Event
Snowflakes, generation wars and other reputation myths
20 October 2025
25 communications leaders joined our breakfast roundtable on The Generation Divide, with special guest Prof. Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London and author of “Generations - Does when you’re born shape who you are?”
An important take-away is that your reputation is never one-size-fits-all. As the battleground for top talent shifts from Boomers to Zoomers, employer brands need to become talent magnets for a whole new generation.
Echo’s insights can help you understand:
- What’s driving EVP (Employer Value Proposition) for your employees & Future Talent
- Which media and influencers different cohorts are following – and which they trust
- Your say-do gaps
Here’s a write-up from Natasha Plowman of Spinning Red and the Break the Silence Collective:
Gen Z are....insert whatever generational myth you like. So what is true, what isn't and how are we going to shape a future that is better for next generations than what we have now - especially at work?
So what is true? The research is showing us some specific differences for GenZ that we need to understand and look to solve with these interrelated issues.
- Economic pressure - we can't deny that that GenZ are suffering from higher wage to house ratio, increases in private wealth (especially held by 30% of boomers and why the work that Dr Eliza Filby does on the Inheritocracy is so important)
- Increase in mental ill health - we have to stop just blaming phones and look wider to how life is different, harder and more fractious
- Delayed adulthood - like the death of the Saturday job leading to lack of experience leading to harder times starting out at work...
What we are seeing intergenerationally is clear separation in where we live (urban to suburbia and rural) and also where we congregate online. This separation is meaning we aren't coming up against different generations enough, except at work. And work is where we are seeing more of a culture clash of the generations.
So how do we get more intergenerational dialogue and understanding?
Four pillars to solve at work:
- Age inclusive recruitment - across the whole life cycle
- Age inclusive policy - recognise different life stages to adapt policy AND the take up of policy
- Intergenerational connection and networks - from social to community to ensuring that work problems involve and hear from multigenerational teams (lose the hierarchy?)
- Individual connection - move on from mentoring and reverse mentoring to truly recognising the mutual benefit all ages bring to solving problems.
Core to that is also being comfortable with tension, conflict, fractiousness - find the common ground, because it is often in those moments that we learn.
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