Does Gen Z need ‘resilience training’?

Resilience is a much-needed skill in today’s tough job market. Despite the headlines lambasting young employees as “lazy” and “entitled”, a Big Four consulting firm is taking matters into its own hands and offering training for recent grads. 

PwC will give its new young hires “resilience” training to toughen them up for careers as management consultants. The firm has introduced the initiative in the UK to help Gen Z brush up on their “human skills,” including communication with clients and handling day-to-day work dynamics, like pressure or criticism. 

“Quite often we are struck that the graduates that join us… don’t always have the resilience; they don’t always have the human skills that we want to deploy onto the client work we pass them towards,” Phillippa O’Connor, PwC’s chief people officer told The Sunday Times.

Resilience requires, among other things, the ability to withstand, adapt or recover quickly from the challenges and inevitable setbacks that come with everyday work and life. A recent study by the McKinsey Health Institute shows that those who report high levels of resilience or adaptability show better holistic health and higher engagement than their peers. 

But simply telling employees to “be more resilient” and “toughen up” isn’t likely to achieve much. When the path forward is unclear, research shows that teams and employees default to what they already know: regardless of whether it’s the best approach. 

O’Connor isn’t alone; the notion of Gen Z (and younger millennials) lacking in the resilience department is one that’s popped up across the general discourse. Growing up as digital natives, missing formative in-person experiences during COVID, and now entering hybrid or remote-first workplaces, many young professionals simply didn’t get the chance to build and exercise certain human or “soft” skills. 

And no amount of resilience training can compensate for a broken workplace. Studies show that resilience may help in low-pressure settings, but in environments with overwhelming workloads and toxicity, it becomes both ineffective and even harmful.

As companies gut layers of middle management, Gen Z hires are increasingly left reporting to stretched, exhausted managers with neither the time nor the bandwidth to offer the close, hands-on guidance they need.

As companies continue to gut middle management, new hires find themselves reporting to overworked, burnt-out managers who lack the capacity for the hands-on support they need. 

Now a number of companies, like PwC, are addressing these concerns head on. Last month the accountancy giant Azets revealed it is exploring partnerships with major hotel, pub, and restaurant chains to offer temporary work assignments for trainee accountants and improve their soft skills. 

In 2023, fellow “Big Four” consulting firm KPMG supplied classes on ‘soft skills’ for its Gen Z recruits who graduated during the pandemic, out of concern they were struggling to adapt to professional life. 

Surviving a global pandemic during their formative years, thrown into a tumultuous job market, and faced with relentless criticism from those on higher rungs of the corporate ladder, Gen Z have more than demonstrated their resilience. 

Now? They’re looking for support.