Most of the leaders we work with are already stretching to meet a moment no generation of leaders has faced quite like this one. You’re leading performance, building culture, and trying to keep people engaged, all while the composition of your workforce shifts faster than most organizations have adjusted for. Gen Z and millennials are projected to make up 74% of the global workforce by 2030, according to Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey.

That shift is already well underway inside most of the organizations we work with.

What we’re noticing is that many leaders sense something is different about how younger talent is showing up, more anxious, more guarded about the future, harder to fully engage, as the changes have happened to rapidly.

Here’s what the data tells us. Deloitte found that 40% of Gen Z and 34% of millennials say they feel stressed or anxious all or most of the time. Nearly half – 48% of Gen Z and 46% of millennials – say they don’t feel financially secure, and more than half are living paycheck to paycheck. And 63% of Gen Z and 65% of millennials worry that generative AI will eliminate jobs altogether. 

Layer those together, and you get a workforce navigating real uncertainty about their finances, their careers, and their place in a changing economy; often earlier in their working lives than most of us faced anything comparable.

It would be easy to compare their experience to what previous generations faced. That comparison misses the point. What matters is listening with compassion, and believing in each other’s ability to build the agency to influence their situation, even when it’s hard.

An opportunity we’re seeing more organizations lean into: treating well-being not as a perk, but as the foundation everything else is built on. Well-being is, in a sense, the price of admission to showing up fully in uncertain times. When people are carrying that much daily stress, they have less capacity left for the discretionary effort and resilience that drive real performance. Free up that capacity, and you create room for people to grow into the next level; which is where resilience comes in, and where Part 2 of this series will take us.

So where do leaders start? In our experience, the shift begins with small, deliberate goals – micro-movements – that build the confidence to eventually take on bigger, bolder ones. 

Four areas tend to matter most.

Social

Connection is protective. Time spent with other people, every day, does more for well-being than almost anything else, and it’s often the first thing crowded out by screens, overwork, or feeling isolated

• Micro-movement: Limit non-essential screen time to one hour a day, or reach out to one person a week, at work, with family, or with friends – just to connect.
• Bold goal: Join a club, community, or volunteer effort. People consistently report feeling less anxious, worried and more purposeful when they’re taking one step at a time to stay connected.

Financial

Financial stress is one of the heaviest weights younger employees are carrying right now, and it rarely stays contained to home life; it shows up in focus, confidence, and engagement at work.

• Micro-movement: Build a simple monthly budget, even an imperfect one, and revisit it every payday.
• Bold goal: Take advantage of an employer-sponsored financial wellness benefit, or a community- or faith-based financial literacy course, to build a real plan for the next three to five years.

Physical

Physical health and confidence are closely tied to how resilient people feel in every other part of their lives.

• Micro-movement: Set one specific, trackable fitness goal – a daily walk, a strength habit, a sleep target, and protect it like a meeting on the calendar.
• Bold goal: Train for something that requires sustained commitment, a race, a program, a season of consistent training, as a way of proving to yourself that discipline compounds.

Emotional

When someone is managing real anxiety or depression, well-being strategies aren’t a substitute for support; they’re a bridge to it.

• Micro-movement: Set one small daily goal built around experiencing genuine joy, not just getting through the day.
• Bold goal: Use the resources already available; an EAP, a community counseling service, a faith-based support network.

Since 2019, Gen Z and millennials have navigated an unusually turbulent stretch, socially, culturally, and economically, to arrive where they are today. If you’re leading, managing, or mentoring them, there’s a real opportunity to come alongside someone and help reframe well-being not as indulgence, but as the pathway to real contentment, even in an uncertain world.

Where might there be an opportunity, this week, to check in with someone on your team, not about their output, but about how they’re actually doing?

In Part 2, we’ll look at what becomes possible once well-being is in place: the resilience strategies that let people not just survive uncertainty, but lead through it.

Sources

Deloitte, 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/2025-gen-z-millennial-survey.html