Alastair is in conversation with Emily Stone, a senior analyst in Deloitte's consulting business and three years into the firm's BrightStart degree apprenticeship. Emily came straight from sixth form at a grammar school geared almost entirely towards university, and chose instead a route that has given her a fully funded degree, a chartered managership and three years of client work by the time her peers were graduating.
In this episode Emily shares the findings of her own workplace research, in which she surveyed and interviewed colleagues from junior to senior about what they expect from work and whether Deloitte delivers on it. Her conclusion is that generations largely value the same things, and that the useful question is not what someone values but why. She talks about recognition as the most underused engagement tool in any organisation, about the phrase humanised communication and where it came from, and about reverse mentoring as a practical answer to generational clustering.
Emily Stone Takeaways:
- Generations value strikingly similar things. What differs is why, and a leader's job is to understand the why rather than reach for the generational label
- Recognition matters at every level, not just the most junior. The public pat on the back is one of the most underused engagement tools in the workplace
- A degree apprenticeship is not a lesser route. Learning the theory while doing the work makes you a better student because you can see it in your reality
- Humanised communication is what people actually ask for, even from a generation stereotyped as preferring text. Everyone wants to feel seen, acknowledged and recognised
- Reverse mentoring works. It helps senior colleagues understand Gen Z's strengths and directly tackles generational clustering
- Every generation gets assigned the same negative labels on arrival. Millennials got me, me, me. The pattern says more about life stage than about the cohort
- Focus on what generations share rather than how they differ, then get specific about the individual, because two Gen Z colleagues can want completely different things
Emily Stone Links:
Generationally Speaking Links: