What Gen Z need from work

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That's work.deliveroo.co.uk. Parle-tu français? Hablas español? Parle italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com.acast spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com.acast. Rules and restrictions may apply. Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or a growing enterprise managing vendor REST, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started at vanta.com. This is Eat Sleep Work Repeat. It's a podcast about workplace culture. Hello, I'm Bruce Aisley. Today's episode goes deep on Gen Z's. I was fortunate enough to be on a panel with Jackie Cooper from Edelman about a month ago. And Jackie runs the Gen Z lab at Edelman. We've featured Edelman a couple of times going deep on their trust report, the Edelman trust report. And they've been fantastic episodes. Today, because I saw Jackie present the Edelman Gen Z lab, I was particularly interested in picking her brains. There were some fabulous stats that came from the Gen Z lab and the stuff she was talking. And I think you're going to find it a really interesting interview, specifically because she said Gen Z's, albeit that they probably need splitting into two different cohorts, the younger Gen Z's and the older Gen Z's. There's a common thread that runs through the group, really. Two thirds of Gen Z's feel that there's a lack of trust. They don't really trust their organisations. Three quarters of them think we need to rethink work and the way that it operates. One thing that's really interesting throughout is that Gen Z's consider personal security, financial, emotional, physical security to be one of the most important prerequisites at work, which is a really interesting thing to sort of project onto young people, really. Fantastic discussion. I think you're going to get a lot from this. The report that we mentioned is linked to in the show notes. And I particularly found that that was a really intriguing quality. This is my conversation with Jackie Cooper from Edelman. I'm Jackie Cooper, and I serve as Edelman's global chief brand officer and a senior advisor. And you run something I saw on your resume called the Gen Z lab. I wonder if you could just... that's the context we're talking today. So I wonder if you could just explain to me what the Gen Z lab is? Yeah, it's really interesting that we established the Gen Z lab to really help our clients understand how to engage with this generation. And it was prompted by me being on a workshop panel for Adweek, where I was asked to sort of moderate an internal workshop around the future of marketing. And it happened to be with six CMOs, and I didn't really know which aspect of that rather wide subject we should look at. And so we rang them up before the workshop and said, what's sort of keeping you awake at night? What would you really like to have in this hour? And I really didn't imagine that every single one said, actually, can we address Gen Z? And that came out really because as a senior marketeer, you've probably grown up in a workplace where you're used to leading audiences, leading creative work, leading marketing direction, and your audience follows and engages. And what they were all feeling with Gen Z was this was not an audience that was doing any of those things. And this is an audience that was not only asking more questions, but had the ability to share their opinions. And of course, at the extreme, bring them down and cancel them. And so they were paralysed by indecision. And they were saying they'd rather do nothing than do something that backlash. And so out of that workshop came the idea that I said to them, well, look, if I could establish insights, data guidance, that would sort of help you make those decisions with knowledge, would you be interested in that? And they all agreed. So give us the top line then. So I've read through the latest Gen Z report that you've done. And on a delve into some of the ways that maybe the group is a bit more bifurcated than we might imagine and the weight split, but I wonder if you could just give us this sort of the top line perspective of the state of Gen Z, how they see the world. Yeah, it's such an interesting conversation to have, because it's a generation that's kind of changed generational behaviour because of what they've experienced. So they've gone, they've seen their parents go through two recessions. They've gone through a pandemic. We have geopolitical unrest, financial unrest, technology opportunities, but also technology fears. And the one thing that came across from the very first outreach of survey, global survey that we delivered was this visceral need for safety. And we were really quite surprised by some of the feedback that we got. And the fear goes across financially, socially, everything that's going on culturally. And the way that that generation and the way this generation is dealing with fear is by asking questions and wanting to understand and wanting to be heard. And this doesn't always go very, this doesn't go down very well quite often with older generations who see this in the workplace quite often as entitlement, or kind of disrespect for hierarchy. And a lot of the time when we've been talking about this behaviour, we've been trying to contextualise it within that initial finding of fear, that if you're frightened, the thing you want to do is find out and if you find out you're less fearful. And so that visceral need for safety has been a sort of common thread for subsequent surveys for us to sort of find out what's going on. And politically, obviously, it's such a challenging time. So in that latest survey, we want to continue to understand because they really are the most influential generation that we have. But what we also know now that the younger Gen Zers are leaning much more to the right. And we really do feel that it's quite fragmented among Gen Z. It's not one cohort. So we really do need to understand a little bit more of the tapestry of how they're behaving and how they're showing up and what's going on. I saw that in your report, I guess the easiest way for us to understand Gen Z is it's anyone born since the millennium. And so, you know, we're going to have people who are older than the century, 25 years old, but we're also going to have people who are as young as 12, I'm guessing sort of 10, 12. And I saw in the report, it said that younger Gen Zs, maybe because they've grown up in the post-COVID era, really, that's the time that they come of age, are leaning right. Is that in the US in particular? Or is that everywhere across the board? It's stronger in the US. But we see it everywhere, probably because this sort of, we don't really understand the source of it. What we are seeing is the reasons that they're giving us now that they're there. And there is this sort of, we all we see this being much more heavily emphasised towards boys and men than we do to girls. So there's something also about a gender divide amongst Gen Z, where the boys and men are sort of wanting to hold on to more conservative values. And there is a challenge that we see through to around masculinity and how they behave and how they get seen and how they show up. And you look at some of the noise around the people like Andrew Tate, and it's sort of quite shocking in terms of how many of those Gen Zers were following that kind of movement. So I think you could ask 1000 questions and really, really get 1000 answers. And of course, when you do a survey, you just try and take, you know, the slides through those responses. But what we do see is this sort of need for them to be heard. And sometimes people will express within Gen Z opinions that are quite idealistic, or quite theoretical, but they're expressing those opinions very firmly anyway, because they feel they absolutely need to be heard. And maybe this world doesn't hear them. And doesn't factor them in, doesn't factor them in to the workplace, doesn't factor them into government, doesn't factor them into the future of work, giving the advent of AI. And so it's a very challenging place for them. Obviously, that's a generalisation. But we do see that in large, large numbers in the US, in the UK, and across the world. One of the things that I got from this stuff that you've done was that actually, there was almost cause and effect in almost everything that you could see. So the older Gen Zs, who'd grown through the Black Lives Matter, or they'd grown through the Obama presidency, they had a degree more idealism about what they believed that politics could do and politics could change. The ones who'd grown up through the COVID era, and were very much sort of shaped and defined by algorithm, and algorithmically driven content, were a touch more focused on safety and security and sort of, you could see the appeal of a confident, strong man leader, that sort of archetype of that. And I just wonder then, projecting forwards, one of the things that came across in your report is political chaos was one of the things that defined the last few years, certainly in the UK. And that political chaos seems to be extending forwards into the future. Would you imagine then, that this state of the younger Gen Zs is going to continue? Well, I think if you look at the world, I think that we can see that absolutely, there's no reason for anyone to feel reassured. We see that, you know, the whole political situation really does help them decide how they're going to behave. You know, Gen Z is basically shaped by experiences, they're shaped by algorithms. And while Gen Z does sort of span multiple ideologies, we've also seen them act as a group with quite a lot of clarity, whether it's pushing industries together, demanding new brand actions. And so I do think it's absolutely a mirror to what's going on in the world. That's what we've really found, that what happens in Gen Z is then sort of trickling through into wider behaviours. And Gen Z are you know, absolutely concerned right now about the world that they live in, from this month worse than last month. And you know, I know you outreach particularly to the US and the UK. And in both of these countries, we do not see things improving, we see things becoming more fractured. And out of fracture comes force. These generations are saying, okay, but I want to be counted, I want to be seen, I want to be heard. And there are various ways that they, they can do that. And it's really, for them, understanding that they have a voice now to decide what their future might look like. And they don't have trust in the traditional institutions, they don't have trust in government, they don't have trust, really, in in this system. And so quite often, we're asked about activism, and we say, well, look, it's not really activism, it's more about Gen Z just wanting action. If you are expressing an opinion, and you want action that doesn't automatically make you an activist. Having said that, Gen Z is also probably one of the most activist orientated generations we've seen since the 60s. But we also see that going through, we just have to look at the King's marches in the, in the US. And you see that people are taking to the streets, that's not just Gen Z. But that notion of having a voice, standing up for what you believe, not sitting down and letting the authorities tell you what's what, is spreading, it's spreading beyond the Gen Z generation. But we find from a lot of the work that we do that it's the Gen Zers who are triggering, triggering families to get out. And it's the Gen Zers who are triggering the workplace to address issues and be more transparent about what they stand for. So we would, you know, we often say that this is the most influential generation. And we have a longevity lab, which also targets 55 to 72. And that's the most economically powerful generation. But the influence is coming from Gen Z. I wonder if we could talk about the impact at work. One of the things that Adelman's trust report actually often talks about is that our organisation, our company is the, is the smallest big thing that we think that we can have an impact over. We become a touch idealised when it comes to our organisation, because we think, well, we can see the boss. And surely somehow we can perceive that there's going to be something done. That's, that's right, because it's done by someone who's close to us. And when Gen Z come to work, what is their, what is the effect of that at work? How do they, you've talked about the need for safety, how do they perceive feedback inside the organisation? You've talked about them not necessarily having faith in institutions. Do they have faith in companies? They do have faith in companies, which is quite interesting. They have a lot of faith in their own CEO, which is super interesting. But that will go up or down depending on accessibility and transparency within their group and the leadership group. And so the hierarchy doesn't automatically dictate to them that they shouldn't have an opinion, or that they shouldn't ask questions. And so a lot of the experience we've had in the workplace that's helped optimise communication within that workplace has been when Gen Z's able to have a voice, feel that they're being heard, and set up the right kind of system so that right the way to the top, they feel that there's not only input from them, but understanding on the direction at the leadership level at the executive level. And we see that a lot of the Gen Zers really want to make an impact in work, and that's a good thing. But they also expect their company to make an impact in the world. And so we see numbers go up if a company can show a Gen Z cohort that they take their role as a company in the wider sense of their place in the world seriously. And if they are communicative and open about what they're doing to make the world a better place. Now, that doesn't mean that they all have to go and save the planet. But there is an element of that there is an element of look, you're out here, you've got a superpower as a business, to use your marketing acumen to use your brand to use the ability to either financially or in, you know, influence to help the world be a better place. And Gen Zers will ask of their workplace, what are you doing? And the more that the company can come back and say what they're doing, the more favourable they feel. The other thing that's really, really important is it's okay to say no to Gen Zers. And I think a lot of people go, Oh, my goodness, you know, I'll just keep them over there. And you know, we're doing what we're doing. But conversation and transparency is everything for them, because that helps them feel safe, they understand what's going on. And a bit like parenting, if you say, well, look, we understand why you want this, but we can't do that right now, because whatever, whatever, however, it's on the docket for later, because whatever, whatever, our Gen Zers say that's fine, because at least we know we're being heard, at least we know that they're actually trusting us to have an opinion, and that we're allowed to hear what's going on. They're pledging their time to a company. And they therefore want that to be respected. And what's it's not kind of blind time for Gen Z, they really want to understand where they're spending their time. And you know, they've seen their parents go through quite brutal lack of work life balance, the pandemic, and they don't want that kind of imbalance. That's not laziness, that's quality of life. And quite often that that gets misinterpreted. And maybe they actually have quite a lot to teach us. Is there is there any scope when when we look at the deal that work represents to Gen Z workers, like, let's say a 22 year old, the deal that work represents is less optimistic, maybe than the deal that was presented to their parents that a lot of parents might have owned a house had a mortgage by the time they were 30. And so, you know, be mortgage free by the time they're 55. Actually, most of those things don't seem attainable without the bank of mom and dad now. And so with the lack of wage growth, in addition, are they more pessimistic? Or have they turned their focus elsewhere to the way that they think about the upside of work? How do they perceive the trade off of work? Both, so they're more pessimistic, or you could say more realistic. This is the first generation that won't do better than their parents financially. And you're right, they won't achieve anything without the bank of mom and dad. And if the bank of mom and dad's not that rich, they've got a problem. So that's a reality check for them. And not these things aren't always black and white. And they see therefore that they want to live a life that isn't just about being strapped into a financial straitjacket and trying to aspire to a house that they're never going to afford. But it really also depends on the socio economic situation of where they're coming from, because there is also, you know, the reality or the optimism of just living a life and being realistic, works for a certain amount of people for another amount of this generation, it's very depressing, because they're going to sort of aspire to watch. It's really interesting, and I'm sure you're more knowledgeable than me about this move away from going, you know, going away from going to university, from, you know, let's just go through that academic process and a job will be ours when we come out. The jobs that we want are the ones that are craft jobs, the ones that are service jobs, the ones that we all need. And we hear just anecdotally, when we were doing these surveys from Gen Z is saying, well, I just want to go out there and earn money and have a job where I know people are always going to need my services. And what are those jobs as well with the advent of AI, because the threat for their jobs and their workplace is real. And so I think that it's such a time of unknown for what that future workplace holds, the notion of being a plumber. The notion of being a plumber and earning money is better than going to university if you're not actually sure where your economic safety is going to come from, because we're always going to need plumbers, hopefully. Yeah, that safety thing is a recurrent theme, isn't it? Like safety, projecting forward. I want to talk about technology, because one of the surprising things in the report is that young people feel like they've got a conflicted relationship with their phone. They feel like they are cautious about AI and what AI represents in the future. Now, I can definitely understand that people in an older cohort might naturally shrink into that conservatism of thinking that everything new is dangerous. But typically, it's young people who are quite optimistic and idealistic about those things. And it's just interesting to see, firstly, to see that they've got the conflicted relationship with their phone. That's something that I normally associate, that phone guilt is something that's acquired later in life. I'd love to talk about technology and this strange relationship they have with technology. No, I love this, because it's a bit counterintuitive, as you say. And Gen Z often use this phrase about, well, I fell into the TikTok hole. And it's this experience of you go on the phone, and obviously, Gen Z, grown up with everything being on that device and all these different platforms being available. But then they fall down the TikTok hole. And what they mean by that is you just get lost into it. And before you know where you are, hours are burned. You've watched all sorts of rubbish. Your head's buzzing. You're probably doing it at night. You're not going to sleep. And you've fallen down that hole. And that kind of works across all of this relationship with everything that's happening on social. You add to that the mental health challenges and the pressure, the speed, the lack of depth, the lack of thought, the adrenaline rush. This is helping this generation and all of us, actually, feel really quite rattled by spending a huge amount of time on these devices in these spaces. What we see from Gen Z, and you may have seen this in some of the themes when you go online, is this absolute thirst for nostalgia and this incredible trend for going back to what was very tangible and very hands-on. We see knitting, crochet, cottagecore, old-fashioned baking, decor. It's even changing how Gen Zers are decorating. They want to go back to the safety, again, and the nostalgia of when things were simpler. And so that doesn't mean being lost in the technological high-octane world of being online. So they'll bake, and they will put on a vinyl record. They won't put on Spotify. They will want to really understand that when you're around the table, quite often it's the Gen Zers who are telling their parents, Mom, Dad, put the phone away. And they don't want the phones to be there. They want conversation. They want it to be in real time. Online dating, there's now this channel that's going through for in-real-life meeting. I actually want to meet you in real life. I'm going to put the phone in the basket in the middle of the table, and we're going to actually see how we get on in real life. And this is a very essential thing if you talk to psychologists, and even if you talk to people who are in the technology companies. You know, we've all read that quite often it's the people in the technology companies who are more disciplined about limiting how much their kids have that online time. We know it's not good for your mental health. It's not good for your creativity. And so Gen Z are looking at their quality of life, and they're looking at how they feel, and they're making some super smart decisions to try and get back, actually, to a place where things were not all about that social space and that digital hit, because it's not a good long-term experience for them. And the more you're in this space, as this space is changing, so, you know, our head of tech always says, today is the slowest the technology will ever be, which is scary. It's just going to get faster and faster. So the only way that we're going to mentally, for our well-being, deal with it is to be disciplined about when we're in and when we're not. And I love that Gen Z are kind of leading on this, and they're telling the older generations, you're on that too much. Look at me. Have a conversation with me. Talk to me. Let's just put that down. Do you think, in aggregate, the expectations of Gen Z are almost inevitably going to be disappointed? I say that largely because you've talked about how Gen Z's joined the workforce. They have got expectations about having voice, about having a say. Previous generations might have had that expectation, but it was sort of hazed out of them pretty quickly. That's not going to happen. You're going to have three years on this slow scheme. Are the expectations unreasonable? And is the TikTok-ification of some jobs, you know, where people project their jobs and say, I'll do this, is that creating unreasonable expectations about what the workforce is going to be like for some Gen Z workers? I think, to answer your first question, we see in the numbers that over 60% of older colleagues say they've been influenced by Gen Z. That's a really high number across how they work, across their choices for mentoring, for what they do in terms of social impact, engagement. So, I actually think Gen Z's influence across the generations, and we have a lot of data across all of the surveys, whether it's the media and content you look at, or whether it's how you turn up in the workplace and the choices you make in the workplace, we see around the 60% mark, older generations saying, yep, I've been influenced by Gen Z. So, I find that very reassuring because you've got the wisdom of the old and, you know, they're not going to just take it all as writ. They can take the influence and be better and recognise Gen Z, but they're still going to make their own individual decisions. And I think that the workplace will be better for it, especially against the absolutely assault of AI and how that's going to change all of our workplaces. The notion of keeping in touch with the human aspect, and that human aspect being more questioning and saying, please make my world better, is such a great antidote to the technology helping with, you know, so much of the graft. So, I'm optimistic, generically optimistic, that this dynamic between Gen Z pushing and asking, the older generation being influenced and hearing, and that sort of pace in the middle where we see, look, you know, I want you to connect more with me as a leader. I want you to show me what you're doing more of impact in the world. I want you to mentor me, but I also want to mentor you, so you understand what Gen Z is doing, this notion of mentor-mentee between generations. Gen Z saying, I want a work-life balance and us saying, well, you know what, maybe you've got a point, maybe we have over-egged it on the, you know, drive to achieve and the drive to have work being everything and recovery at weekends rather than it being much more sort of balanced. And Gen Z also want to use the workplace to upskill, but they also want their life to be used for upskilling. And that does make you a better all-round person when you come to work. So I think on balance, it's optimistic. I think we have a responsibility to have them in the room, literally and metaphorically. I think if we don't do that, it won't be optimistic. It seems to me like there's one thing that comes out of a lot of what you're saying, is that being comfortable with contradictions is a really important part. I saw you talking actually about young people often have got contradictions at the heart of their own feelings. They're like, they think one thing, but they also think another and these things aren't fully formed. And it seems like organisations, if they start with good intention, thinking, well, we're going to try our best on this, but there's going to be some moments where maybe we don't get it fully right, but it's the attempt that is putting us in the right direction, that that's not a bad place to be. That's the way I'm reading it. Yeah. I mean, in the workplace, we've been schooled to believe that we have a strategy and we have a way and then we all go into that way. And that's a good thing. We all know where we're going. And that is a good thing. But within that, you've got a tapestry now of multi-generational people who can make that good thing better. And actually being comfortable in the grey and hearing that rather than the black and white could make the strategy better. You know, we've heard that, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Why is that? And that's because it's made up of the people who are in the workplace, who are human beings in a human workplace with their own feelings, with their own opinions and with their life influences affecting how you come to work. And during Covid, obviously, it was such an extraordinary time because while it was massively challenging and frightening, we were in a place where we were all experiencing the same world thing to try and manage how we were all managing in the workplace thing. And it was such a weird experience to, for example, have a call with someone that you just met, but you were talking to them from your home. So you immediately were in each other's homes and the immediacy and intimacy of that helped those conversations be a bit more intimate and maybe a little more speedy to get to what you really wanted to get to of knowing that person and getting to be constructive. So I think we expect a system to sort of run the company, but actually a system should support where a company wants to go. And that system has to change now to be optimal. It has to be more lateral. It has to, of course, have a hierarchy, but a hierarchy that's respectful of all the levels. And you and I met on a panel, you know, at a company where leaders were asking us about Gen Z and about the workplace. And what I found so interesting about the workshops, most of the questions I was asked as we were doing that sort of round robin in the workshops is how do I just hear from Gen Z and what do I do with what I hear from them? I've never really asked them anything. But asking is all they want. They're not saying you have to change everything because their naivety and their lack of experience is known by them as much as it's known by us. But they do want to ask the questions to get the reassurance and also to love where they work. For them, having faith and having excitement about where they work is a two-way thing. And I've got a Gen Zer here, for example, who was supposed to be coming to a meeting and kind of didn't want to come to the meeting because someone didn't come back to him in a certain way. And I just literally wrote to him and said, well, we didn't come back to you because of this, this and this, but I suggest you still come to the meeting and tell me what you think, this, this and this. The discomfort has to be comfortable. The discomfort has to be welcomed. I'm so interested in that discomfort. I'm just interested in whether we probably need to graduate Gen Zers into the workplace slightly more explicitly than maybe previous generations. I hear all the time from people saying Gen Zers are a little bit uncomfortable with feedback. And, or, you know, to your safety point, they go to HR if they get too direct feedback. And that suggests to me, and it's younger millennials, I've heard that as well, that suggests to me that maybe we just need to do a bit of acclimatisation of them into work and adapt them. But it's not to say they can't be adapted, but probably just bring them up to speed a little bit. Yeah, I think adapting is the word, because everyone wants to advance. And if they don't, they shouldn't be in the workplace. I mean, it's not like you should just say, well, all Gen Zers are fabulous, and they should be mollycoddled and they should be listened to. And they just have to sort of be reassured all the time. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. The insight of the sort of journey that they've come through, through the pandemic, through all kinds of political, social, economic challenges, means that they are really traumatised. It's not too big a word in many ways, because they've had to fight or see their parents fight. We had 15 year olds in the US in our survey telling us that they were saving up for medical insurance so that they wouldn't see their parents go through what their parents went through, what they saw their parents go through. So this need for safety is such a theme. And I think adaptability for all of us is necessary. We've had to adapt post-COVID. We've had to adapt to understand hybrid working. We've had to adapt to understanding that suddenly a commute from somebody is expensive, and they're coming to us and saying, but I can't afford to commute. And like, well, you commuted before COVID. And they say, well, yes, but before COVID, I lived in a one-bedroom studio in New York, and I realised that that was untenable. So I've moved out, and now it's costing me a lot of money to come to work. My whole situation has changed. And we don't criticise for that. We recognise that that's something that has changed fundamentally in our world. Gen Zers have been through all of this, and they continue to go through all of this. We have our media telling us that we could be on the threshold of a world war. Like, you know, you think about before World War II and how people behaved and that sort of need to live their life, because they didn't know what tomorrow was going to bring. There are elements of that for this generation. That's exactly what they're going through now. So we adapted from COVID, and this generation changed because of COVID. Why wouldn't we therefore recognise that there's further adaptation needed for this generation in the workplace? And we can learn from them, but they also need to learn from us. And the work that we've done on the longevity lab, and I've mentioned on that panel that we did together, Chip Conley, who's a fantastic author and talks about the sort of older generation's ability to really understand what they can bring to the workplace. Exactly, it's some parallels. We see lots of bookend parallels between Gen Z and the 55-plus, because 55-plus now isn't what 55-plus was 10 years ago. The older generation is asking different questions. No one's saying, you know what, farm me out at 60. People are saying, keep me in the workplace. I'm not done. I'll actually know what I'm doing. And Chip Conley talks about the wisdom that's necessary in the workplace. And he told us that the startups that he's been looking at succeed. He's an entrepreneur and supported lots of different businesses. They succeed mostly if they have someone of over 60 on their board, but obviously, most of the startups are made up of the Gen Zers. So that dynamic between the Gen Zers who have all the sort of vim and vigour and the passion, but also they just don't have the wisdom. They need the wisdom from the older generations. And the older generations need to understand the questions from the Gen Zers. So I'm so lucky with our Gen Z lab. We have 400 Gen Zers around the world who we can immediately turn on for focus groups, workshops, reviews of creative work, workplace advisory sessions where we give box pops. And they in turn have their own posse of people in each of the markets. I learn from them every single day. Recently, last week, I was in Chicago and attended our global leadership accelerator session where we had hundreds of employees from around the world come in who are sort of the next bright stars of the business. You learn more from being in the room with those people than anyone. They have enough information to be super smart, but they're asking enough questions of us to make us smarter. Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor REST, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started at Vanta.com. If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. 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I wonder if there was one bit of advice or what you've specifically learned that you would say has helped you empathize with Gen Zs or is there anything that you would suggest to someone else if they're struggling with Gen Zs inside their organization, there's one point that you would sort of, you would focus on. My biggest learning is pull them together and just talk with them, not at them. Don't present to them, talk with them and let them understand that what they say is interesting. You might not agree with it. You might not do anything with it, but just hear them. Once they feel that they've been heard, they will 100% lean in and you're going to learn something. 100% you're going to learn something because their ability to forensically research stuff is off the scale and therefore their ability to feed back to you and have knowledge is on another level to the previous generation. So that two-way communication is only going to help. I love that. I love that. Jackie, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you to Jackie. As ever, all of the best things are in the show notes and you can also subscribe to the newsletter there if you're interested as well. I've been Bruce Daisley. Thank you so much for your company. I'll see you next time. and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor RISC, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started at Vanta.com. Do you speak French? Do you speak Spanish? Do you speak Italian? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. 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