Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

ONE DAY IN a distant, nightmarish future, perhaps the humans will be groveling at the feet of the AI overlords. “I’m sorry you’re upset,” it might say. “But listen, I tried to get you a bigger paycheque.”

And it seems it would be right. A new report from Payscale wanted to understand why there has been a “widening disconnect” around salary expectations, and found some evidence that AI has a chronic tendency to overestimate market rates for salaries, quietly pushing the 20 per cent or so of jobseekers who use tools like Gemini or ChatGPT to research salaries to unknowingly drive up their salary expectations.

“Seventy per cent of employers have noticed a rise in employees using AI to shape salary expectations,” it found. “But using generative AI as a barometer of salary expectations is creating new tensions: 27 per cent of AI-using employees say it inflated their expectations compared to other sources, and 38 per cent of employers agree AI tools are driving salary demands higher than ever before.”

It’s good to be a bit skeptical about this sort of thing. It might be a case of both sides externalizing responsibility to generative AI, when what we’re actually seeing is traditional tension between employer and employee over salaries. It’s easy for an employer to believe an employee wants more money because ChatGPT told her she deserves more; it’s also easy for an employee to believe deeply they are underpaid because the fancy search engine machine told them so.

But however the data should be interpreted, research has shown this is a tendency that AI models have. A 2023 Employee Benefit News report found that ChatGPT specifically overestimated significantly when compared to anonymized payroll data.

The avenues for employees to educate themselves on salary expectations are expanding,” said Payscale compensation strategist Ruth Thomas. “Employees are still gaining knowledge from traditional sources like family and friends and industry salary guides, but AI and social media are driving up salary expectations without the verified data and role context needed to inform compensation.”

COMMUNICATIONS

‘Hello?’ Gen Z’s silence on the phone baffles older workers

Gen Z is quietly redefining phone etiquette, leaving generational gaps at the dial tone

LOOK, OVER HERE at London Inc. HQ, newsletter division, we’re trying not to dump on Gen Z too much for their workplace habits. For one thing, they get enough of that from everybody else. For another, in the not-too-distant future they’ll be calling the shots, and we want to stay on their good side. (They’ve already made me feel self-conscious about wearing ankle socks.)

But sometimes, reports of odd Gen Z behaviour surface and we are forced to ask questions, like, do gen Z know how to answer the phone?

Apparently not universally ― at least according to one viral post from a recruiter. “I’m a recruiter, so I do a ton of phone interviews, and something I’ve noticed about Gen Z specifically is that a lot of them answer the phone and don’t say anything,” wrote the recruiter on X. “Like, I can hear their breathing and the background noise, but they wait for you to say hello first.” 

Let’s at least assume the post is truly from a recruiter. What on earth is going on here? The Financial Times’ Pilita Clark was as gobsmacked as us, and looked into it. Turns out there’s some truth to this. “A remarkable 40 per cent of British people between 18 and 24 think it is acceptable to answer a phone call without any form of greeting,” Clark wrote, citing a YouGov poll.

Surely not here in Canada, you’re thinking. Wrong again. “It’s very common,” said Mary Jane Copps, a Canadian communications consultant at The Phone Lady.

The reason, she says, comes down to robocalls. “Rather than start the conversation and then discover it is a recorded message or scam, they wait to hear who or what is calling them before they respond.” (Digital communications experts say that from a strategic level, this checks out. Saying hello and engaging with a spam call flags you as a potential mark. “By saying hello, you’re confirming that your number is active, which can land you on even more robocall lists,” wrote Charlotte Hilton Andersen.)

Okay, so that’s fine ― when it’s a robocall. It is probably much less fine when we are talking about real people on the other end of the phone. Like a recruiter, or a job you applied for or a job you interviewed for. Will anyone go to bat for this behaviour?

Actually, yes. “What you’re observing is less a lack of etiquette and more a shift in how Gen Z navigates power, privacy and presence in real time,” said Career Nomad CEO Patrice Williams-Lindo. “The pause is a form of boundary setting, not rudeness.” A stretch, perhaps, but a defence nonetheless.

But nothing is as constant as change, as the saying goes, and whether you like this new trend or not, it’s an evolution we’re going to have to live with. “What we are witnessing is an evolution of social norms, and the ones that bristle against it are the ones that are having the hardest time adjusting,” said Williams-Lindo. “A cheery or corporate ‘hello’ can come across as disingenuous or emotionally performative. Gen Zers value emotional clarity over politeness. They want authenticity, not artifice.”

All that said, it’s still a little strange. To a millennial over the age of 30, the idea of waiting for the other person to start a call that I answered is as cringe-worthy as ankle socks. This author must regrettably side with the olds on this one.

“A young person who knows such simple truths [to answer the phone] can stand out from the ruck in ways that would have seemed inconceivable just a short while ago,” Clark concludes. “It is such an easy way to excel. Grab it while it lasts.” 

CULTURE

Dressing the part

The work uniform: a simple answer to decision fatigue ― or something more dystopian?

ALONG WITH REWRITING the rules on phone etiquette, Gen Z and their anxious millennial comrades have also been busy doing a myriad on thing in the world of workplace fashion. They’ve birthed “office siren” style, various trends of bizleisure and so on. Self-expression is becoming more common; dress codes, a thing of the past.

But one thing younger professionals seem to be is consistent: they are finding their work outfits and sticking with them in virtually all situations. A recent International Workplace Group report looked at the fashion and clothing attire choices of younger employees and found that 53 per cent have a “work uniform” — something they are likely to wear most days that they are required to be in-office.

“Driven by a desire to be efficient, make fewer decisions and even save money,” they wrote, “employees are creating a singular brand that shows up in their daily outfit choices.”

But the dark side is that this seems to be also coming, at least partly, from a place of anxiety, and is a byproduct of a workplace that, since the pandemic, has lacked clear cultural anchors.

“It’s never been harder to dress for work. Just ask Gen Z,” declared Fast Company last month. On the younger side of this demographic, you have employees who aren’t returning to the office but rather heading there for the first time. On the older end, you have elder millennials with their own problems: more of them are moving into mid-level positions, facing tougher expectations and might even be nominally responsible for enforcing dress codes. The reality has shifted away from traditional business casual, but to where is harder to determine.

“The reality is, there is a uniform, and there is a standard to which people dress,” said one tech worker in Fast Company. “[But} it’s not based on a level of formality. It’s based on a level of identifying with a given group.”

That is a more complicated fashion world to navigate, and thus not a huge surprise that the IWG report found that 46 per cent say they experience some kind of stress or anxiety around work attire each week.

So, the return to the workplace uniform makes a bit of sense, in the sense that it neutralizes some of these questions. As long as you can decide on at least one outfit. 

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