Does gen Z’s communication style confuse older colleagues?

As professional conversations move increasingly online, the generation gap has become a communication chasm as older and younger workers try – often with limited success – to understand how colleagues in different age groups communicate.

Twenty-four-year-old Mary Clare Wall told The Washington Post that jargon used by older workers often clashed with gen-Z slang. For instance, when an older colleague said that she would be “out of pocket,” Wall and her gen-Z coworkers interpreted it to mean that the colleague planned to do something crazy or inappropriate, as opposed to being unavailable.

By the same token, Wall said she had to explain her use of the word “slay” – used by gen Z to mean “good job.”

“I [had to] give an almost definition of the word ‘slay,’” Wall told the Post. “Now they all text me ‘slay.’ They’re excited they know how to use it.”

Generation Z – defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 – grew up entirely online, and use of emojis and other text shorthand is second nature to them. However, as business conversations become increasingly text-driven, the younger generation’s style of communication can become confusing – and even confounding – to folks who remember dialing a rotary phone.

Vibe check, fam

Okay, boomer. It’s true you might find gen-Z lingo low-key cringe. Sure, it hits different – but, vibe check, fam: it’s here to stay, and those who don’t get with the program will need to take several seats. By 2030, gen Z is expected to account for more than 30% of the workforce in the US, the UK, Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands, according to a study by Oxford Economics. That means younger workers need to be prepared for miscommunications, and older workers need to get comfortable asking questions, the Post reported.

“The trickiest thing is [language] keeps changing,” Lieke Verheijen, assistant professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told the publication. “This kind of misinterpretation can definitely complicate and hinder communication.”

That complication is a two-way street. Zoomers are used to adding visual elements like memes and emojis to their communications – which can lead some to question the intent of messages that stick to traditional commas and periods.

Alyssa Velez, a 23-year-old media relations specialist, told the Post that she was initially thrown by seeing simple periods at the ends of sentences in messages from her coworkers. Velez once received a comment from a colleague telling her “Good job.” But the period at the end of the sentence made her wonder if the colleague was really praising her.

“I’m like, ‘Is it a good job?’” Velez told the Post. “It just makes me nervous. I even had to ask, and then I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m overthinking it.’”

‘Earnestness is cringe’

Twenty-three-year-old software engineer Janvi Kalra, who works at San Francisco-based startup Coda, told the Post that zoomers see periods as overly formal and can sometimes interpret them as passive-aggressive. Older colleagues, however, tend to prefer communicating in complete sentences, including the dreaded period.

Kalra said that emojis are often the cause of the greatest confusion. For instance, she said that some zoomers interpret the emoji with puckered lips as a judgmental face rather than a kissing face – a distinction that could be pretty important at work. The generational divide on emojis is enough of an issue that Coda has a Slack channel dedicated to helping older employees understand gen-Z emoji use, the Post reported.

Keith Broni, editor-in-chief of emojipedia.org, an online emoji encyclopedia, told the Post that gen Z tends to use emojis with more nuance than prior generations. Emojis tend to take on a literal meaning much less often with zoomers than with their older colleagues, he said.

“Earnestness is cringe,” Broni told the Post. “It seems a little more ironic or sardonic.”

Some younger workers, meanwhile, can be intimidated by big blocks of text in one message. Many zoomers tend to separate their thoughts and questions into different messages.

“Older generations adapted the idea of email from letter-writing,” Andrew High, associate professor at Penn State,” told the Post. “For gen Z, letter writing was foreign. They were texting.”

The immediacy of text messaging – an immediacy zoomers have known all their lives – also means many of them expect responses to their messages more quickly than older generations might. Layla Wellington, a 22-year-old graduate assistant at the University of Illinois Springfield, told the Post that she had to get used to a delay in receiving responses to her emails.

“With that gap, we can build emotion about why they aren’t responding,” Wellington said. She added that she didn’t use email much before college.

“I had to realize that it takes time and a lot of people like to reply in business hours,” she said.