Gen Alpha is entering the workforce. Do you know them?

Not another generation to understand. That was my first reaction to reading headlines about Gen Alpha entering the workplace. First, it was about engaging with them as consumers. Now, it’s about managing them as colleagues.

Then I realised, I do ‘get’ Gen Alpha. I’m raising 10 year old triplets. That’s pretty much as Gen Alpha as you get for a generation born between 2010 and 2024.

Generation Alpha (a term coined by Mark McCrindle) is expected to be the largest generation in history. More than 2 billion people. They will soon outnumber the Boomers. Many will live to see the 22nd century. Their influence is already being felt.

And yet, as they begin entering the workplace, the reaction from many organisations is the same. A huge dose of hesitation and scepticism. This isn’t a generation to fear or treat as a mystery.

We’ve been here before

Every generation arrives with a label. Boomers were lazy and uncommitted. Millennials were entitled and sensitive. Gen Z were too anxious and too fragile. Now, Gen Alpha is the chronically online, relentlessly activist and dangerously opinionated.

None of this is new. There’sa 2,500-year tradition of people complaining about the younger generation.

Aristotle wrote:  "[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. […] They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it."

Each generation sees something in the younger one they don't fully understand. That reaction is normal. But it becomes a label. Overconfident, lazy, unemployable.  

Those labels are written on the outside. For Gen Alpha, the view from the inside tells a very different story, particularly for any leader trying to understand who’s heading their way.

Who is Gen Alpha?

Gen Alpha's perspectives on global issues and communication are already shaping how they think about the future. They think critically, organise collectively and hold the world to account. Always. That's not a challenge to be managed. It's a capability to be understood. And it's one that's already very much present, especially in my household.

They have grown up online

Gen Alpha is the first generation raised entirely online. Their whole existence has been based on a hyper-connected world that moves fast. Really fast. Smartphones, smart appliances, social media, YouTube, Alexa… These are all daily norms.

My kids, like many in their generation, chat with Alexa daily. Roman ask random questions about whatever fact he wants to know the answer to, what the weather’s like or details about whatever Premier League player is his obsession for that week. Eva will ask what the animal of the day is, what the dog of the day is, what the cat of the day is, etc., etc.

They are environmentalists

Gen Alpha are passionate about the environment and deeply concerned about climate change. They’ve been born during the hottest years on record. Their knowledge about environmental and social issues is outstanding.

My kids repeatedly go out litter picking where we live. They own litter pickers and use them happily to collect other people’s rubbish. Roman will constantly quote the names of animal species that are near extinction and ask what can we do about it. Eva wants to write to the Prime Minister about the trees that were cut down near to where they go swimming.

And at school, their class was so angry about the destruction in the Amazon rainforest that they decided to write to Nestlé about needing to increase sustainable palm oil and now constantly read the ingredients labels of foods to see what has palm oil in it. The pride in their voices when they came home one day to tell me that they ‘got a letter back from Nestlé’ was heart-warming.

They have experienced continuous conflict and crisis

Gen Alpha has grown up fast. They’re argumentative, challenge a lot and don’t shy away from debate on whatever they want to discuss.

The world they have experienced so far included the pandemic as a defining event. Gen Alpha expect parents to work from home as a norm. They know virtual communication – Teams meetings frequently show little faces onscreen. FaceTime is a preferred way to keep in touch.

Either side of the pandemic, conflict has been a constant: Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran. Trying to explain why the world is the way it is and why human civilisation behaves as it does can feel overwhelming. The news cycle has been dominated by war, Brexit and the pandemic for the majority of their lives.

The questions we are asked as parents – ‘why is President Putin doing this’, ‘are we safe in England’ – are hard ones to answer. The reality is that conflict is now a permanent narrative and one that we all need to be mindful of, as it carries mental health implications for Gen Alpha.

The question worth asking

What emerges isn't fragility. It's a generation that has been tested early. And that changes the question organisations should be asking.

Anxiety about a new generation entering the workforce is normal. But the question shouldn’t be: Is this generation ready for the workplace? It’s: Do organisations have the people intelligence to see what this generation is capable of?

Gen Alpha won’t be the problem child of the workforce. Just as Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers weren’t when they first joined. Some of this cohort are still young and still figuring out who they want to be. But they’re already thinking critically, holding their values with conviction and have been shaped by more uncertainty than previous generations.

There are already things visible in this new generation that no CV will ever capture: how they handle frustration, what makes them persist, how they treat people when no one’s watching, what they care about when given the freedom to choose.

That's the intelligence that matters.

Every generation enters the door being more than the label. The question is: do organisations have the right intelligence to see past it?