In this op-ed, Orizontas associate Ella Eberhardt explores the value Gen Z brings to the communications industry, arguing that organisations need to make better use of their digital instincts while they learn to turn those observations into commercial insights.
Before asking how to attract Gen Z, can we better articulate (and use) the value they already bring?
Young professionals can offer more than a clear read on TikTok and trend cycles. But turning digital instinct into commercial judgement requires organisations to invite it and Gen Z professionals to learn how to frame it.
I recently attended an industry dinner. During the night, the host voiced aspirations for our industry, with one in particular standing out: how do we make this an appealing career for young people entering the workforce?
As a 20-something working in the industry, recently graduated with starry eyes and relevant degrees, naturally this piqued my interest and raised further questions.
Growing up as the first digital natives has helped many young professionals hone useful instincts about credibility, audience behaviour, technology and change. These instincts aren’t a substitute for experience, but when paired with commercial context and developed into sound judgement, they deserve a place in more consequential conversations.
Many organisations already do an excellent job at developing their graduates. However, conversations are often limited to deliverables. Prioritising tactical skills for young professionals is critical, but so is using what they notice about strategy, behaviour and values. Those observations can be harder to capture through traditional reporting lines or professional development frameworks.
Gen Z has the instinct. Pattern recognition, picking up on friction in digital systems, deep familiarity with online communities, reading informal and qualitative signals – often quickly and across large volumes of information, and, perhaps most importantly, being some of the first to point out gaps between rhetoric and reality.
In communications this can show up in many ways. Whether it’s messaging that feels forced or insincere, changes to audience values and segmentation or emerging risks in community expectations. However, if these aren’t shared, sought, or developed with commercial language, evidence and context they remain instincts – not useable insights.
UKG Australia’s Gen Z in the Workplace Report elaborates on this, finding that 42 per cent of Gen Z preferred face to face communication and 61% experienced miscommunication because of digital channels, highlighting that digital nativity does not mean confident engagement with colleagues and management.
Growing up online, in the presence of such an overwhelming amount of content means many young professionals have become accustomed to processing large volumes of competing information quickly and forming early judgements about what feels relevant, credible or trustworthy. The
challenge is that Gen Z can often sense when something is off, long before they can clearly articulate why – without evidence, context and commercial framing, this rarely influences decision making.
Instinct is not the same thing as experience, and proximity to a trend does not automatically produce good strategy.
Experienced professionals hold context developed through years of decisions and consequences. Younger professionals can bring proximity to emerging behaviours and technologies. Organisations and leaders benefit when those perspectives sharpen one another.
Recent findings from Deloitte demonstrated this interaction between instinct and experience in AI adoption: young workers reported higher technical skills and risked overconfidence, while older generations had a higher performance on judgement-based skills but were less likely to use AI. Neither capability is sufficient on its own. The opportunity lies in combining them.
The other side to this is that Gen Z cannot wait for employers to automatically recognise the strategic significance of every instinct we bring – many of which don’t even get voiced. In the post-AI world articulation will be one of the most valuable skills. We need to take responsibility for developing it.
Confidence comes from practice. If something feels off, explain why. If you notice a judgement, interrogate and validate it. Look to decision-makers in your organisation and notice how information is shared with them.
The goal is not to hand the five-year strategy to the youngest person in the room, rather to ensure their perspective is somewhere in the picture. For leaders, that means considering new places where young employees’ judgement could add value. For Gen Z professionals, it means valuing our own observations enough to test, voice and frame them in relevant ways.
If we want more young people to choose communications, we should be able to articulate both sides of the proposition: what this industry can teach them, and what their perspective can teach the industry.
