A tsunami is rising on the horizon, a tidal wave of nearly 2 billion people joining the work force. Generation Z, the generation currently in their teens and twenties, comprises 26% of the global population.
As these 2 billion individuals embark on their careers, they bring new perspectives, new skills, and new values to organisations currently designed and built for professionals who grew up with significantly different mindsets, needs and life plans.
For hospitality employers, this shift is especially urgent. Hotels depend on young talent not only to fill front-line roles, but to become the supervisors, department heads and general managers who will shape the next era of the industry.
Companies that want to thrive now and the years to come must understand what makes Gen Z tick. What do Gen Z individuals want out of life and their careers? What do they value? How do they grow? What motivates them? What do they need to reach their full potential? How can organisations tap into their unique skills and forward-thinking ideas?
As an institute of higher learning focused on training emerging talent for the hospitality industry and related business sectors, AIHM works directly with the generation now entering the hospitality workforce. In July 2026, AIHM hosted the Cracking the Gen Z Code webinar to help employers understand how to attract, develop and retain Gen Z talent.
What Gen Z Hospitality Talent Needs from Employers—and What They Bring in Return
Hospitality employers often hear that Gen Z wants flexibility, purpose and rapid advancement. While that is broadly true, those labels are too general and vague to be particularly useful.
The Cracking the Gen Z Code webinar explored what these broad themes actually mean for hospitality employers and the concrete realities of the workplace. Several AIHM young professionals currently earning their Bachelor of Business Administration in Global Hospitality Management sat down with AIHM’s Head of Student Engagement Alison Stanworth and Director of Global Partnerships Samantha Lauver-Marion to discuss what makes Gen Z different and to uncover actionable insights for their future employers. They explored ways companies can attract, develop and retain emerging talent.
Speaking directly to an online audience of hospitality employers and HR professionals, the students offered a clear view of what helps Gen Z perform, grow and stay. Six lessons stood out.
1. Turn supervision into purposeful guidance.
As Fortune magazine has recently reported, Gen Z employees have “loudly rejected micromanagement.” This observation, echoed by managers across industries, reflects Gen Z’s strong preference for autonomy, trust and control over how they deliver results.
Gen Z sees micromanagement as a hallmark of a ‘toxic workplace’. This resistance raises a dilemma:
Do you simply give the new generation free reign to do as they please and hope for the best?
Of course not.
“Angela” Nang Thein Hseng, BBA Student
AIHM BBA student “Angela” Nang Thein Hseng explained, “When there’s a purpose and a goal behind the way someone is teaching us, we don’t necessarily see it as micromanagement. We see it as guidance and mentorship.” The younger generation welcomes close oversight when it feels like development rather than control. Good managers know when to cast a guiding light—and when to step out of the way.
The panel of AIHM students discussed when close guidance is appreciated and necessary—their key example being onboarding, especially at luxury properties, which have exacting standards.
Luc Peth, BBA Student
Fellow BBA student Luc Peth noted, “Some properties have strict SOPs and a lot of compliance is required, especially in luxury properties. You need to understand and appreciate those rules in order to support the rest of the team.”
The emerging generation of employees welcome hands-on support especially when learning:
- Luxury-service standards
- Property systems
- Compliance requirements
- Operational procedures
- Detailed SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)
How can you provide guidance during critical periods such as onboarding? Explain why a standard exists, demonstrate it clearly, and gradually hand over the keys as confidence grows.
2. Make feedback timely, regular and developmental.
Gen Z’s preference for autonomy does not imply a preference for managerial absence. The emerging pattern is: less control over every action but more useful communication about performance and development.
According to Gallup polling and reporting, today’s young employees are strongly focused on career development—17 percentage points more than older generations—and they place a high value on “clear expectations and feedback from their manager”.
In a fast-moving hospitality environment, young employees value:
- Immediate recognition
- Regular check-ins
- Clear corrective feedback
- Opportunities to reflect after mistakes
- Visible evidence that managers notice their contribution
The keyword to remember about giving guidance is “developmental”. Developmental feedback helps young employees progress. Feedback that comes across as criticism rather than teaching and empowerment is counterproductive.
Kanyarat “Soft” Sitthilersanjanya, BBA Student
BBA student Kanyarat “Soft” Sitthilersanjanya explained that in a welcome, developmental approach, a supportive leader will—instead of being negative or accusatory—turn a young employee’s mistake into an opportunity to learn. They ask, Soft said, “How can we move forward and prevent this from happening? How can we make it even better?”
Alison Stanworth, Head of Student Engagement
Alison noted how AIHM’s approach to teaching aligns with what graduates hope to experience when they enter the workforce. “We don’t teach perfection,” she said. “We teach learning.” Teach and show young employees how to handle issues more effectively. Focus on the solutions rather than the problems. Approach feedback through the lens of powering career development instead of simply pointing out flows and failings.
Timing for delivering feedback is critical, and a major generational difference exists. Gen Z has grown up in a world that’s extremely fast-paced and hyper-connected. For this generation, annual reviews seem to operate on almost an almost geological timescale. Waiting a year for feedback feels more like archaeology than development. Build feedback into the working rhythm through shift debriefs, weekly conversations and task-specific coaching.
3. Show employees who they can become.
Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey found that learning and development ranked among Gen Z’s leading reasons for choosing an employer, while 89% considered on-the-job learning important to career advancement.
AIHM’s Cracking the Gen Z Code webinar clearly demonstrated this. Growth was one of the strongest retention themes in the webinar.
Angela exclaimed, “If the company can make me feel like I’m bridging the gap between who I am and who I want to be, then I would stay with them.”
How do you demonstrate paths for growth? Young employees want to see how today’s role connects to:
- Greater responsibility
- Cross-departmental experience
- Specialist expertise
- International opportunities
- Supervisory roles
- Long-term leadership pathways
Make progression concrete. Show employees what skills they need, what opportunities exist and how they can move toward them. Career growth should not be a misty promise somewhere over the horizon. Give employees a map, milestones and a visible next step.
Equally important, treat growth trajectories as mutual investments. Because Gen Z is especially development-focused, they are motivated to give their best when organisations demonstrate a real commitment to their growth. Soft explained, “When a company is willing to invest in me, I feel that they see me as an asset and want to grow with me.”
Clear growth trajectories and visible, active efforts to accelerate professionals’ skill and career development will pay strong dividends down the line to both a company and its promising young team members.
4. Build belonging into the employee experience.
Alison highlighted that employers often mistake Gen Z’s digital connectedness for a reduced need for human connection:
“We believe this generation is so social-media-based that we forget they are still human beings.”
AIHM students Soft, Luc and Angela all reinforced this point. Soft noted that being part of a friendly, cohesive team can make employees very reluctant to leave even when new opportunities arise. Money is very important but is only one part of job satisfaction.
For Gen Z, workplace relationships are valuable for supporting retention. Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey found that Gen Z employees with close workplace friendships were 15 percentage points more likely to expect to remain with their organisation for at least five years.
The results in Thailand were particularly clear: 81% of Thai Gen Z respondents said they had colleagues they considered personal friends, and those with strong workplace friendships reported greater happiness and longer intended tenure.
The effect of close relationships and a sense of belonging is especially relevant in hospitality, where teamwork, emotional labour and long or irregular shifts make the quality of workplace relationships difficult to separate from the quality of the job itself. Hospitality is a people-intensive industry. Employees are more likely to stay when they experience:
- Trust
- Friendship
- Team connection
- Psychological safety
- Recognition
- A sense of contribution
To be clear, building employee belonging does not mean HR should manufacture compulsory friendship or rely on the performative socialising that so many employees would prefer to avoid. Foster connections organically through peer buddies, cohort onboarding, mentoring and cross-departmental projects. Create conditions for trust, connection and belonging.
Angela described the kind of professional environment that allows Gen Z professionals to thrive:
“An empowering workplace is built on trust and psychological safety, where we are allowed to express ourselves and have ownership.”
A sense of belonging is about more than workplace friendships, though as mentioned, those can be extremely valuable to employee retention. Gen Z employees feel a sense of belonging when they are trusted, heard and allowed to contribute meaningfully.
5. Develop managers who are approachable, transparent and human.
Everyone has heard the saying, “People don’t leave jobs. They leave bosses.”
The quality and character of your managers and other leaders directly impact your job satisfaction, your motivation and, to a large extent, the calibre of work you bring to an organisation.
Are you seeking to attract, retain and develop promising Gen Z talent? If so, work to make sure their leaders and mentors exhibit the qualities that help this talent thrive and contribute with their valuable, specific insights and skills.
AIHM’s panel of Gen Z high-achievers, described the qualities they value in the leaders guiding them:
- Approachable
- Empathetic
- Transparent
- Supportive
- Trustworthy
- Willing to teach
- Willing to admit mistakes
- Able to recognise individual strengths
They want leaders who model behaviour rather than simply issue instructions. Angela explained how she benefited from her managers’ guidance during her initial internship: “They didn’t just tell me how to solve problems. They solved the problems in front of me. They showed me, and they made me feel like I could do it too.” She defined a good leader as “someone who leads by example, not someone who just tells us what to do.”
Luc emphasised that Gen Z professionals value “leaders who are approachable, transparent and supportive, but who also recognise individual strengths and create opportunities for people to grow.”
To take full advantage of what Gen Z talent can contribute to your organisation, train operational managers in coaching, modelling and developmental conversation.
6. Invite fresh perspectives—and expect informed solutions
The strongest Gen Z employees want to contribute meaningfully. Importantly, they bring fresh perspectives and skillsets that differ from the generations already firmly established in the workforce and relatively set in their ways.
Alison gave a passionate endorsement of the extraordinary value Gen Z adds to companies:
“They will come with solutions. They will come with new ways of thinking because they are looking through the eyes of this generation—and at the context of the here and now, not the past.”
Fresh eyes often spot the cracks that familiar eyes have learned to overlook. The best emerging talent does more than point at them; it helps repair them.
To be very clear, what rising talent offers companies isn’t simply naive, blue-sky thinking. The AIHM students discussed how they contribute to innovation and optimising current operations or commercial tactics. Luc explained the approach: “Before making any suggestions, properly understand the process. Then focus on solving the problem, not simply pointing out what the problem is.”
As the students talked about how to share their own observations and new ideas with leaders, they demonstrated a strong maturity, a respect for existing operations and a solution-oriented mindset—the precise qualities recruiters want in management-track interns and graduate hires.
The working model the students outlined:
- Understand the process first
- Identify whether the problem is recurring
- Gather examples
- Raise the issue respectfully
- Propose a solution
If companies want to strategically leverage the benefits that Gen Z’s new perspectives can bring to their businesses, they should create channels for early-career employees to suggest improvements and participate meaningfully in projects, rather than as mindless worker bees or gears in a machine.
Build feedback mechanisms into your processes. Capture insights and fresh, informed perspectives by establishing clear opportunities for young talent to present ideas to decision-makers.
Build a Strong Future for Your Business
Gen Z is asking for clearer purpose, leaders who empower, visible development and a credible opportunity to contribute.
The organisations that understand Gen Z best will retain more young employees, especially those with the highest potential. These companies will identify future leaders earlier, develop them more intelligently and give them reasons to build their careers within the business.
By understanding what motivates emerging talent, you can fully leverage their potential and build a stronger leadership pipeline. The tidal wave is well underway. Understand its currents so you can ride it to success.
Six Top Insights for Working with Gen Z
1. Turn supervision into purposeful guidance.
2. Make feedback timely, regular and developmental.
3. Show employees who they can become.
4. Build belonging into the employee experience.
5. Develop managers who are approachable, transparent and human.
6. Invite fresh perspectives—and expect informed solutions.
How AIHM Develops the Next Generation of Hospitality Talent
AIHM is proud to be a premier source for the next generation of leaders in the hospitality industry. We attract the most promising students from Asia and beyond and guide them in developing the skills required to manage, innovate, adapt and lead the industry.
AIHM prepares its young professionals through:
- Practical operational exposure
- Internships with the world’s most prestigious hospitality brands
- Business studies with a global outlook
- Leadership roles
- Reflective learning
- Critical thinking
- Extensive networking opportunities
- Collaborative problem-solving
Our young professionals graduate having already begun practising the behaviours required for future management.
Interested in recruiting some of Asia’s best-trained talent? Learn more about recruitment opportunities from AIHM.
