They are entitled. They complain too much. They do not have the same work ethic. They expect advancement before they have earned it. They want employers to accommodate them instead of paying their dues.
Sound familiar?
Depending on when you entered the workforce, those complaints might have been aimed at Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, or even Baby Boomers.
That is worth remembering the next time someone says the newest generation entering the workforce is fundamentally different from everyone who came before it.
We have been having versions of this argument for a very long time.
The Generation Gap Is Not New
In May 1968, LIFE magazine published an article titled “The Generation Gap” by Richard Lorber and Ernest Fladell. The article explored the differences in attitudes and expectations separating younger Americans from the generation ahead of them.
The young adults being discussed at the time were members of the generation we would eventually call the Baby Boomers.
Today, Boomers are often associated with decades of experience, institutional knowledge, business leadership, and a strong work ethic. For many employers, one of the major workforce challenges of recent years has been figuring out how to retain or transfer the knowledge accumulated by experienced workers before they retire.
That is quite a transformation from being the young generation older Americans once struggled to understand.
There is a lesson in that.
Some of what employers identify as a “generational problem” may actually be a normal part of bringing inexperienced people into the workforce.
A 22-year-old does not have the perspective of a 52-year-old. We should not expect them to.
Experience changes people.
Responsibilities change people.
Failure changes people.
Being responsible for a crew, project, customer, schedule, budget, or family changes people.
That is not an argument for ignoring poor performance or lowering workplace standards. Employers should have expectations, and workers should be accountable for meeting them.
But criticizing an entire generation does very little to build the workforce we need.
We Cannot Demand Experience Before We Provide It
Construction and the skilled trades face a particularly difficult version of this problem.
Employers need people who understand the work. They need workers who can recognize hazards, solve problems, operate equipment correctly, communicate with crews, make sound decisions, and eventually step into supervisory and leadership roles.
Those abilities are developed over time.
Yet employers sometimes talk about younger workers as though they should arrive already possessing the judgment that took experienced workers 20 or 30 years to develop.
They cannot.
If an organization needs experienced workers in the future, it has to develop inexperienced workers today.
That requires more than hiring people and hoping they figure things out.
It requires training, coaching, mentoring, cross-training, feedback, meaningful assignments, and opportunities to take on increasing responsibility.
Younger Workers Are Asking for Development
The interesting part is that workforce development is not simply something employers need.
Workers want it too.
LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that career progress is the leading motivation for employees to learn. The report also found strong connections between learning, career development, employee retention, and organizational adaptability.
That should get the attention of employers struggling to recruit and retain people.
Workers may be telling us something important when they ask:
Where can this job take me?
What can I learn here?
What is the next position?
Who is going to teach me?
How do I become qualified to do more?
Those questions are sometimes interpreted as impatience or entitlement. Occasionally they probably are. But sometimes they are exactly the questions we should want employees to ask.
A worker who wants to develop is giving the employer an opportunity.
The question is whether the organization has built a path for that development.
Mentoring Cannot Be Accidental
Construction has always relied heavily on informal knowledge transfer.
An experienced worker shows a newer employee how something is done. A foreman explains why a particular sequence works better. An operator teaches someone what to watch for. A superintendent recognizes that a younger employee is ready for more responsibility.
That system can work remarkably well.
It can also fail when knowledge transfer depends entirely on chance.
If critical knowledge exists primarily in the heads of experienced employees, companies should not wait until retirement announcements are made to start transferring it.
Mentoring should be intentional.
Cross-training should be intentional.
Leadership development should be intentional.
Companies should identify the knowledge and capabilities they cannot afford to lose and determine who needs to learn them next.
That does not mean every experienced worker has to become a classroom instructor. Much of the best development still happens where it always has: alongside someone who knows the work.
The difference is making sure those opportunities actually occur.
Technology Changes the Method, Not the Need
Training methods have changed substantially since the original version of this article was written.
Online learning, mobile training, digital resources, video instruction, virtual meetings, learning-management systems, and other tools now give employers more ways to deliver information.
Those tools can be valuable, especially when employees are spread across projects and geographic locations.
But technology does not eliminate the need for experienced people.
A video can explain a procedure.
A course can introduce a concept.
A digital platform can document completion.
None of those automatically develops judgment.
Judgment is often built by seeing how knowledge applies when conditions are imperfect, plans change, equipment behaves differently than expected, production pressure increases, or an unusual problem appears.
That is where mentoring and field experience remain difficult to replace.
The strongest workforce-development programs do not have to choose between technology and traditional mentoring. They can use both.
Stop Asking What Is Wrong With the Next Generation
Every generation enters a workforce created by the people who came before it.
Then, eventually, that generation becomes responsible for preparing the people coming behind it.
That may be the more useful way to look at the generational debate.
Instead of asking why younger workers are not more like experienced employees, employers might ask:
What are we doing to help them become experienced employees?
Set expectations.
Hold people accountable.
Teach the work.
Explain why it matters.
Give employees opportunities to develop.
Let experienced workers pass along what they know.
Create visible career paths where possible.
And recognize that becoming a dependable, experienced professional is a process.
Today’s inexperienced employee may eventually become the superintendent, safety professional, operator, project manager, instructor, executive, or mentor everyone depends on.
Every experienced worker was inexperienced once.
The responsibility of one generation is not simply to judge the next one.
It is to prepare it.
Written by Troy Clark
