Working in collaboration rather than in contradiction with Gen Z workers, PwC UK is now offering resilience training to the youth joining its ranks. Maintaining a diverse workforce can be quite a challenge. Each employee walks on the job with different experiences, opinions, and backgrounds that shape their approach to the workplace. Matters grow more complex when they differ in terms of qualifications and competencies, especially when they come with pre-determined labels like “fussy” or “lazy.”
Many employers have already written Gen Z off as unemployable, but it’s hard to deny the truth: these workers are the future of the workforce. Rather than continue to resist their presence in the workplace, PwC’s approach to Gen Z in the workforce offers an alternate solution that better prepares them for the challenges that are to come. Resilience training for the youth isn’t just beneficial for them as individuals; it also ensures the organization is well-staffed to handle the sweeping changes that are to come.
Providing Gen Z with resilience training can not only help prepare them for employment but also improve the organization’s resilience and stability overall. (Image: Pexels)
PwC UK Is Offering Gen Z Resilience Training, Equipping Them to Better Fit Into the Workforce
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that Gen Z employees will make up about 30% of the U.S. workforce by 2030. In just five years, the youth of the workforce will take up nearly 50 million jobs across the country, and choosing to ignore this statistic and the most tech-savvy workers we have today is a risky strategy that can hurt in the long run. Instead of resenting their presence in the work, PwC UK is providing Gen Z with resilience training.
“Quite often we are struck that the graduates [who] join us—who are meeting all the cognitive tests we’ve set—they don’t always have the resilience,” Phillippa O’Connor, the Chief People Officer at PwC U.K., told The Sunday Times. “They don’t always have the human skills that we want to deploy onto the client work we pass them towards.” As a way to equip graduates with the training they need to productively participate in the workforce, the company is providing hires with resilience training as well as programs on developing communication skills, in their first six months on the job.
By teaching workers to handle criticism or work their way out of sticky situations, the company’s Gen Z training program offers employees a way to prepare for both daily operations and extreme situations with equal ease. While the company has hinted at an overall hiring slowdown, the PwC UK wing is well on its way to filling the 1,300 graduate jobs open for the year, and this strategy shows us why.
Should Other Businesses Consider Offering Gen Z Grads Resilience Training?
A business is only as successful as its workforce is efficient, as a large majority of a company’s performance hinges on how workers perform their duties and keep operations running. Skilled employees make for good employees, but it can be exceedingly difficult for employees to develop their skills or gain new ones when they spend their 9-to-5 on existing duties. Building employees’ skills is always a worthwhile investment, as it helps improve their performance and also improves engagement, dissuading them from job hopping away to greener pastures.
In 2026, many employers predict there will be a noticeable shift towards skill-based hiring, and while it might be possible to find talent equipped with the right skills, identifying perfect candidates for every open position is a far-fetched and time-consuming proposition. Developing talent internally helps in a myriad of ways, building up a workforce that is perfectly tailored to the goals of the organization while also increasing the ease with which the company can get started on succession planning.
Skill Training Should Extend Beyond AI
Resilience training isn’t just beneficial for Gen Z but for the workforce at large, providing them with the skills to build the grit it takes to survive in a competitive environment. Training in other soft skill areas like decision-making, communication, leadership, and conflict management is just as important as training in hard skills like AI literacy or cybersecurity.
The conversation around training employees has shifted to focus heavily on tech and AI, and while these aspects certainly warrant training to ensure a future-ready workforce, most workspaces that have thrived have done so with an assortment of skill-development programs to support their workers.
Ambitious projects like the US government’s new Tech Force program or Palantir’s apprenticeship for training young talent have now emerged to prioritize AI and tech knowledge as key drivers of employability. Still, other aspects like a collaborative spirit and creativity are also essential to working within an organization.
Whether through EAPs that specifically develop essential skills that are missing or general training for all employees, it is essential to prioritize comprehensive training on the job.
It’s Time to Make Investments Towards Gen Z and Overall Workforce Development
Gen Zers are a product of the times and have evolved with idiosyncrasies that may not appeal to the traditional workplace. While there are some habits and attitudes that they will likely need to leave behind to fit into the workforce, they are also determined learners who are eager to build connections at work and secure a future for themselves.
Understanding their priorities and filling in the gaps in their abilities can not only make them loyal learners but also enrich the organization with skills and insights that further the organization’s performance overall. Their social faux pas may be a result of their development alongside that of social media. It could also be due to their isolated growth during the pandemic, where they lost out on critical transition years that may have otherwise better prepared them for the workforce.
Regardless, resilience training for youth or other similar investments into their talent can create opportunities for united growth. This serves as a better alternative than wasting their talent at such a crucial stage and being forced to hire from their untrained ranks, five years down the line.
What do you think about PwC UK offering Gen Z resilience training? Should other organizations follow suit? Share your thoughts with us. Subscribe to The HR Digest for more insights on workplace trends, layoffs, and what to expect with the advent of AI.