Writer: Graham Atkinson
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“Young people are entitled. They're lazy. They don't live in the real world. They're not loyal.”
You don't have to look far to find these headlines. The Standard, The Guardian, the New York Post. Take your pick. And if you’re being honest, you've possibly had versions of this conversation yourself.
When I was asked by Hospice UK to speak on this topic at the recent Clinical and Workforce Leaders Conference, I jumped at it. Not because I had an easy answer but because it's one of the most live and interesting challenges I see across the charities we work with at Atkinson HR. Organisations are struggling to attract, retain and motivate early-career talent. And too often they reach for a generational stereotype to explain why.
So, at the Clinical and Workforce Leaders Conference, I wanted to interrogate those headlines. How true are they? How helpful are they? And what can we actually do to write a different story? This blog post is a follow up to the conversations we had at the that conference - for anyone who was in the room and also anyone who wasn't.
Who are we actually talking about?
A quick word on generational labels. The convention runs roughly like this:
- Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964;
- Generation X from 1965 to 1980;
- Millennials (or Gen Y) from 1981 to 1996; and
- Gen Z from 1997 to 2012.
Each tag comes with a tidy bundle of assumed traits, behaviours and expectations. The Boomers had it easy with free University, cheap housing, gold-plated pensions etc. The Millennials would own massive houses by now if only they stopped eating avocado on toast and drinking expensive coffee. Generational labels can be a useful shorthand for thinking about what different people bring to work and want from it.
I'll be honest. I find them clumsy, stereotypical and largely unhelpful. People are not a birth year. So, I'll steer away from using the term "Gen Z" in this post. I’d much rather talk about ‘young people’ and ‘early-career professionals’ which, in my opinion, is a far more useful lens for the challenge many hospices, and other organisations, are actually facing.
What's actually going on in the workforce?
Before we reach for stereotypes, it helps to look at the data. Some of it is genuinely interesting.
Our workforce is getting older. Around 11% of people aged 65 and over now work, compared with 5% in 2004. For some that's a positive choice. For others it's financial necessity. Either way, young people make up a smaller proportion of the workforce than they used to.
Young workers are three to four times more likely to be unemployed. That's not new and it's not because they're ‘lazy’. It's simply harder to get a job at the start of your career. The hardest point in anyone's working career is getting started and that hasn't got any easier.
They also arrive with less workplace experience. The proportion of young people ‘earning and learning’ through apprenticeships, placements and part-time study alongside work has dropped from 40% in 1997 to 34% today. Only 28% of employers recruiting 16-24 year-olds say those recruits are well prepared for work. We have a generation entering work with less exposure to workplace norms, whilst we still expect them to turn up fully ‘work ready’.
And what about loyalty and job mobility? Data shows that the average job tenure in the UK for 16-24 year-olds stay is approximately one to two years whilst over-50s stay for ten years. But the interesting thing is that this hasn’t really changed in the last thirty years. Young people aren't, all of a sudden, more flaky than they used to be.
What has changed isn't how long people stay; it's why they stay. The psychological contract between employer and employee has shifted. Job security, loyalty and steady progression used to be a given. The goalposts have moved now and that's a story about the deal we offer, not about a flaky generation.
What is the labour context in hospices specifically?
The picture in the hospice sector sharpens the point. We employ just over 36,000 staff across around 220 hospices, including roughly 13,500 nurses and 1,200 doctors. Over a third of the clinical workforce is now aged over 55, and that number is climbing. Tellingly, 58% of clinical staff in children's hospices are under 45 but that figure drops to 36% for adult hospices.
Speaking to colleagues at the Clinical and Workforce Leaders Conference, there is still a view that the perception of many is that clinical hospice roles are ‘retirement gig’ rather than a ‘career of choice’.
When you layer on the additional workforce pressures, the challenge is stark. Demand for palliative and end-of-life care is rising. Immigration restrictions may make international recruitment harder. And, as a sector, we're competing with the NHS. Hospices need an estimated extra £120 million just to match NHS pay uplifts.
Objectively, this feels like an existential challenge for the sector. An ageing workforce, more barriers for young people entering work and real questions about career pathways into palliative care. Our ability to make hospices attractive to young people, and then to keep them, could be fundamental for our future success.
The good news is that young people might be a brilliant fit
There is definitely room for hope and optimism though. Research from Deloitte and PwC tells us that younger workers are motivated by growth, learning, meaning, wellbeing and flexibility. Only 4% of young people in the UK say their primary career goal is to reach a leadership position. Over half (54%) of young workers cite opportunities to learn new skills as a key factor in the decision to job-switch (compared with 28% of all workers).
Purpose. Compassion. A human-centred approach. Flexibility. Inclusion. This is what hospices do. If young people care about these things, in the hospice sector, we should be pushing at an open door provided we get our approach right.
Don't fix the generation. Fix the work
We tend to talk about attracting, developing and retaining talent, in that sequence. But I think that's the wrong way of thinking about the problem. There's no point running a brilliant recruitment campaign, drawing in lots of bright early-career talent, if they arrive to a disappointing experience and head for the door six months later. You'll have spent time and money simply to refill the same roles.
Reframe the problem. Start by getting the experience right including the development, the management, the culture, the sense of purpose and then turn your attention to attraction. Get this order wrong and you're pouring water into a leaky bucket. Get it right, and your reputation as an employer will start to do the hard work for you.
What else will help retain, develop and attract young talent?
Make development real. If early-career joiners can't build skills and confidence quickly, they'll go elsewhere to find them. The offer matters and so does the story you tell about it. Don't bury learning and development in a policy document or reduce it to a line about mandatory compliance training. Spell out the structured pathways, the mentoring, the chance to stretch into new areas and frame it as something you're investing in them. Not a box to tick. Be explicit that growing their career is part of the deal and that choosing a hospice doesn't mean putting their own development on hold. For a generation that ranks learning among its top reasons for joining and staying, a vague or apologetic L&D narrative is a missed opportunity.
Invest in your managers. It's a cliché because it's true - people don't leave organisations, they leave line managers. For early-career staff, the line manager often is their experience of your hospice. Be specific about what good looks like and equip people to deliver it. Set clear standards for how often managers should be having development conversations, not just annual appraisals. Train them to give feedback quickly and well, rather than saving it up. Help them connect someone's day-to-day tasks back to the bigger purpose. And give them the time and headspace to actually manage, rather than treating it as something squeezed in around a clinical or operational role. Get this right and your managers might become your single biggest tool for retaining young talent.
Be explicit about expectations. Because many young people arrive with less prior workplace experience, the unwritten rules of work aren't always obvious to them. Assuming otherwise sets everyone up to fail. Spell out what good performance actually looks like in the first six months and be really explicit about how you expect people to show up at work. Define what you mean by ‘flexibility’. Which hours are fixed, what's negotiable, how to ask etc. Be clear about how you communicate, how decisions get made and what to do when something goes wrong. Then check your induction is genuinely landing these messages rather than drowning them in policies and passwords. A strong first few weeks, with expectations named out loud, can prevent a lot of frustration later.
Listen properly and act on it. It's hard to design a great experience for young staff if you don't actually know what they value and what grinds them down. Build in real ways to hear them. Break down your staff survey results by age, so the experiences of early-career people don't get lost in the average. Run focus groups or set up a young workers' network. Use stay interviews (not just exit interviews) to understand what's keeping people, before they have one foot out the door. And crucially, close the loop. Tell people what you heard and what you changed as a result. Listening that visibly leads to action builds trust.
Design for integration, not separation. A workforce spanning four generations is an asset, not a problem to manage. But only if you actively design for it. Left to chance, age groups might cluster and stay apart. Build project teams that deliberately mix ages and experience levels. Pair new starters with buddies from a different generation. Set up reverse mentoring, where younger staff coach senior colleagues on things like digital tools or fresh perspectives. These connections spread knowledge, break down "us and them" thinking and give younger staff visibility and a sense of belonging whilst older colleagues rediscover their own enthusiasm in the process.
Then (and only then) sharpen your brand and recruitment. Once the experience is right, make sure your shop window reflects it. View your careers page as a young person would - on a phone, on the bus, in two minutes. Can they see people like themselves in the photos and stories? Is it clear what you offer in terms of development, flexibility, purpose and inclusion? Is the application process slick or is it a clunky Microsoft Word form? Then look beyond traditional hiring. Your volunteers, for example, might be a ready-made talent pipeline. Over a third of 16-25-year-olds volunteer (formally or informally). Do we have deliberate and intentional routes and pathways from volunteering into paid roles?
So what?
Do young people arrive with different priorities and expectations? Absolutely. Are they lazy, entitled or uncaring? Not in my view. The evidence simply doesn't support it.
As the pressures on our hospice workforce grow, our ability to engage, develop, retain and attract young people matters more than ever. And the good news is it should be a great fit. Appeal to their sense of purpose and their hunger to develop and we're close to unlocking real potential. As long as we're smart enough to provide an experience that lives up to it.
Sources:
CIPD report "Changing face of the youth labour market" (December 2024)
Deloitte: Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey (2026)
PwC: Global Workforce Hopes & Fears Survey (2024)
DCMS Community Life Survey (2024)
Graham Atkinson
Atkinson HR Consulting Ltd