The Workplace Gap with Gen Z's Nobody Talks About - And What to Do About It in Brunei
- Mar 26
- 4 min read
Some of the usual sentiments we hear in offices across Brunei, in the break room, in performance reviews and occasionally in slightly exasperated messages to HR, sound something like:
"The graduate we hired seems bright enough but has no idea how to conduct herself in a meeting."
"I've been doing this job for 15 years. Why do I need to change how I work just because the new hire prefers WhatsApp over email?"
"I don't even know how to start looking for a job. Nobody taught me any of this."
Three different people. Three very real frustrations. And at the centre of all of them - the same gap.
The Graduate Who Walks In Unprepared
Let's be honest about something - school does a reasonable job of teaching people what to know, however, it does a poor job of teaching people how to work.
Most fresh graduates, not only in Brunei, arrive at their first job with genuine ability and very little idea of what's actually expected of them day to day. Not because they're not capable, but because nobody told them. Some examples are:
How to behave professionally in the workplace.
How to speak up in a meeting without sounding defensive.
How to handle feedback without taking it personally.
How to dress for a client visit versus a regular Tuesday in the office.
These things seem obvious to someone who's been working for ten years but they are not obvious to someone who graduated three months ago.
The result? Graduates who come across as unprepared or overconfident in interviews - not because they don't care, but because they genuinely don't know what "prepared" looks like in a professional context yet.
The Experienced Staff Member Who Doesn't Want to Adapt
On the other side of the office sits someone who has been doing their job well for a long time. They know the systems, they know the clients and they know how things work around here.
In comes a new 23-year-old team member who does everything differently. Communicates differently. Thinks about work differently. Questions processes that have "always been done this way."
The frustration is understandable. Change is uncomfortable, especially when you've earned your position through years of consistent effort. But here's the thing - digging in and refusing to adapt isn't just uncomfortable for the new person. It quietly poisons the team dynamic and sends a message to leadership that this person's best years may be behind them.
The most common reasons experienced staff resist working with younger colleagues usually come down to a few things:
fear of being shown up,
genuine generational differences in communication style,
a feeling that their experience isn't being respected, or
simply never having been given the tools to bridge the gap.
That last one is more common than most organisations realise - and it's fixable.
The Leadership Team Caught in the Middle
Then there's the manager or business owner who hired the graduate, values the experienced staff member and is now fielding complaints from both directions.
The temptation is to label it a "Gen Z problem" and move on. But that framing misses the point entirely. Every generation that entered the workforce was at some point accused of being lazy, entitled or difficult to manage. Every single one. And yet here we all are.
What's actually happening is a collision of different expectations, communication styles and definitions of professionalism - none of which were ever explicitly discussed, because most organisations assume people will just figure it out.
They don't. Not without help.
What Needs to Change - And Where to Start
The mistake organisations keep making
Assuming that a new hire will "pick things up" on their own. Some do. Most don't - at least not fast enough, and not without collecting a few avoidable bruises along the way.
Leaving professional development to chance isn't a neutral decision. It's a choice to let the gap widen quietly until it becomes a performance issue, a culture issue or a resignation.
The Gen Z myth worth dropping
That they're lazy.
In over two decades of working with teams across Asia Pacific, I've rarely met a genuinely lazy person.
What I have met frequently are people who are disengaged because nobody explained what was expected of them, or demotivated because their contribution was never acknowledged. Gen Z didn't invent disengagement. They just respond to it more visibly than previous generations did. That's not a character flaw. That's feedback.
The one thing you can do right now
Have the conversation you've been avoiding. Whether that's a manager sitting down with a new graduate to explain what "professional" actually looks like in your organisation, or a team leader acknowledging that the way things have always been done might need to evolve - most of the friction in multigenerational workplaces comes down to unspoken expectations on both sides. Say the thing. It costs nothing and it changes everything.
A Note to Fresh Graduates Reading This
If you're about to enter the workforce and feeling overwhelmed - that's completely normal. The uncertainty you're feeling isn't a sign that you're not ready. It's a sign that you care.
The things you don't know yet are learnable. The professional habits, the confidence, the ability to read a room - these aren't personality traits you either have or don't. They're skills. And skills can be built.
You just need someone to show you how.
If your organisation is navigating this challenge - whether you're an employer trying to bridge the gap, or a graduate looking to hit the ground running - the Professional Development Program at Doris Suresh Consulting was built specifically for this.
Three progressive levels. Practical, honest and grounded in real workplace situations. Take a look here.
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