said: "If an employee wants to learn anytime, anywhere, on any device, they should have access to it."

Like Jesuthasan, Tarafdar said differentiating employees based on how they'd use AI was key to upskilling them effectively.

"We recognize that some of them will be consumers of AI, which means they will use the AI tools in order to become more productive and efficient, and some of them will be creators of AI," he said. "And then somewhere in between, we'll have builders, those whose skills will change."

He added that as companies developed courses in such a focused way, each employee would learn how to drive value for their specific job.

Reverse mentoring

FOBO could be a particular problem among more senior workers, Jesuthasan said. They might delegate tasks to a secretary or team rather than AI, he said, and may not have received any significant technical training for 20 years.

An approach Jesuthasan said would likely be effective in bridging the age gap is "reverse mentoring," where more mature workers partner up with younger folks who may be more adept with modern technology.

But it's not just digital skills, Jesuthasan said. Younger generations also have transversal skills and a different worldview that will become more useful in the AI future, he said.

"They're more adept because they've grown up in a much more volatile world," Jesuthasan said. "They've not had the luxury of saying, 'I'll be an engineer for life.'"

Ultimately, though, people have to motivate themselves to avoid becoming redundant, the future-of-work expert said.

"Every one of us has to really force ourselves to be curious," he said. "The company can provide resources. The company can provide the space for reskilling and upskilling, but the individual really has to bring the impetus for change."

• The Chinese equivalent of TikTok is less harmful to young users than TikTok, Jonathan Haidt said.
• The author of "The Anxious Generation" spoke to Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
• He compared letting TikTok operate in the US to letting the Soviet Union own US media during the Cold War.

The Chinese equivalent of TikTok is less harmful to young people than TikTok, a leading social-media expert said.

"TikTok is severely damaging children in the Western world, whereas the version in China is very different and is much more pro-social and is not damaging their generation," said Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the author of "The Anxious Generation."

He made the comments in an interview with Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.

TikTok does not operate in China, where consumers can use the Douyin app. Douyin is subject to different regulations, including the Chinese Communist Party's censorship rules.

TikTok and Douyin are both owned by ByteDance but operate independently, with TikTok's CEO based in Singapore.

Douyin's users are generally older than TikTok's and it has introduced measures to curb online addiction. Douyin has a "youth mode," which limits users under 14 to just 40 minutes a day and locks them out between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. daily.

A less restrictive version of youth mode limits the content that users between 14 and 18 can view through the search function.

Douyin has said it pushes "enriching" content related to general knowledge and educational material to users in youth mode, BI previously reported.

The changes were introduced in 2021 when the Chinese government was imposing a series of measures to limit the time children spent online.

In the US, TikTok has said it has "robust safeguards" and removes suspected underage users. "We have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16," a TikTok spokesperson previously told BI. The app defaults to limiting users who are under 18 to 60 minutes a day.

Attorneys general from 14 US states are suing TikTok for exploiting and harming children's mental health. Documents from the ongoing investigation revealed that officials at TikTok knew the algorithm was highly addictive and could harm children's mental health.

A TikTok spokesperson said: "This lawsuit ignores the number of proactive measures that TikTok has voluntarily implemented to support community safety and well-being. Instead, the complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and outdated documents and presents them out of context, which distorts our commitment to the safety of our community."

Haidt's book explores the effects of social media and smartphones. He argues that apps like TikTok affect young people's attention spans, which in turn blocks opportunities for growth and creativity.

"We know that TikTok has a damaging impact on the development of young people" and China "is able to influence what happens on TikTok," he said. "So I think TikTok is a major national security threat for the United States and other Western countries."

A US appeals court last year found that the US government had offered no evidence to show China was manipulating content on TikTok in the US, but there was evidence that China has compelled TikTok to manipulate content elsewhere.

TikTok is facing an uncertain future in the US. A divest-or-ban law passed by the Senate in April mandated that TikTok had to stop operating in the US on January 19 unless it was sold by ByteDance. The Senate voted 79 to 18 in favor of the bill.

Some lawmakers have called for the intelligence briefings related to the case to be declassified so the government can "better inform the American people about the significant risks the social media platform's Chinese ownership poses to our national security." Other senators have said the "ban lacks evidence."

The platform briefly went dark for US users on Saturday but resumed on Sunday after Donald Trump said he would sign an executive order delaying the ban.

After his inauguration on Monday, Trump paused the ban for 75 days. The company said it will work with the president on a "long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States."

Haidt compared allowing TikTok to continue operating in the US to allowing the Soviet Union to run The New York Times and other leading media sources during the Cold War.

"The Soviet Union invested a lot of money in trying to change American public opinion and trying to divide us and trying to make us hate each other. From the 1950s through the end of the Soviet Union, they had a culture change program, and of course, China has one," he said.

"It is just inconceivable to me that the Soviet government could have owned The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and PBS."