Employers are rethinking performance reviews as Gen Z workers seek more frequent, clear and actionable feedback.
4 min
Bosses are getting no shortage of feedback on how to give their youngest staffers…well, feedback: Do ask how they are doing first. Don’t criticize a personality trait. Do give them concrete direction, and a lot of it.
And whatever you do, call a performance discussion a check-in, not a review.
The oldest members of Gen Z are about to turn 30, yet companies are devoting more time and resources than ever to figuring out how to give this manager-befuddling generation better direction. For help, they are turning to a cottage industry of multigeneration-workplace consultants and even artificial-intelligence bots, while ripping up the script for what used to be once-a-year evaluations.
All of it is a departure for leaders who rose through the ranks in an era devoid of so much thought to effective coaching and criticism. “When I started my first job, I got a performance review a year later, and that was just expected,” said Adam Coyne, chief administrative officer at research and analytics firm Mathematica, which has shifted from annual reviews to quarterly, two-way check-ins for new junior hires.
“This is a group that wants a lot more real-time feedback,” added Coyne, 55.
It is a message managers say they are getting nonstop from surveys and all-hands meetings, not to mention the universities and colleges preparing graduates for the white-collar world of work: Used to the immediate validation of social-media likes and comments, even instantly posted grades, this generation of workers craves clear, frequent direction—and they feel disoriented and anxious when they don’t get it.
Gallup data suggest companies are still struggling to get the hang of it. Younger workers report some of the biggest drops in engagement at work over the past five years. Not knowing where they stand appears to be a big factor. The share of Gen Z and younger millennials who strongly agreed with the statement, “I know what is expected of me at work,” fell 9 points to 42% in surveys between 2020 and 2025.
That doesn’t mean they need the effusive praise that many managers claim they do, some 20-something workers say. “I personally dislike this style,” said Nathan Luckock, a 20-year-old engineer at an AI startup. More effective, he said, is just “pointing out mistakes and then offering a solution.”
That sounds familiar to Lindsey Pollak, a multigenerational workforce expert and executive coach, who says she coaches bosses to be as specific as possible. Instead of “be more responsive,” for instance, she suggests “need to hear from you within an hour of receiving an instruction.”
At Mathematica, Chief Executive Paul Decker said the firm switched to more frequent check-ins in part because so many new entry-level hires were peppering supervisors with questions like: “How am I doing?” and “What does the next level require?” At staff meetings, younger workers often questioned why things were done the way they had always been done.
That included things like “waiting months to learn whether you’re meeting expectations,” he said.
KPMG executives said they, too, began giving their younger workers more frequent assessments on skills like critical thinking and adaptability last year after interns said they wanted to hear more often how their skills were coming along. The firm wanted to “make sure that we scratch the itch,” said Jason LaRue, vice chair of talent and culture at KPMG’s U.S. practice.
Some managers are getting feedback on giving feedback from bots.
Joe Hirsch, a corporate speaker and author of “The Feedback Fix,” recently used an AI coaching platform to work with a tech-company manager on her delivery. She had been frustrated that one of her junior reports wasn’t grasping her pointers on pitching clients, so she role-played the conversation with the AI coach.
The problem, the bot advised, was that she wasn’t giving the employee enough context for why she wanted things done a certain way. “Let’s connect so I can share more about our approach and get your take on it,” it suggested she say.
That did the trick when she tried the approach in real life. “The advice finally landed,” Hirsch said.
Even a few, clear bullet points work, said Valerie Chapman, the 27-year-old founder and CEO of Ruth AI, a career strategist platform for women. “My generation likes to get feedback so that they know how they should adjust.”
She recalls getting bullet-pointed direction when she worked as a strategic growth partner at real-estate company Compass a few years ago. The feedback started with praise before offering pointers.
“It would be, ‘Great job. Here are some things that you could do next week,’” she said. “If that comes in on a Friday, then my Gen Z brain knows exactly what I need to do on a Monday.”
Mike Ekbundit, director of GE Appliances’ engineering programs, said he has tried to make performance discussions with younger workers in rotational programs two-way dialogues rather than top-down critiques. So he revised online evaluations to include prompts for managers to ask questions like “Did you like the assignment leader?” and “Was it too much work?”
Managers are also asked to assess the program participants on nine different categories, like innovation and resilience, while employees are prompted to list their top strengths and weaknesses.
“I need high customer satisfaction to retain this highly sought-after talent, and this is part of how I get it,” he said.
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LEGO is expanding beyond its traditional audience by tapping into people’s passions, from flowers and gaming to music and Formula One, through creative products, immersive experiences and social-first marketing. The strategy is paying off, with revenue rising 21% in the first half of the year to a record DKK 41.9 billion.
5 min
Lego’s core audience was once young boys. But in recent years the world’s largest toy maker has expanded its reach, attracting more adults, teenagers and girls.
At the center of this expansion has been a strategy to tap in to people’s interests and hobbies—the Danish toy-brick maker calls them “passions”—many of which cross demographic boundaries. These include personal preoccupations like bonsai trees and golden retrievers, celebrities such as pop star Olivia Rodrigo and mega events like Formula One and the World Cup.
That has led to new types of building sets, including more sophisticated models that adults can display on their coffee tables, and a shift in marketing strategy, with Lego pouring money into experiences and social-media skits aimed at fans.
For Formula One watchers, Lego built life-size, drivable replicas of the teams’ race cars, which drivers took around the circuit at last year’s Miami Grand Prix. To reach gaming fans, Lego in August showed up at the Gamescom trade event in Cologne, Germany, with a giant Minecraft Lego chicken that visitors could sit on.
“We go not just for the people who are there, but because the types of things that we create become big social-media engagement,” says Julia Goldin, Lego’s chief product and marketing officer.
The strategy has helped spur growth. In the first half of this year, privately held Lego’s revenue rose 21% from the year-earlier period to a record 41.9 billion Danish kroner ($6.27 billion), while net profit climbed 32% to 8.6 billion kroner.
The Wall Street Journal spoke to Goldin about how the company researches people’s passions and turns these into products and marketing campaigns.
Edited excerpts follow:
WSJ: Adults have become a big focus for Lego—what’s behind that?
JULIA GOLDIN: Over the past eight years, we said there was a bigger opportunity with adults—not just people who are super-high-affinity fans, but people who maybe built a long time ago or had never built with bricks before—by giving them the things they would love to build now.
We approached adults from a passion-point perspective from the very beginning. We said we need to understand what they’re into. So, we looked at men, we looked at women, we looked at what their big interests were, what types of things they like to collect, what types of things they wanted to display in their rooms, etc. Now you can put Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” on your wall, or if you’re into animals, some cute floating sea otters. And then gamers who love a bit of ’80s or ’90s nostalgia can build and display the Game Boy.
We are now seeing strong growth with both adults and kids.
WSJ: How do you find out about people’s interests?
GOLDIN: We do a lot of trend-seeking and social listening. We look at viewership of various programs, behaviors, what’s trending socially. Then we dive quite deeply into these interests through primary research, ethnographic research and interviews.
AI has helped us ramp this up. There are tools where you can ask, with the right prompts: “People who are passionate about F1, what are they talking about? What are the latest conversations on Reddit?”
WSJ: Lego flower bouquets and trees are among the company’s most popular sets. How and when did that come about?
GOLDIN: When we started to talk seriously about adults, we could see that some people were into gardening and flowers. We launched the first flower bouquet in 2021 and completely underestimated how successful it would be. We started with the 18-plus age group because we thought that’s where the sweet spot is. But we realized that younger girls, especially teens, really love to build Lego flowers so we expanded the range.
You might think botanicals are women and F1 cars are men. But that’s why we talk about interests and not just gender and demographics. Yes, botanicals have a huge following among women and teenage girls, but bonsai trees are one of the top 10 products for men and teen boys. Speed Champions F1 cars show up in the top 10 for teen girls. I thought most of Olivia Rodrigo’s following would be girls, but my 16-year-old son asked me for two sets because his friends are massively into her.
That’s why we don’t market to a demographic. You can never be assumptive about how that breaks down in terms of gender.
WSJ: How has this shift in thinking changed your products and marketing?
GOLDIN: F1 is a great example. In the past, we might have started with a partnership with a team and a great Lego car for people to build. But we understand that it’s a multigenerational passion and different people are in it for different things. Some people love the cars, some collect, some follow the actual sport of racing, and some have tremendous passion for the drivers and their teams. That is why our F1 portfolio spans everything from Duplo [bricks] for toddlers to detailed display models and driver helmets for older fans.
But then we ask ourselves: What can we do to go beyond the products, to give fans Lego brand experiences that they would never expect? That’s why in Miami last year we built 10 full-size Lego Formula One cars, with nearly 400,000 bricks in each, and put all 20 drivers in them for the driver’s parade. Everyone assumed they were static models, until the drivers started lapping the circuit and we saw a tremendous amount of excitement and social media buzz. We generated something like two, three billion views.
WSJ: Do social-media views of a marketing event translate into significant sales of Lego sets tied to these campaigns?
GOLDIN: Yeah, of course. We don’t share data, but I can tell you they’re some of our most successful products.
WSJ: You say Lego is growing particularly strongly with girls. What is driving that?
GOLDIN: We used to have only Lego Friends as the one big line for girls, and some Disney products like “Frozen.” But rather than looking at toy categories that were selling to girls, like dolls, and trying to replicate that, we really worked to understand what girls are into.
We realized girls are super into pets and creatures, nature and flowers, socializing and music. We expanded significantly around those areas with botanicals, animals, K-pop and Olivia Rodrigo.
We also did the “She Built That” campaign, very strongly saying girls can build just as well as boys. I’ve heard for a long time that “girls don’t like to build because moms don’t,” but that’s just not true. We’re showing them things they really love to build, and that’s why it works.
WSJ: Why do you think adults, teens and others are turning to Lego more nowadays?
GOLDIN: There’s an overriding sense of lack of purposefulness and this drowning in content that you’re constantly being fed. Three hours have gone by and you’ve just been scrolling through feeds of reels. People are getting really tired. They want to actively do something that’s more purposeful and lasting.
When they build with Lego sets, they say they feel creative. They want to do something they can be proud of—where they can say, “Wow, I did this.”
