What Gen Z wants from their internal comms

Gen Z is changing how internal communicators write for their audiences. Sarah Vasquez, head of executive communications at Mozilla, told Ragan that communicators need to understand both the change in audience and the impacts of AI.

“There are these two tensions converging,” she said. “One is how the industry uses AI to transform and accelerate its work. The other asks, ‘How do we raise the next generation within that?’”

Vasquez, a Millennial born on the cusp of Gen Z, is the youngest person on Mozilla’s comms team.

“I’m on both sides of the spectrum, being in communications myself, delivering internal comms, but also being part of the employee workforce,” she said. “There’s a lot of conversation about relatability, and from our point of view, we just want to be able to read a message and understand the basics. What happened? Why does this matter? What am I supposed to do with this information? Brevity and getting to the point are really important.”

During Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference this November in Austin, Vasquez will discuss what Gen Z is looking for in the age of AI. You can register for the conference here.

Cover the basics to inform the audience

AI is changing how comms teams develop their newest members.

“The way I was trained to do PR and comms is so different from how we’re training the younger generation,” Vasquez said. “AI makes it easier to summarize, to take in information and to distill.”

She said newer communicators should work through tasks such as summarizing articles or coming up with two or three suggested directions on their own, then move on to AI tools once they’ve got the hang of it.

“We really need to figure out how to make sure Gen Z is getting exposure to judgment-based challenges,” she said.

Less up front, more follow-up

When a major change like AI adoption rolls out, comms teams often feel pressure to plan out the answers to every possible question, even before employees can ask them. Vasquez said that impulse can end up working against communicators.

“As communicators, sometimes we try to do everything at once,” she said. “Here’s the exciting message. Here’s the who, what, where and why. And then we drop a link to a giant, 80-question FAQ and tell them to look it up themselves.”

Vasquez added that it would mean so much more to a Gen Z person if a message simply opened with what’s happening and how it applies, then let employee questions shape the follow-up. If the same questions keep surfacing, the next message or set of messages can tackle them head-on.

“If they do have a question, answer it directly instead of posting the giant FAQ in the Slack channel,” she said.

Gen Z can tell when you’re trying too hard

A message can still miss on tone. Vasquez said Gen Z cringes at forced enthusiasm, including slang, the overuse of emojis, and messaging that emphasizes too much excitement.

“You don’t necessarily need to tell someone how they should feel about something,” she said. “Just tell them what is going on, how it is going to change their day-to-day and what to do about it if they don’t like it.”

When companies try to connect with younger employees, they often reach for a looser style, such as unscripted, casual video. Vasquez said that can work, as long as it fits the person that’s delivering it.

“Not every companywide message needs that,” she said. “Let’s say you’re introducing a new AI tool. You don’t have to try to make me excited to use this.”

Sean Devlin is the senior internal communications editor at Ragan. You can follow him on LinkedIn here.