Is Your Workplace Ready for a New Generation of Expectations?

One question in our ongoing research into workplace culture asks professionals how ready they believe Nigerian organisations are to manage the evolving expectations of younger employees around hierarchy, communication and professionalism.

The responses so far have produced an interesting result. 61% of respondents selected “Very ready” or “Somewhat ready.” 27% selected “Neither ready nor unready,” while 12% selected “Somewhat unready” or “Very unready.”

The numbers give us an early sense of how professionals are viewing the workplace as expectations continue to evolve. They also raise a more useful question for organisations: what does readiness look like in everyday working life?

It can begin with something as simple as knowing what employees are expected to understand when they join an organisation. How should people approach senior leaders? What does respectful communication look like in practice? How should employees raise questions or disagree with a manager? Where do people learn these expectations when they join a new workplace?

These experiences shape the way employees understand their organisations. A person may have spent years in workplaces where hierarchy was highly formal, then move into an environment where communication is more open and relationships with senior leaders are more accessible. Someone entering the workforce for the first time may arrive with a different reference point altogether.

Managers play an important part in this experience because employees often learn workplace culture through everyday interactions. A manager’s response to a question, the way feedback is delivered during a meeting, or the tone used when someone makes a mistake can teach an employee more about organisational culture than a policy document ever could.

That is why our research is looking closely at the relationship between formal expectations and everyday workplace experience. We want to understand how professionals across Nigeria learn the culture of their organisations, how they interpret hierarchy and respect, and how these experiences vary across generations and career stages.

The research is still open, and we are continuing to gather perspectives before we draw conclusions from the full dataset.