How to prepare for Generation Alpha joining the workforce

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the XpertHR podcast. XpertHR is a comprehensive source of leading practice, employment law and benchmarking information for HR professionals, providing solutions and expertise for every HR role, challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.xperthr.co.uk. My name is Robert Shore, and I am joined today by Rebekah Martin, who is senior vice president for reward and inclusion at AstraZeneca. Rebekah, hello.

Rebekah Martin: Hello. Nice to meet you, Robert.

Robert Shore: And we’re going to be discussing Generation Alpha and how organisations might need to start thinking in order to make themselves attractive as employers to this next generation. So Rebekah, before we get onto Gen A, do people say that? Do they say “Gen A”?

Rebekah Martin: We call it “Alpha” when we’re talking about it.

Robert Shore: Okay. So “Gen Alpha”. I’d like to do a bit of scene-setting and just ask
you about your professional journey to your current role. I think you began by studying biochemistry. Is that right?

Rebekah Martin: Yeah, that’s right. So a scientist back in the days of university.

Robert Shore: Yeah. And I mean, obviously that ties in, in some degree, with what AstraZeneca does.

Rebekah Martin: Quite. Shall I tell you a little bit about how I got where I am today and what I’m doing now? I’ll try and keep it quite short.

Robert Shore: Please do, yeah.

Rebekah Martin: Okay. So yeah, I started out as a scientist and then I trained as a lawyer and I became a specialist employment lawyer. After a little bit of time in law firms I realised I wanted to move into industry, and I had the opportunity to join AstraZeneca. So AstraZeneca’s a global biopharmaceutical company, and I joined as a specialist employment lawyer, did a few different roles in legal, spent time on assignment in Singapore with my family, which was amazing, and I got the opportunity to actually join the human resources function about six-and-a-half years ago. And my role is an interesting one. So I cover reward, inclusion and diversity, and also talent acquisition. So these are the centres of expertise inside the company for HR.

Robert Shore: Yeah, and that’s quite an unusual sort of gathering of different functions, isn’t it? Do many other companies that you know of do that?

Rebekah Martin: I haven’t met another one of me yet, Robert! But there are companies that are increasingly bringing together reward and talent. So we do see that. But I think when we bring together different areas of expertise it is an opportunity to think differently about the work, and that’s been something which has been really interesting for us at AstraZeneca.

Robert Shore: And actually, are you the first person to have the role which covers the different areas?

Rebekah Martin: Yes.

Robert Shore: You are?

Rebekah Martin: Yeah.

Robert Shore: And so, is there a wider perception of the change that’s made?

Rebekah Martin: Let me bring it to you from the perspective of reward and inclusion. If I start with that, in bringing those two quite different areas… Reward’s quite technical. Inclusion and diversity, it’s a little of a different discipline to reward, more to do with the culture and the way that we make people feel. And when we brought the two things together we really thought about this being the essence of what motivates people. So when we think about how we reward people, how we’re incentivising them to deliver the behaviours and performance that we want to see across the organisation, that’s clearly extrinsic motivation. So what you can put in place to incentivise someone to deliver something.

When we think about inclusion and diversity, this is about how we make people feel and how they interact with one another. And feeling valued for the difference that you’re bringing, and also being able to really connect as a team to the broader company purpose, that’s what motivates from the inside. So that’s the intrinsic motivation.

So when you put it like that, it’s all about motivation, and that then…we talk about creating rewarding experiences that inspire growth, and that’s what we look to do at AstraZeneca.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So actually, tell us a little bit about AstraZeneca as a workplace. So I mean, just for instance, you know, how many people work there? What sort of range of roles? I think everybody knows since the Covid pandemic that it’s a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company. I think it’s quite recognisable as a name. Do people have to work on site? How hybrid can you be? Just paint us a little picture.

Rebekah Martin: So AstraZeneca, it’s quite a different company than the one I originally joined, Robert. So what we’ve seen inside our organisation, we now have 85,000 employees. We’re right around the world. And what makes us unusual is that whilst we are technically a UK-headquartered company, we’re actually geographically super-diverse. So we don’t have everyone sitting in the US or everyone sitting in the UK, particularly from a senior leadership perspective. So we’re really sort of spread around the globe.

In terms of the types of employees we have, we have our research and development functions. So we will have lab scientists, we’ll have people working in the markets on our clinical trials. We have our operations function. So we have manufacturing employees, who are actually sort of moving from the molecule to the medicine and getting it out there into the market. And we have sales and marketing employees, who are engaging in dialogues with key opinion leaders, with prescribers, with healthcare professionals all around the world in order to ensure that our medicines get to patients. So we have people there who are field-based.

Behind all of that, of course, we do have our enabling functions, as you would expect, and those in sort of global corporate. And these people are office-based.

And you asked about our approach to hybrid. So the first thing to point out is clearly for our field force they’re in the field, for our lab-based people they’re in the lab, for our people who are working in manufacturing, they’re on the manufacturing lines. But in the office, what we try to get is this balance where we have a degree of flexibility. People can work from home. They can be remote. But only for a proportion of their time. We want people to be spending the majority of their time, so 60%, together. And that’s really important, actually, in order to create that sense of community and to foster learning and development, both things very important to Generation Alpha, I should say.

Robert Shore: Oh yes, Generation Alpha. Now, of course there are no Generation alpha in the workplace at the moment. But you do have a certain number of Gen Z-ers, I imagine, at AstraZeneca? So can we define where Gen Z ends and where Generation Alpha begins? And maybe the line is a bit blurry but let’s draw a line anyway.

Rebekah Martin: It is a bit blurry. I mean, one of the things that’s interesting about when we describe people in terms of the generation that they’re in, of course we’re going to be making generalisations, and what’s true of one isn’t going to be true of all. But let’s acknowledge a little bit of stereotyping.

But when we describe Generation Alphas we’re talking about people who were born between 2010 and 2024. So they’re the children of the Millennial generation. And this is, you know, a group of people who will be growing up in a technological age which many of us who’ve been immersed in a working environment for some time have been adapting to as we go, but they will have been in on it from the beginning, so to speak.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So as I say, the key thing is there are no Generation Alphas in the workforce at the moment, but we’re saying companies need to prepare and begin to shape policies to attract this new generation. That being the case, what are the traits that shape Generation Alpha’s profile? What do we know?

Rebekah Martin: So, growing up in a highly digital and connected world, Generation Alpha is likely to expect that of the companies that they work for too. So work needs to be easy to do. They might anticipate the seamless integration of technology in the
workplace. And they’re going to value companies that provide opportunities for continuous learning and development, we think. So, Generation Alpha will be fluent in the language of innovation. And technology isn’t just a tool; it’s a way of life. So I think that’s one of the things that I would call out as being really important – technological fluency will be key.

I’ll give you a couple more. So, purpose-driven work, I think, is going to be really important. So Generation Alpha will be growing up at a time when issues like climate change, social justice, sustainability are prominent. And they might have a heightened awareness of those issues, and expect companies to have a really strong commitment to doing something about it. So making a difference in the world, essentially.

And then the third one I’ll call out, I’ve mentioned inclusion and diversity already, but this idea of growth and development, career growth and development. So Generation Alpha is likely to seek opportunities for that growth and development, and will be valuing companies that offer mentorship programmes, training initiatives, clear pathways for advancement. So fostering that culture of learning, which is already important now, is going to be even more important in the future.

Robert Shore: How different is that from, say, Gen Z?

Rebekah Martin: I would say it’s like Generation Z but kind of leaning in, turn the volume up. All of the things which we’re starting to see as themes which are emerging now, I expect those to kind of increase in importance to a Generation Alpha workforce.

Robert Shore: Yeah. I suppose just to ask, what’s the source of our sort of knowledge for this? How do we know? I was mentioning this to my son the other day, who was a bit outraged at the idea that, you know, so much is supposed to be known about him and his generation (he’s Generation Z), so I need to be able to explain to him now that it’s not just because we’re looking on TikTok. Or is it just because we’re looking on TikTok?

Rebekah Martin: Educated guesswork is the best way that I would describe this here, because if we imagine your son, my children, these are individuals who are spending quite a lot of their time on social media. They are scrolling through vast amounts of information in very short bursts. They are hyper-connected in the digital world. Now, if they have that as their lived experience in a social setting, what are they going to expect when they come into a workplace? Will they find it totally jarring if actually they need to spend hours and hours doing something which is repetitive, or are we going to find that perhaps their attention span for certain things will be a little bit different? Their need for that social interaction in the workplace is going to be different. We might need to think about dialling up our recognition programmes because the thirst for “likes”, for example, on social media, it’s giving people dopamine hits. If we pull them away from all of that when they get into work and they have to wait for a month to get a thank you or to get noticed, this is not going to fly, I believe, for a Generation Alpha.

Robert Shore: Forewarned is forearmed, isn’t it? So another question actually relating to that is how global do we think these characteristics are?

Because obviously we have a lot of employers who are looking to…well, who first of all work globally and can recruit internationally. So if we’re doing that, are these assumptions that are reasonable to make across the board?

Rebekah Martin: I think the access to technology is the fundamental which will drive whether or not it’s kind of global. And in some cultures they’re ahead of where we would be in the UK, and in some countries they are behind. So I think it does depend because if you have communities which do not have this heavy dependence on technology, that’s one of the fundamentals that we’re talking about, is influencing this generation as they move into the workplace. So I think that’s a key component. But there will, I imagine, be a lot of things which are universal and global, and I think that issues such as climate change and the importance of tackling a topic like that increasingly around the world…there are very few countries that haven’t experienced some odd weather events recently, like extreme weather events. It’s touching people’s lives around the world. So I think it’s fair to say that, yes, it might be different depending on where people have grown up, but there will be a lot in common, I believe.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So I suppose in part that’s organisations thinking about their ESG, how they sort of define themselves in that way. Is that right?

Rebekah Martin: Yes. I mean, I think one of the things which I feel very privileged about in working for AstraZeneca is that we are a company which is looking to be a force for good in the world. You know, at its heart we are about inventing the next generation of medicines that could be looking at, you know, curing cancer as a cause of death, for example. That is a very positive purpose to get behind. But we still need to do that, you know, in a way which is helping the planet. And I think all companies are having to tackle this. We see it increasingly rising in the agenda in terms of importance to shareholders. So investors are expecting this of companies. But I think that that’s something which is only going to be on the rise.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So I was going to say, you know, what motivates Generation Alpha? And I think you’ve already described quite a lot of that. How then, as an employer, can you begin to articulate these things so that actually your potential future workforce recognises what you’re doing? What is this practically going to turn into?

Rebekah Martin: On the ESG side, Robert, or broader?

Robert Shore: So, you talked about, you know, climate change for instance, and you know, that this is something that is high in the consciousness of young people generally, people generally. But actually, how does a company sort of begin to speak about that in a way that is meaningful?

Rebekah Martin: Well, that’s a really important point because there are a lot of companies that will talk about their aspirations in this space. But really what people will be looking for is action. And so when we talk about, within AstraZeneca, our ambition for zero carbon, which is to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, even though we are a growing company, being able to demonstrate that we are, in absolute terms, reducing those greenhouse gas emissions, that we’re not just looking at Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions which are in our direct control, but we are part of industry initiatives where we’re actively looking to manage the indirect carbon as well. These sorts of things, and being able to show through the data that we are making a difference, means it’s not just words. And I think that the investments that companies make – we have an AstraZeneca forest, for example; we are planting trees in order to support our efforts in relation to biodiversity and the carbon agenda – these are things which there will be an expectation that companies will put their money where their mouth is and prove that the difference they’re making, that these things do actually matter in practice.

Robert Shore: Yeah. And is there a sort of formal process, though, for showing this to the workforce, that the reporting is…?

Rebekah Martin: Yeah. So increasingly it’s something which companies will cover in their annual report. But we also have a sustainability report inside AstraZeneca, so every year we will issue our sustainability report and we’ll be describing both where we want to go but also the journey that we’ve taken so far and the material developments that we’re seen there. And increasingly, regulators are expecting that too. So there is more external reporting. There are plenty of certifications that companies absolutely should have. Whether or not, you know, the generations coming into the workforce will almost look at this like, “This is the passport that the company has to comply with in order for me to be prepared to work for them,” remains to be seen. But for sure companies are under increasing scrutiny to be doing business in the right way.

Robert Shore: Yeah. And do you get a lot of feedback from the workforce about this, that there is a lot…do you find there’s a lot of engagement and sometimes uncomfortable engagement? Pushing for more?

Rebekah Martin: It’s welcome, when we do have that appetite from our workforce. I’ve just come off the back of our end-of-year review, internal end-of-year review and a celebration of our achievements across the year, and the enormous enthusiasm and pride that our employees are already demonstrating for what AstraZeneca’s doing in this space is visible, you know. Like, you’re watching all of the hearts and the thumbs-up go whenever the recording’s showing on the video and it does fill us with an enormous amount of pride.

I’d almost say, in terms of being a force for good in the world, and you mentioned it right at the beginning with AstraZeneca now being more of a household name than it’s previously been, that was due to our response to the pandemic. Now we were, you know, the only global pharma company that made such a material commitment there, where we were running that programme, not being a vaccines company originally and doing it not-for-profit, that’s something which now, you know, people feel super-proud. There are so many people around the world in lower middle-income countries that would not have had a vaccine because of what we did. If we haven’t have done that, you know, 6 million lives wouldn’t have been saved. This is what matters. It’s actually doing it that matters. And yes, people are proud.

Robert Shore: So let’s talk a bit more about inclusion, diversity and equity. What role will DEI play in attracting future Generation Alpha talent?

Rebekah Martin: It’s going to be critical. I mean, imagine this world where we have AI that can do lots of the work that might be done today by humans, we have all of these technological advances, we have very cool tools, it’s all seamless to interact with. But we will still need people. We need people because of their empathy, their relationships, the judgement that they can deploy. So we will have to have a community and we’ll have to have a strong sense of community. And that’s where inclusion and diversity comes in, because humans need humans, and humans need to feel appreciated for the difference that they’re able to make. As we see this rise in technology, we also have to dial up the emphasis around inclusion and diversity. It’s how we can learn with one another, it’s how we can achieve together, and it’s how people feel seen and appreciated.

Robert Shore: Yeah. I mean, again is there a sort of first practical…or some practical steps that you’ve found yourself taking recently that sort of illuminate that pathway?

Rebekah Martin: Absolutely. Let me break it into a little bit the inclusion and diversity strategy that we have at AstraZeneca. So we put inclusion before…we say “inclusion and diversity”, we say that one first. Diversity, people often go to that straight away because you can get to numbers on it. So it feels more measurable. It’s a little bit more difficult to measure inclusion. And I think knowing your diversity is important, knowing the composition of the workforce that you have is important and acknowledging those differences is good. But if we have diversity without inclusion it’s a missed opportunity. Inclusion is the mixture, and getting people to share their different ideas, appreciating that people are different from them, and putting people together in teams that are perhaps unexpected is where the magic can really happen.
And so if any company is looking at developing an inclusion and diversity strategy, I think sometimes there are people inside companies that think that inclusion and diversity is a nice-to-have and not a must-have. And if that’s the case then all companies will appreciate that being able to do something new, being able to innovate is going to drive success and business performance, and being able to tell that story and help leaders and employees understand that it is a driver of business success, I think, is really important. So I’d say that’s probably one of the messages to land. But then I think it goes beyond that, and where we talk about inclusion and diversity we talk about the impact that we can have as a healthcare company because our patient populations are diverse. And so of course we have to be bringing in different perspectives as we develop our solutions or they’re not going to be fit for purpose. And so seeing it as the intersection where innovation happens is important, but then also thinking about it from the perspective of, “Well, who are we here to serve? We’re here to serve patients. What are the patients like? They’re diverse.” Bringing in that diverse thinking, then, you know, it’s a double no-brainer, if I can put it that way.

Robert Shore: Let’s talk about reward and recognition. And will organisations need to adapt their programmes in that regard? You know, will you need to employ somebody who’s sort of 24/7 liking social media posts? Is that one new role that’s going to be created?

Rebekah Martin: God, I hope not. That sounds really dystopian! No, I think it has to be genuine. If we’re recognising one another, it needs to be because we are thoughtful and we do genuinely appreciate people, you know. I think it would be very fast for somebody to see through something like that, as cynical as that.

But I do see the role of recognition as being important, and it reinforces relationships and human relationships. So I’m sure there’ll be some AI somewhere that could like all of our posts, Robert, but we wouldn’t care if it did. It’s about the person that’s behind the appreciation.

Robert Shore: But actually, I mean, just on a serious note there, actually what is the sort of more immediate, face-to-face version actually of that dopamine hit you mentioned, because actually, you can get an awful lot of the other in a slightly artificial fashion. And so actually, what shape do you think that recognition could take? So it’s people being very aware of the fact that they need to give feedback more possibly than is traditionally thought as being necessary. But are there new ways in which you give feedback as well, and recognition?

Rebekah Martin: Yeah. I think it can go from something as simple as the check-ins that an individual will have with their manager, which should be in the flow of work, but where they’re receiving that kind of coaching support, which is appreciating what they’ve done well but also helping them with sort of positive intent around the things that they could explore doing differently in the future, and looking forward to the future. ‘Cause people, they will feel appreciated for what they’ve done but they’ll also really value their manager’s investment in their growth and development. And I really do think that a key success criterion of the leader of the future is going to be their ability to coach their team members, develop them, and export them into other parts of the organisation. That’s really a measure of the success of a leader.

So I think that may feel like we should be doing it today – and I think that we probably should – but I think that it’s going to be table stakes in the future that this kind of investment in somebody, they are appreciated for what they do and they’re supported to be more successful in the future.

And then there’s tools and technology that can help with this. So we have a global recognition programme at AstraZeneca, which can happen across every business unit. It’s peer-to-peer recognition, it’s in-the-moment. We can do it with an app on our phone, where we’re able to record a video message, award somebody points, points mean prizes, you know, there’s a material value to what we’re doing, and I think this kind of thing is something which really reinforces the organisational connections beyond the employee and line manager. It really is sort of surroundsound when it comes to building up that recognition approach.

Robert Shore: Yeah. I think we talk a lot at the moment about upskilling and reskilling line managers, in part in response to sort of the change in hybrid working, ‘cause obviously that requires quite different skills sometimes to manage people who are not present. And this is obviously another aspect of the way in which actually possibly the whole idea of management, or line management and leadership at every level, needs to be rethought.

Rebekah Martin: I would see, you know, some organisations are, you know, exploring whether or not there might be a different track, actually. So it’s more a career coach that’s needed because, actually, the work that’s sitting underneath, people may be moving from gig to gig inside a company, so there’s much more variability and flexibility as they apply their skills to the opportunities that are available or perhaps they want to learn in a new space, and the career coach becomes the constant. So their day-to-day manager may change as they’re sort of doing this internal gig working, but there’s a career coach sitting in the background. And that kind of thing, I think, absolutely can work. But in a lot of the tracks, certainly as we have it today, that traditional, you have a line manager, you have a job, that’s probably going to continue to have a role, I think, in most organisations.

Robert Shore: And reward. How is reward changing in response to the expectations of the changing generations?

Rebekah Martin: So I think there’s a really interesting challenge for us to resolve in the reward space actually, because if we look at people’s expectation of reward, they will expect that throughout their career their reward will increase with their experience. And they’re usually right. That’s usually what happens. And what that means then is that people can, you know, move through different stages of their life, they can enhance their lifestyle according to their means, and all brilliant.

What happens in a world where actually the skill cycle is increasingly narrowing, and just because I have a skill and I’ve learnt a skill, well that’s great but I might not be deploying it in my job. Should an employer be paying me for that skill because I have it if they’re not asking me to use it? I think there is an ongoing conversation in reward professionals around skills-based pay at the moment and whether there’s a role for that. My personal view, I think it’s an interesting topic but I don’t think it is going to fundamentally challenge the way that we reward people. I think that we will still have fixed reward, variable reward.

Variable reward might relate to delivery of particular work, but I think the idea of having reward that’s just attached to a particular skill is unlikely to work in practice unless that skill’s being deployed, which then comes back to the work itself. I could talk about this for a while but I might bore you, so I’ll stop there.

Robert Shore: Not at all. But I guess that can get quite complicated as something that you actually need to apply in practice.

Rebekah Martin: Quite. And if you think about that from an equity perspective, you know, we have differentiated reward inside AstraZeneca and many organisations. We have to differentiate it in a way which is equitable. So you’re treating people differently, their outcomes can be different, but it needs to be justifiable. And you get into a much more kind of subjective space, potentially, when we’re talking about skills-based reward because it’s reward that’s framed just around a particular person and their composite mixture of skills. How you then can do a read across and say, “Well, we’ve got a man over here that’s paid in this way and a woman over here that’s paid in this way”, and be able to then triangulate back and get confidence that that’s an equitable approach, it becomes much more difficult. It becomes pay for the person.

Robert Shore: And we were talking as well about continuous learning as an expectation. How is that going to be met by companies? How should they be preparing themselves to think about, you know, making sure that they retain talent because actually they’re providing people with that sense of an ongoing personal and professional journey within an organisation, ideally, within a single one, without leaving.

Rebekah Martin: Without leaving, yeah. We talk at AstraZeneca about you don’t just join for a particular job but for the career that you can have. And I mean, I’ve certainly… I feel like I’m a proof case of this, right? I wasn’t expecting to have this career and be in a position in HR but I’m so glad that I am. I think that there’s a component which we’ve mentioned around the role of the line manager in coaching people, giving feed-forward on an ongoing basis and helping to be more successful tomorrow than they were today or yesterday. But then there’s also the access to learning opportunities. And I see there are two key components to this. I’m sure there are more but I’ll call out two.

One would be the access to learning. And so learning content. People who are invested and curious, they can go to all sorts of external places to get their information, but getting access to academy-quality learning content through any device at any time, at a time that suits them, is going to be, I think, very important. And then there’s also the access to opportunities, development opportunities, and having a really democratised approach so that people get visibility of those internal opportunities and can participate in that internal talent marketplace, I think is another important piece.

Robert Shore: Yeah. Finally, I think, corporate social responsibility. How do companies integrate initiatives, CSR lines, that resonate with Generation Alpha’s social consciousness? ‘Cause you’ve described that actually it’s a generation that pushes that more in the foreground, ever more, even more than Gen Z. How will that work?

Rebekah Martin: So I think organisations will have to be super-clear around what their purpose is. A bigger purpose. It can’t just be about profit. I do wonder if the accountancy firms, for example, how they’re going to be able to sell what they do to people who will want to work for them. I’m sure the work is super-attractive but I think coming back to, “What’s the difference that we’re here to make as an organisation in the world? What is that difference?” Finding the meaning in that, that people can connect their personal why to the corporate why, I think will be important. And doing it in a way that’s good for the environment and respectful of people, I think is the other key component here.

Robert Shore: Yeah. I mean, as you said, with the Covid vaccine, this was done notfor-profit and was a tremendous altruistic gesture. Have you found that that’s in any way set a precedent for everything to be done in precisely the same way?

Rebekah Martin: Well, I won’t comment on the company’s kind of strategy. I think we were at a very special moment in time in facing the pandemic and the way that we dealt with it was differentiated. And because we strongly believed that it was important we play our role in the world’s response to it, and I think we did take a leading position on it.

I think when it comes to other topics where we can take a leading position, be it from an environmental or other perspective with an ESG lens, then this is something that we absolutely do, and something which we continue to be proud of.

Robert Shore: So, Rebekah, that’s been a really interesting conversation. I’ve really enjoyed that and I think it’s been really illuminating. So thank you very much.

Rebekah Martin: Well, thank you, Robert, for your time today.

Robert Shore: To our listeners, that has been a podcast on AstraZeneca and Generation Alpha in particular, and we’ve had some interesting ideas, I think, there about future directions that we may be taking in the workplace.

And so again thank you to Rebekah, and I wish you well until the next time.