Blunt, smart, unignorable: Is Pakistan’s Gen Z ready to take over?

Gen-Z - young people who fall under the 28-year age bracket - are sometimes percieved to be lazy and ill-mannered. But experts say they are blunt, smart, tech savvy, and cannot be ignored. They make up around 60% of Pakistan’s total population of 240 million, and will soon be taking on leadership positions at corporations and in the political world.

“The question is not whether Gen-Z will survive, the question is whether the aging current leaders at corporates and offices will be able to survive [in competition with them],” Qaiser Abbas, founder of CEO Academy, said while speaking at a pre-launch webinar for a study titled ‘Decoding Gen Z in Pakistan: Gen Z - Just another generation?’, organized recently by global market researcher and consulting firm Ipsos.

Gen Z, born between 1997-2012, have grown up surrounded by a digital technology revolution that made them extremely tech savvy - much more than Baby Boomers, Gen X, and even Millennials, experts on the panel said.

According to Abbas, Gen Z prolong their stay at organizations that value them. They can even develop emotional and physiological attachment with their workplaces. They, however, want clarity and quick feedback, for example on a month-on-month basis from their managers instead of waiting for a whole year for annual evaluations.

What’s more, “they protest when they find contradictions between their leaders’ sayings and practices, protest against injustice of workload and against murder of merit. They want the values written on the walls to be practiced,“ explained Abbas.

Unlike older generations, they don’t believe in staying silent, he added.

Former Finance Minister of Pakistan & Economist Miftah Ismail was also on the panel. He projected that a notable number of women leaders will emerge in Pakistan in the next five to 10 years from Gen Z, and will challenge the mostly male-run political dynasties of recent times.

He also noted that while Gen Z are spoilt for choice when it comes to mobile apps that allow them to call a cab or order food whenever they want, their spending constraints are also on the rise, citing a recent study by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) which says that the average real income of Pakistanis has dropped by 12.2% in six years, meaning “poverty has increased by 12.2% in 2024-25 compared to 2018-19,” Ismail said.

He added that people belonging to older generations should talk to the youth and understand their point of view, instead of ignoring them due to difference of opinion and communication gaps. “How will the aging people communicate with Gen Alpha youngsters (born 2013 onwards) if they cannot find a way talk to Gen Z?”

Meanwhile Pakistan’s former ambassador to the UN, US & UK, Maleeha Lodhi said she had noticed that Gen Z want to stay in the country instead of going abroad. They have hope in Pakistan’s future.

She lauded them for protesting against unemployment, authoritarian governance, incompetence, corruption and misrule, as has been seen in countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya and Indonesia.

Cambridge University Press, Country Director, Uzma Yousuf asked what the people in position are doing for Gen Z at present.

“We have to create an enabling environment for them…who at a young age have seen devastating wars in Palestine, Iran and Venezuela instead of peace. They have faced climate change, heatwave, smog and Covid-19 pandemic.”

She said corporate leaders have to give priority to humans over AI, as the deployment of technology has erased a big number of jobs. Some 26 million children are out of schools. Women and girls are facing decades old issues at public places and workplaces. “Our job is to give them (Gen Z) a voice and engage with them. They are amazing and wonderful people.”

Meanwhile Planet N Group CEO Nadeem Hussain said that Gen Z are generally defined as lazy but he found the opposite to be true. “They are smarter and faster at work, not lazy.”