Today’s CEOs are facing a new reality. For the first time in modern history, five generations share the workplace, each bringing their own distinct expectations and values. Failure to navigate these unprecedented waters successfully—and foster an environment where each generation feels their voices are heard—could hurt your business, potentially resulting in turnover, decreased employee engagement or disruptive organizing activity.
Gen Z in particular is redefining the employer-employee relationship. A recent Deloitte survey found that 89 percent of this cohort say a sense of purpose is important to job satisfaction, with 44 percent having left a job that they felt lacked purpose. Others have called Gen Z “the most pro-union generation alive today.”
In short, Gen Zers often want input into a business’s direction and other issues beyond typical pay and benefits concerns, from hybrid work and wellbeing policies and benefits to any number of other areas that affect their day-to-day work lives. These pressures aren’t limited to impacts on an organization’s culture and reputation. They’re increasingly putting CEOs and boards of directors in the hot seat when it comes to managing a growing number of issues.
Still, focusing too heavily on Gen Z creates its own risks, including disengaging other generations. The key, then, is to find effective (and lawful) ways to engage with all employees by investing in structures that amplify their respective voices and make them feel heard by all levels of your organization.
New Demographics, New Labor Relations Risks
Changing workforce demographics have given rise to workers with different values. Whereas previous generations of workers may have been more singularly focused on issues like wages and pensions, the modern workforce often includes a subset of employees with vocal opinions about issues such as work/life balance; good corporate citizenship; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); and environmental impacts.
For instance, in a 2025 Littler survey, roughly half of employers agreed that the growing number of Gen Z employees in the workforce has increased the level of activism on social and political issues (55 percent) and led to a greater desire for input into strategic business decisions (49 percent). Though that has yet to lead to actual increases in union membership rates, union petitions were up 27 percent in the National Labor Relations Board’s 2024 fiscal year—and the consequences of organizing attempts can be significant even if workers ultimately vote against unionizing, from stock price declines and proxy fights to brand and cultural impacts.
The byproduct of this new state-of-play is that labor relations issues are no longer merely the provenance of the shop floor. Instead, they are increasingly falling on CEOs’ and directors’ shoulders.
Five Ways to Hear and Listen to Worker Voices
In this new landscape, businesses can no longer merely pay lip service to workers’ voices. The below practices can help executives successfully engage with workers of all generations and create structures where their voices are meaningfully heard.
- Establish lawful employee engagement programs. Employee engagement programs—whether they involve rewards/recognitions, mental health and wellbeing initiatives, employee surveys, or employee voice programs—can be invaluable in creating workplaces where employees feel valued and heard. However, these programs can create more risk for the organization if they are not thoughtfully implemented or if leadership does not have a system in place to address employee concerns.
- Develop communication channels that will actually reach and engage your employees. Take a moment for reflection. Do you believe as a CEO that you communicate with your employees well? If your answer is yes, do you believe that your employees believe you communicate with them well? After all, it’s their viewpoint that matters in the public and social realms. Businesses conduct marketing to find and target customers—you should do the same with employee communications, assessing whether workers actually hear your updates and understand what’s happening with the business.
- Focus on consistency in corporate policies and filings. Messaging from union organizing campaigns often focuses on areas in which companies fail to live up to their stated policies, goals and/or commitments (e.g., filings about executive compensation; environmental, social and governance commitments). Consistency in these areas will involve an audit of current programs to solidify internal alignment between public statements and any anticipated responses to employee actions. It will also require a strict program to assess whether suppliers and other networks are creating risks of their own.
- Provide incentives for local managers to listen to workers’ voices. In today’s data-driven business world, your organization likely measures performance in numerous ways. And, depending on how employees fare against those metrics, you likely reward good performance (or perhaps use a “stick” if needed) and then adjust your business strategy accordingly. The question is: Do you do the same with respect to employee engagement and hearing employees? If listening to workers’ voices isn’t a formalized key performance indicator that could truly impact managers’ jobs (whether from an advancement or a compensation perspective), it is not likely to ever become a real priority. If employee engagement initiatives are not prioritized by leadership, employees and other constituents are likely to seek other avenues to have their voices heard, be it through organizing or turnover.
- Establish a cross-functional effort. Effectively engaging with employees and managing labor relations issues is a holistic effort that requires the involvement of multiple departments and teams. C-Suites and boards should work with teams across the organization, from operations to HR to communications to government relations, to align on goals and create clarity on responsibilities.
The makeup of today’s workforce is changing—fast. Executives must adapt in kind, or risk employee departures or potentially detrimental organizing activity.
