Beth Steinberg (Chime): Talent Development Is Crucial Today

Blake: As many news headlines are suggesting gen Z is showing up in the workplace today en masse. As a people and talent leader, how do you think companies can best attract and engage top gen Z talent?

Beth: It's a great question and something that I think about a lot, we talk about in my company, and on my team, there's a couple things. First of all, gen Z, to generalize are very focused on doing something good. Having a company that has a strong mission, that has a strong set of values and leadership behaviors is really important. The other area that's really important is making sure that you develop people and have an internal development strategy. And over time, people have started realizing that development is not just about promotion, but it's really about acquiring skills and competencies to help you in your career. I often describe to people that your career is not necessarily going to be a ladder. It may be more of a checker board where you need to learn something so you might move into a role, but perhaps have to start as a beginner or a mid- level person in order to get to your higher achievement or gen Z learning, growing, developing is incredibly important. And then lastly is really being a company that has a lens on diversity, equity, and belonging, and are not afraid for employees to have a voice. And that has been one of the areas that's been really challenging for companies, quite honestly. Some companies may see this as a negative. How I see it is that a lot of my employees who are gen Z really push us to do the right things and they're challenging perhaps traditional structures and norms of how a business is run. It's healthy and it's great to have that dialogue and to be able to talk to people about things that are hard things without getting defensive, that is really an important quality for companies to have to attract gen Z. Those are three things that really are top of mind for me in to both attracting and engaging gen Z talent.