The Snowflake Myth Becomes Reality
Finally…my book is ready to go!
The Snowflake Myth: Explaining Gen Z in the workplace and beyond will be released on Monday 29th September.
Please click on the image of the book above for all details.
🎥CLICK HERE for the intro to The Snowflake Myth🎥
As you might imagine I am very excited! It’s my first book and it’s been a huge learning curve for me. Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way.
I hope you will excuse the fact that my content will include more than a few references to this in the next month or so. But it won’t all be about the book (promise).
Book Pre-Orders Now Open!
Get the book for just £9.99 (including P&P) with your subscriber discount code here.
Don't have the code? Sign up here to get it plus a free chapter (regular subscribers do have the code but not LinkedIn subscribers).
Pre-orders will arrive on the official release date: Monday 29th September.
Also available from Waterstones, Amazon, and other retailers click here.
Audiobook coming in 2025.
Finally, the ebook will also be available from Amazon at a VERY special price in the first day or two of release. So if you want to wait for that, no problem!
Separately I am also going to mix up the format of this newsletter in the weeks to come, including some reflections on what is going on in the world of the multigenerational workplace. There will still be content which serves my senior leader coaching clients (some of whom are Gen Z themselves of course).
Please let me know what you think.
1. The value of the physical office
The debate around remote working is not new, and I am not going to repeat the tired arguments here.
What is new is that those who started young professional lives in 2020 as we went into lockdown have now had five years’ experience of the workplace.
Let’s not forget, when the lockdowns ended Gen Z were the first back in the office. Free heat, water, tea/coffee and colleagues were all incentives as was the opportunity for many to get away from living, working and sleeping within the same four walls.
Yet, as this article from Business Insider shows, 40 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds feel lonely or isolated because of the nature of their work, a rate significantly higher than the 24 per cent reported across the wider workforce.
No one wants to travel into work to carry out exactly the same tasks as they could have done remotely. But young professionals know they need to develop soft skills in the workplace, they want to be mentored and developed.
As with anything it won’t be everyone, but it is in employers’ best interests to check that working arrangements continue to suit their employees over time. What might feel like a liberating experience to stay away from the office can become a problem in the future.
Six months of one day in the office and four at home might be fun. Years later it can be the root of a very different problem.
2. Robot recruitment
Hot topic this one.
At what stage does a human look at your job application?
And for that matter, to what extent was a human involved in writing it?
At the moment we have a lack of transparency about the answers to both those questions. As new versions of Large Language Model AI are developed, the more tasks they can undertake. The longer we live with these LLMs the more skilled recruiters and potential employees become.
This is a nice article from The New Statesman outlining some of the issues.
One of those issues is the disparity between the large employers who can afford the complex and ever adapting Applicant Tracker Systems and those who cannot.
Young professionals can experience the worst of it all.
It is not uncommon for someone in their early 20s to apply for hundreds, if not over a thousand jobs, and get nowhere. In effect, machines are talking to machines (and if they use the same LLM then it’s the same machine).
Whilst competence at using AI tools may be a reasonable expectation in this day and age, there is also a risk that those best suited to the job are not getting through AI driven stages of the process.
What is working for you (or not) in your organisation?
3. Military influencers
This article from the Guardian shows what the US Army is doing to increase recruitment.
I am not sure whether it will work or not, but I do think any attempt to show potential recruits reality has a chance. This is particularly when it is directly from the perspective of those currently enlisted.
A few months ago I was interviewed by the BBC for a radio documentary on armed forces recruitment. In the end my bit didn’t get used but I did get to make my point that I thought the current marketing materials were dreadful.
Young staff want the unvarnished truth and to hear (and preferably see) from those who are doing a job, not the version of their managers or an agency hired to put some sheen on it all.
With the exception of the RAF in one particular year, all three of our armed forces have missed their recruitment target five years running.
If this works in the USA it will be interesting to see if the pattern follows here in the UK.
How can I help you?
1. Talks, workshops and seminars - I am an award-winning speaker. My talks recruiting and retaining Gen Z, understanding Gen Z, overcoming the challenges of the multigenerational workplace plus those relevant to the topics below. Speaker showreel here.
2. My book The Snowflake Myth will be published in September 2025 - to receive a free chapter (and receive a discount code for the book) please click here. You can pre-order the book here.
3. One to one coaching programmes for senior leaders who are swamped by their jobs so they can thrive in life. Click here to discover where you are on your journey from Frantic to Fulfilled? Just 5 minutes of your time and you will receive a full personalised report with guidance on your next steps.
4. Team coaching programmes - working IN a team is not the same as working AS a team and yet they are often treated as if they are the same. I help teams move from the former to the latter, and generate huge shifts in productivity and outcomes.
