Gen Z Is Shaking Up Hawai‘i’s Workplaces. Are You Ready?

They’re young, ultra-casual, and opinionated. They like flexible work arrangements and would rather not do email. Many, in fact, would rather not come to your drab, boring workspace at all. Welcome to Generation Z. They’re the youngest members on the team, and they’re making earlier intergenerational differences seem downright quaint. Consider these local examples:

• A Gen Zer asks her boss for a raise just two weeks after getting hired.
• A young team member keeps missing work, with no warning or explanation.
• A boss gives his new hire feedback, and is surprised to get some in return.
• A 22-year-old lands a dream job, but already feels disillusioned: “This is not what I imagined.”

In interviews with Gen Zers and their employers in Hawai‘i, people are reporting misunderstandings, misaligned expectations and outright culture clashes. And the problems aren’t going away, no matter how many demands and threats employers make.

Consider this too: In a national survey of managers conducted by resumebuilder.com in 2023, 1 in 8 said they had fired a Gen Z employee a week after hiring them.

But refilling positions isn’t easy, especially in Hawai‘i. The state’s population has been falling for several years, with the “brain drain” of young, educated people driving out-migration as they move for college or jobs in the continental U.S. They often don’t come back.

And the percentage of older residents here is growing. About 1 in 5 was 65 or older in 2020, a proportion that’s projected to rise. With fewer young people entering the workplace than those aging out, the stakes are high for companies to cultivate the next generation.

Despite all the complaints, Gen Z can be the best thing to happen to a business. Young employees can be creative, entrepreneurial, technically adept, not afraid to question why a business is doing things so inefficiently, and eager to work hard when they feel valued and challenged.

So what makes this age group so different from previous ones? What motivates them and helps them do their best work? And how can employers modify the old rules and norms to appeal to this new generation, tap into their strengths and entice them to stay on the job?

Here’s what a selection of Hawai‘i’s Gen Zers – and the people who work with them – say about understanding Gen Z, bridging generational divides and creating a pipeline of talented young leaders who can keep enterprises thriving long after Boomers have made their exits.

A New Breed

In Hawai‘i, Gen Z is made up of about 260,000 people born between 1997 and 2012. Now around 12 to 27 years old, the cohort has been steadily joining workplaces, often baffling, frustrating or even infuriating their older colleagues.

“Every generation has differences, and there’s always tension. But this one feels like it’s more of a gap,” says Katie Chang, executive director of the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders and an upbeat Millennial.

The Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders has emerged as an informal think tank on the issue of generational differences in Hawai‘i, in part because it’s immersed in both the world of young people and the organizations that support its mission.

More than 800 high schoolers across the Islands attend the nonprofit’s weekly in-person classes, where they learn skills such as conflict resolution, opinion writing, critical thinking and advocacy, culminating in major community projects. The goal is to help young people see themselves as leaders and start practicing the habits of leadership.

In December 2023, about a dozen Gen Zers from CTL’s vast alumni network were brought to Honolulu for what Chang calls an “explosive conversation,” where stereotypes were debated, confirmed and rebutted. The session is helping shape CTL’s presentations to its funding partners, many of whom are concerned about finding and keeping young workers.

“We still have to insist on character formation and accountability for our young people, such as insisting on the discipline of showing up consistently, and showing respect. On the flip side, this is a radically different generation, and they really do want to be seen, heard and loved. Both sides are going to have to move and meet in the middle.”

— Katie Chang, Millennial and Executive Director, Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders

In the popular narrative, Gen Zers are often described as lazy, prone to anxiety, socially awkward, tech-addled and distracted, obsessed with work-life balance, and ready to bolt from jobs that don’t give them what they need.

Many of Hawai‘i’s Gen Zers say the stereotypes are partly true, but they fail to capture the whole story. For every negative trait, there’s a positive one, or a contradictory trait that complicates the picture. And many stereotypes point to the biases and unchallenged norms of older generations.

Sean Maskrey, a 2021 graduate of ‘Iolani School and rising senior in economics and political science at the University of British Columbia, says some generalizations are just wrong, such as the laziness jab.

“It strikes a chord with me to hear we’re not trying,” he says. “We weren’t born and told to be lazy. That wasn’t something that was ever shown in a positive light for us. I don’t think anyone prioritizes laziness or relaxing or wanting to have a work-free life.”

He chafes at the condescension he sometimes hears, and the lack of understanding about the pressures his generation has experienced. Gen Z, for example, gets blamed for being addicted to the technology that adults developed and handed to children. “I don’t think kids had a choice,” he says.

Others, such as Alexa, a Hawai‘i based Gen Zer who was recently promoted to operations manager in her organization’s technical division, says it’s the older generations that often create problems by being stuck in their ways. As an example, she points to the software used at her company: It was installed in the year she was born.

“It takes a younger person to ask, ‘Why are we doing this? This doesn’t make sense,’ ” says Alexa, who asked that her real name not be used. “The younger folks are trying to improve things, but they face resistance from people who want to keep it the same as it’s always been.”

“In my experiences, the most important thing is just having the openness to ask questions and not being put down by asking those questions. … An ideal workplace is to have clear expectations about the scope of the job and what’s expected.”

— Sean Maskrey, Gen Zer and a student at the University of British Columbia

So Smart, So Clueless

As digital natives tethered to their devices, Gen Zers have a lot of information at their fingertips, and they absorb viewpoints from many voices. They’re knowledgeable, articulate and very good at presenting themselves, explains Chang.

“It’s a real paradox, then, how they seem to be clueless in the sense of the knowledge gap, and the whole skills gap seems to be widening exponentially,” says Chang. When high school students begin working on their final projects with CTL, she says they can identify pressing problems to address, but their solutions are often “a complete non sequitur.”

“Even the basic critical thinking of how do you get from A to B, and therefore to C, used to come more naturally, and now we’re having to train for it,” Chang says. She says employers report the same. Chang says she thinks social media, where it’s never quiet and information is rarely linear, plays a part. Long stretches of deep reading and thinking have grown increasingly rare, and can seem impossible to achieve.

A bestselling new book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, “The Anxious Generation,” argues that Gen Zers have literally had their brains rewired by technology, and their progress toward independence stunted by overprotective parenting.

The situation developed quickly. In 2007, the iPhone appeared. In 2009, “like” and “share” buttons were added to social media. In 2010, the front-facing camera was introduced, allowing teens to embark on self-curated lives, offered up for approval from a fickle virtual world. The result, argues Haidt, has been a youth mental health crisis, along with sleep deprivation, the loss of real social ties and fragmented attention spans.

Maskrey could feel the impact of social media when he was working on college assignments. He deleted TikTok from his phone last year, which he says has helped. “The ability for critical thinking is definitely diminishing, and I felt it happening to me,” he says.

Others were also struggling. Maskrey says one of his professors became exasperated and wanted answers from the class: Why can’t anyone get their work in on time? Why can’t they extrapolate their own opinions from the readings?

Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

Alone in a Noisy World

For April Nakamura, a longtime teacher at McKinley High School, associate director of CTL and a Gen Xer, the generational shift became noticeable before the pandemic, and was mostly centered on socialization.

“Throughout my teaching career, it’s always been very easy to build relationships with students. But starting around 2018, I began to notice that it’s almost like a veil has come down. They just don’t really talk to you or engage with you,” says Nakamura.

Students are self-aware, if confused about their own behaviors, she says. They tell her, “We don’t know what’s wrong with us. I don’t know why we are this way.” She worries about their social lives, and says they rarely have anything to report from the weekend, except sleeping, homework, playing video games and hanging out at home.

The pandemic accelerated those feelings of isolation and alienation.

“Covid was a defining moment for my class,” says Kimi Vidinha, who graduated from Waimea High School on Kaua‘i in 2023 and recently finished her freshman year at Pacific University in Oregon. “A lot of us have trouble communicating and have not fully matured, which is really apparent in college.” She says most students don’t contribute to classroom discussions and many stick with the people they know on campus.

Since exiting the pandemic, when school and social life were fully mediated by devices, she says that many of her peers have become addicted to their phones and distracted by the glossy mirror world of social media.

“You see what people look like on Instagram, and what other people are doing, and it gets hard to differentiate between reality and what you see on social media. … It’s completely blurred.”

Vidinha can find herself “sucked into the loop” of Instagram but prefers staying busy with classes, clubs and track practice. And she’s something of a pandemic outlier: The long school shutdown turned her into a more extroverted person. “I was able to self-reflect and become a more confident version of myself,” she says. “My personality kind of did a flip-flop.”

Ezekiel Bernardo-Flores, a private banking associate in First Hawaiian Bank’s Wealth Management Group and an older Gen Zer, says his generation connects to the world through social media, which is a “gateway for you to feel that you’re less than.”

He says he’s bombarded with postings from people who seem to be wildly successful, even if their stories are unverifiable or even fabricated. It leads to making comparisons and feeling bad about your own achievements.

“I’m very hard on myself, and I’m not the only person that’s hard on themselves,” says Bernardo-Flores, who imagines an easier, less fraught past, before social media, when the only success stories you heard about were from people you knew in real life.

For Maskrey, quiet self-reflection is difficult for his generation. He thinks the nonstop, all-consuming nature of social media has interfered with developing a secure identity, away from the judgment or approval of the comments area.

“I think there is a loss of identity in general and the idea of self for young people,” he explains. “There’s no opportunity to really think about it and develop it because it’s kind of like your identity is what’s trending now.” He says that shaky foundation leads to perceptions of Gen Z being “super emotional and reactionary” in the workplace.

Already Burnt Out

The ceaseless distractions of social media contribute to premature burnout, says Trisha Mei Ramelb, a student leadership facilitator and marketing coordinator at Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders and a Gen Z alum of the organization.

“It’s hard to turn off. And I think that’s why we feel so restless and so tired all the time, because we aren’t able to turn off and separate; we’re always on the go,” she says. “Usually you would expect burnout in midcareer but now it’s happening in high schools.

“Young people describe losing momentum and feeling like it’s a perpetual Monday, with fatigue and brain fog, unable to see clearly. Guarding mental health has become a priority among Gen Z.”

Gen Zers want workplaces to prioritize mental health as well. A 2022 national survey of 19-to-25- year-olds found:

• 82% of Gen Z employees say mental health days are important.
• 31% find it difficult to cope with pressure and stress at work.
• 42% say burnout and lack of work-life balance would make them quit their jobs.

Justin Fragiao, technical director at UH Mānoa’s Kennedy Theatre, a current graduate student and a Millennial, says he appreciates Gen Zers’ openness about discussing mental health, having struggled himself, especially as a high schooler. But he also worries that, after they graduate from college, they won’t find the same level of inclusivity and honesty in the working world.

He gets exasperated when his staff of 10 reasonably well-paid student workers continually ask for mental-health days, or just fail to show up. Sometimes they don’t even email or text to let him know.

When they do show up for work, they bring all their emotions with them. “They just wear everything that’s going on with them, whether they’re elated about something or having a terrible, terrible day, and then everyone should know about it,” Fragiao says.

As a new boss, he found himself shouldering much of the workload of building giant sets for productions, and under tight deadlines. It wasn’t sustainable. Now, he’s working to impose more rules on students and expectations about their roles. He says he wants to build students’ skills so they can handle multiple tasks, and instill a sense of professionalism in them.

Lord Ryan Lizardo, the associate VP of education at the Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i and a young Millennial, was a teacher at Campbell High School for six years. He also saw intense emotions from students that affected their ability to cope.

“If something was happening in their personal lives, they would immediately shut off,” he says. “Being sensitive to situations is a critical piece to navigating mental health with this upcoming generation. They want a workplace that supports their growth and values their mental health.”

“Yes!” to Work-Life Balance

In a poll that CTL conducted of Hawai‘i students and alums, 74% said they would choose work-life balance over a high salary.

It’s a natural byproduct of the stress and anxiety that they struggle with more than other generations. It can also be a reaction to the workaholism of their parents, or the lack of loyalty that workplaces have shown employees, including their parents. That lack of loyalty is usually reciprocated.

Gen Zers had more than a full year disrupted by pandemic shutdowns. The older ones learned firsthand that they could work from anywhere, often on their own time. And they’re certainly not nostalgic for the old workplace of fixed hours and open offices.

Many, in fact, recoil at the trade-off they’re expected to make: decades of work, nearly all their daylight hours, the bulk of their adult existence on Earth, in exchange for enough money to one day buy a little house. Is that really appealing?

Maskrey, for example, has spent much of his life on a familiar path for Hawai‘i’s high-achieving youth: 13 years at a homework-heavy private school, an Eagle Scout, multiple summer internships and now deep into a five-year program that leads to a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in business management.

Lately, he’s been rethinking the many hours he’s spent in a volunteer leadership role at his university in Canada, and questioning what these years of effort will actually bring. For all the talk about employers not being able to fill jobs, he says many of his peers struggle to land anything.

He says he’s gotten internships in Hawai‘i through personal connections; when he didn’t know anyone, his applications went nowhere. Many of his college friends can’t find jobs, even those graduating in popular fields such as environmental studies. One friend applied for dozens of service jobs to help pay living expenses, with no callbacks.

“The biggest experience for my generation is that we’re just not hearing back,” says Maskrey. “We’re applying to so many jobs and not hearing from anybody.” And they’re not being picky, he says. They’re just trying to keep moving forward with their lives.

In an ideal world, he says Gen Zers want jobs that align with their values and offer a sense of purpose, without sapping away all their time and individuality. “Gen Z prioritizes being real and just being human. People are people, not capital,” he says.

The worst work situation, Maskrey says, would be “feeling like you just have to show up and clock in, sit and put your head down forever, and then clock out at 5 and go home. That’s a nightmare situation for me.”

Alexa is living in that world now, having made the “difficult transition” from a part-time job while attending UH Mānoa to a full-time role with her organization. Her recent promotion to a managerial position has elevated her stress and sense of unease. She says she “feels the burnout.”

“I had certain expectations and higher hopes of what working was going to be like,” she says. “And then you come into the workplace and realize this is not what I imagined. You’re faced with the reality of working 9 to 5 for the rest of your life, and it’s very depressing.”

Gen Z is adept at stepping into “big shoes” and thriving in roles that demand responsibility. But they’ll probably need lots of coaching. | Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

“True Pragmatists”

For all their idealism and commitments to social justice and climate activism, money is still important to young people. And given what they’ve experienced in their lives, how could it not be?

As Courtney Kajikawa, a Gen Xer and senior VP and manager at First Hawaiian Bank, wrote in her 2023 thesis report for Pacific Coast Banking School, major political, economic and social events, known as “period effects,” have had a profound impact on Generation Z.

“Period effects like the Great Recession, the pandemic and the current inflationary environment have made Hawai‘i Gen Zers feel more financially insecure,” she writes in “Brain Drain to Brain Gain.”

Some had parents who lost their jobs during the Great Recession and the pandemic, and some Gen Zers did too. Others struggled to find employment as they graduated from high school and college into a challenging economy.

In writing her thesis, Kajikawa ran focus groups to gather Gen Z perspectives in Hawai‘i. She says that young people understand how financially precarious their lives are, and the insecurity weighs heavily on them.

“They’re really concerned about, ‘How am I going to pay off my debt? How am I going to afford a place to live? How am I going to save for retirement?’ ” Kajikawa explains in an interview.

“I see Gen Z as ambitious and driven. … It just requires more coaching and more time with managers and supervisors, and more empathy on our part. We need to ditch the ‘Oh, kids these days’ attitude and meet them where they are.”

— Courtney Kajikawa, Gen Xer and Senior VP and Manager, First Hawaiian Bank

Hawai‘i residents ages 20 to 24 earn an average of just $40,200 a year, which is far too little to survive independently. For those with student loan debt, the burdens are even heavier.

These economic concerns are felt worldwide, with 51% of Gen Zers saying they live paycheck to paycheck, according to the Deloitte Global 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. They may want work-life balance, but 46% of Gen Z respondents said they’ve taken second jobs to make ends meet, compared to 37% of Millennials.

In a Morning Consult survey, half of Gen Zers said they wanted to become entrepreneurs or start their own businesses. Many dream of being influencers, while others make money live-streaming themselves playing video games on Twitch, or selling T-shirts or “kitschy little things” on Instagram or TikTok, says Fragiao from UH Mānoa. He says one of his friends left a job he hated and devoted himself to painting; he now sells his artwork online.

Data from McKinsey & Company shows that Gen Zers are more likely to be self-employed or working gig jobs than older workers, but 56% of them would prefer to have permanent positions. Like most people, they’re looking for stable paychecks.

Gen Zer Josie Dang, a rising junior studying health care management at UH West O‘ahu, agonizes over whether to take on her family’s full-service salon in ‘Aiea when she graduates, or keep studying for an MBA, or look for a professional job with regular pay.

Her father arrived in Hawai‘i as a refugee from Vietnam, and he started his business from the ground up. Dang says he and her stepmother work constantly, leaving her home to cook, clean and take care of her younger sister. She’s seen how owning your own business doesn’t always bring the freedom and flexibility her generation seeks.

She says she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful or be a disappointment, and that she knows she should take him up on the offer of taking over the family business. Instead, she says she “just goes back and forth. … Honestly, a 9 to 5 with a high salary is looking kind of good.”

Chang, from the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders, believes that financial stability will guide many Gen Zer decisions.

“They’re true pragmatists,” she says. “A lot of employers think they need to put out the right messaging when it comes to political and social issues, and I think that’s true to a degree. But in the end, I think that the priority will be financial.”

Why Move Out?

In Hawai‘i, many young adults deal with the high cost of living by living at home. This multigenerational arrangement, long popular here, is growing across the country, with nearly 16% of Millennials (ages 28 to 43) living with their parents in 2022, according to U.S. census figures.

But the CTL leadership team wonders if the arrangement can be too cozy and interfere with Gen Zers’ growth and independence. They say the stigma of living at home is gone, and the motivation to leave is weak.

“Gen Z has a much higher desire to live at home, but there are things you learn by not being at home, so they have knowledge gaps,” says Chang.

High school teacher Nakamura, a Gen Xer, says she grudgingly stayed home after college, but she paid rent and saved to move out as soon as she could. Ramelb, a Gen Zer, still lives with her family and says both she and her family members love it. Still, she’s saving to live on her own one day.

At 26, Bernardo-Flores recently left his family home and moved into a rental in Honolulu. His mother didn’t want him to go, but after high school at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama, college at Chaminade University and a job downtown, the commute from Waipahu had become unbearable.

His father questioned why he was renting and not buying, like he had done as a young man. The house, Bernardo-Flores says, cost less than a tenth of the price today.

For Alexa, being away from home is worth it, for now. She recently moved into a small studio apartment in Kaka‘ako and is paying more than she’d like to, but she says she was tired of being treated like a child. “It’s hard to have your own life and live at home,” she says.

The decision to rent wasn’t easy, and she says she’s still “testing the waters” before deciding whether it’s really worth the money to live on her own.

Let’s Fix Things Around Here

Lizardo from the Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i loves many things about Gen Zers, such as their social media skills and their sensitivity to what he calls “the isms”: racism, sexism, homophobia – they’re able to navigate those in ways that other generations aren’t able to, and to really be delicate but also very fierce.”

While the subtleties of talking about identity are clear for Gen Z, the nuances of communicating across generations are much less so. “They’re not afraid to push boundaries and share what they’re thinking about the workplace very quickly and easily,” before they’ve built trust and rapport with older colleagues, Lizardo says.

He coaches them in understanding the workplace culture before trying to change it, and improving their communication skills, such as writing business emails without using texting shorthand.

At First Hawaiian Bank, where 16% of the workforce – over 300 employees – are Gen Zers, Sherri Okinaga, a senior VP and head of the Organizational Effectiveness Division, embraces their energy, adaptability and what she calls “resilient risk-taking.”

“Seasoned employees want to focus on why policies and procedures exist and how existing programs came to be, whereas the younger generation is questioning, ‘Why do we have to do it that way?’” says Okinaga, a Gen Xer. “They’re reinventing work in a different way, using more AI and digital tools.”

Okinaga is working to make the bank “an employer of choice” among young people – and reexamining some of the traditional practices in the process. As nearly half the employees are Gen Zers and Millennials, and the executive team is made up of soon-to-retire Gen Xers and Boomers, she sees it as an imperative.

“Employers who are really galvanizing the Gen Z energy and creativity, by hearing their voices in the design of future work, are going to be the winners in the war for talent,” she says. “If we keep doing what we’re doing today, we will be out of business.”

The bank provides opportunities for young adults to learn, grow and lead, she says, and creates benefits and programs that appeal to them. For example, there are flexible hybrid work options; cross-mentoring that lets younger people coach older colleagues on technical skills; cohort-based learning programs to help them feel connected; and a quarterly awards program designed by younger staff and rolled out on social media.

Award winners are treated to dinner with the entire C-suite – an exercise in flattened hierarchies. “Employees can be in maintenance, in facilities, security guards, anyone,” says Okinaga. “It brings everybody closer and says every contribution matters.”

Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

What’s Next for Me?

Employee engagement lies at the core of any business’s success: Do people care about their jobs and do they try to do their best work?

Gallup polls say mostly not. In 2023, Gen Z engagement in the workplace dropped from 40% to 35%, and 14% of Gen Z employees were considered seriously disengaged.

The status quo isn’t going to work anymore, says Bernardo-Flores, the private banker and Gen Zer. Companies can’t expect young employees to do the same job for the same company, decade after decade, as his father did. Gen Zers want more than that, he says.

“We have an unusual labor market right now,” says Chang. “It’s important for employers to know Gen Z wants work-life balance, meaningful work and high salary. I think that expectations of really wanting all three are going to create demands on a lot of employers.”

And many Gen Zers are doing quite well for themselves. The Economist noted that the U.S. has more than 6,000 Gen Z chief executives and 1,000 Gen Z politicians. And many Gen Zers in Hawai‘i are defying generational stereotypes and quickly climbing the company ladder. But even as they do, they feel pressure to dispel others’ perceptions.

Bernardo-Flores says his father encouraged his kids to go to college so they’d have more opportunities than he did. His mother wanted them to find stable jobs with well-established organizations. The values of his parents shaped his own choices, he says.

After graduating from Chaminade in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, he moved from his part-time teller job with First Hawaiian into a full-time role. From there, he soon moved into the position of private banker, complete with a Bishop Street office with a view.

He says many of his peers started intensive training at the bank, then abandoned it after a few months. The fallout trickles down to people like him, who love their jobs. He says he appreciates the mixture of autonomy and guidance he’s given, as well as long-term pathways.

“I feel like as a Generation Zer it’s harder for me to gain that trust, to let my employer understand that I’m committed, I’m different from these other guys and gals that maybe weren’t,” he says.

Alexa, the operations manager, agrees that being one of the only Gen Zers among older colleagues means constantly having to prove herself. She says she works hard, at a high level, to combat low expectations, while given little support.

Despite her efforts, she finds it frustrating when she’s not taken seriously or left out of conversations. “There’s an attitude of, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m not really going to pay attention to what you’re saying,’ ” she says.

The sense of disillusionment with the adult world of working full time, paying bills and trying to stay afloat is leading her to question her prospects in Hawai‘i, the place where she was born and raised and had never wanted to leave.

“The world has changed. Older generations will say, ‘You just need to get your foot in the door and take any job you can.’ It doesn’t really happen like that anymore. You have to have so much experience and education to even get a job. … We need more opportunities for younger people to gain that experience.”

— Alexa, Gen Zer and an operations manager at a well-known Hawai‘i organization

“But the reality is there just aren’t many opportunities. It’s much too expensive, and the amount of work you need to do to live is not sustainable.” She’s looking at options, such as graduate school, working on the mainland – anything to escape a narrow, constrictive future.

While Bernardo-Flores says he’s committed, he’s also practical and ambitious – two traits that Gen Zers aren’t always known for, at least not yet.

“Money isn’t always the driving factor for us,” he says. “It’s the idea that we’re going to be recognized for our work, that the work we’re doing is high value, and that there’s long-term success waiting for us. If we don’t see that in the job, then we definitely won’t commit ourselves fully to it.”