FINDING 1/9

The Drop in Integrity

Integrity posted the largest year-over-year decline of any competency Cangrade measures — and unlike most data points in a dataset this size, it barely varies from person to person.

Across 71,747 behavioral assessments of Gen Z and Millennial workers, one competency dropped faster than any other. Integrity posted the largest year-over-year decline of all 40 competencies Cangrade measures in its behavioral assessment. And unlike most data points in a dataset this size, it barely varies from person to person. The individual spread around Integrity is the lowest of any competency we track.

When a metric declines with low variance, it is not an outlier. Most people in this sample scored similarly on Integrity, and they’re scoring lower than they have before.

Integrity is not a headline strength or an obvious weakness, which is exactly why a decline this consistent doesn’t appear in an analysis of the top and bottom competencies. It only shows up when you watch how each competency moves year over year. That’s why it leads this report.  Not because it’s the most extreme score in the dataset, but because it’s the most consistent movement in the dataset, and consistency at this scale is hard to explain away. 

Three data points make it our headline finding.

Most uniform result in the dataset.
Integrity has the lowest standard deviation of any competency we measure (0.33), well below the dataset average. Low standard deviation means low individual variation. Most people score similarly. So when a low-variance competency declines, outliers aren’t dragging the average down. The population moved together.

Low rank.
Integrity ranks 26th of 40 competencies, sitting 7% below the overall midpoint. 

Largest YoY decline.
At -0.87%, Integrity posted the steepest year-over-year drop of all 40 competencies, well ahead of the next-largest decline, Fostering Teamwork, at -0.65%.

The data doesn’t tell us why Integrity is declining, or which industries feel it most. What it does tell us is where to focus. 

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

You can’t assume behavioral honesty and ethical consistency. Because the decline is so uniform, this isn’t a hiring problem that can just be screened for. It also shows up after people are already on your team. A workforce with strong leadership and execution skills but decreasing Integrity is still a workforce you can’t fully rely on. 

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 2/9

The Leadership Readiness Gap

To successfully lead a team requires moving beyond the skill set required for success as an individual contributor and acquiring new skills like delegation, motivating others, and coaching. But what happens if Millennials’ and Gen Z’s leadership skills are waning?

Across nine competencies tied directly to leading people and building teams, in the Gen Z and Millennial workforce, eight are declining, five rank below average, and four are both.

A single declining leadership competency could be an outlier. But eight out of nine moving in the same direction, across everything from Delegation to Consensus Building to Coaching, is a definitive gap. Gaps in leadership readiness tend to show up later as turnover, disengagement, performance, and managers who were never built for the job they were given.

Fostering Teamwork illustrates why directional data matters alongside structural rankings. It sits at rank 12 overall, above average and not a weakness by any conventional measure. But it is the second-fastest declining competency in the entire dataset at -0.65%, falling from a position of strength.

Three things make this trend in leadership readiness worth paying attention to.

1. Five of the competencies needed for successful management are below average. The ones near the bottom are exactly what you need once you’re managing people: Leadership (rank 33), Consensus Building (32), Delegation (39), Coaching (27).
2. Facilitating Change ranks 6th of 40, among the highest-scoring competencies. It reflects the drive to champion and advocate for organizational change. But it is declining (-0.36%) while sitting alongside Adaptability at rank 40 (-0.44%). The same workers who are strongest at pushing for change are weaker at personally adapting to it, and both competencies are moving in the wrong direction. Facilitating Change scores 56% higher than Adaptability on the same scale.
3. Eight of nine leadership-adjacent competencies are declining. Fostering Teamwork is falling fastest. It reflects the ability to build a collaborative team culture, which is the basis of team performance. Promoting early-career workers into team lead roles without deliberate leadership development can lead to engagement and performance risks.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

Promote people on individual performance alone, without investing in leadership development, and the gap will show up in team effectiveness, retention, and manager quality. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report found that manager quality is the single biggest driver of employee engagement. This is the finding with the clearest business case attached to it. A gap in Millennials’ and Gen Z’s leadership skills this wide is a retention and productivity risk.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 3/9

The Rise in Outcome-Orientation

While Integrity and leadership readiness are declining, a distinct group of competencies tied to individual performance is climbing. Understanding the decreases and the increases together shows where this workforce is headed more clearly than either on its own.

In a tough job market with high competition for open roles, Gen Z and Millennials are even more performance-aware. Results Orientation leads all competencies in year-over-year growth at +1.11%, moving from rank 16 to rank 15. It now sits 7.9% above average. 

When combined with the increase in Negotiation Skills (+0.69%), Consistency (+0.57%), Monitoring and Managing Performance (+0.55%), and Persuasion (+0.52%), it is clear that these generations are focused on outcomes, execution, and getting results.

The motivation data backs up the same story from a different angle. Structure, the preference for defined processes and predictable environments, ranks 11th of 16 motivations and is rising at +0.60% (see Finding 6). Excellence, the drive to do high-quality work, ranks 3rd of 16 and is up 0.39% year-over-year, already one of this workforce’s most dominant motivations, and still climbing. Two different Gen Z and Millennial workforce trends, behavioral competency and motivation, are pointing toward the same shift. These generations want a clear framework to perform within, and they’re increasingly motivated to do that work well.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

Providing clear feedback, defined standards, and structured goals will set these generations up for success. Any performance-consciousness driven by a tight job market may fade once conditions ease, so the organizations that build habits and systems around it now will keep the benefit after the labor market loosens back up.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 4/9

The Near-Average

Twenty-nine of 40 competencies land within 15% of the overall average. This is the zone where development can have a high ROI. These four competencies sit close enough to average that targeted coaching can move them meaningfully.

1. Strategic and Conceptual Thinking (rank 24, 1% below average) sits nearly at the midpoint but is trending down. 
2. Communication (rank 8, 14% above average) is a genuine strength.
3. Handling Setbacks (rank 22) is holding steady. This group isn’t especially resilient to failure, but it’s not fragile, either.
4. Active Listening (rank 31, 10% below average) sits in the bottom third, below what most roles need for real collaboration. 

The most consequential finding in this zone is Active Listening. It doesn’t make the headlined weakness list, but it sits in the bottom third, below what most roles need for real collaboration. Workers who score high on Emotional Intelligence but low on Active Listening have a specific gap: they’re tuned in to their own emotions but not consistently turning that awareness outward. That kind of gap, strong on the underlying capacity, weak on the applied behavior, is typically faster and cheaper to close than a competency coming in dead last.

The motivation data backs up the same story from a different angle. Structure, the preference for defined processes and predictable environments, ranks 11th of 16 motivations and is rising at +0.60% (see Finding 6). Excellence, the drive to do high-quality work, ranks 3rd of 16 and is up 0.39% year-over-year, already one of this workforce’s most dominant motivations, and still climbing. Two different Gen Z and Millennial workforce trends, behavioral competency and motivation, are pointing toward the same shift. These generations want a clear framework to perform within, and they’re increasingly motivated to do that work well.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

Active Listening is the skill to prioritize here. Workers who score high on Emotional Intelligence but low on Active Listening have a specific, fixable skills gap, and closing it is a high return move.

Cangrade’s research on Gen Z and Millennial workplace myths found Emotional Intelligence ranks 1st of all 40 competencies we measure, 30.3% above the overall average, directly contradicting the narrative that younger workers lack soft skills. The real gap isn’t a soft-skills deficit. It’s specifically in applied interpersonal behaviors like Active Listening, reinforcing this finding. Treating “soft skills” as one undifferentiated problem means missing that the internal awareness is already there. What’s underdeveloped is turning that awareness into consistent action.

When development budgets are finite, the middle of the distribution is where a small, well-targeted investment produces the most visible change.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 5/9

The Reasoning Gap Is Widening

Four competencies covering how the Millennial and Gen Z workforce thinks, not just what it does, are all declining at once: Critical Thinking, Innovation, Creative Problem Solving, and Analytical & Quantitative Reasoning. A fifth, Strategic & Conceptual Thinking, covered in the previous finding as a near-average competency trending down, is moving in the same direction.

This Millennial and Gen Z workforce trend lands at an inopportune moment. As AI absorbs more routine, procedural work, the competencies left for people to own are exactly the thinking ones tracked here: reasoning through ambiguity, generating new approaches, and evaluating information critically.

Three things make this pattern worth watching:

None of these four ranks in the bottom five of the index. This isn’t a crisis-level weakness. It’s a slow drift across an entire category of thinking skills, at the exact moment those skills are becoming more valuable, not less.

Critical Thinking is the steepest decline of the four, and it’s already an acknowledged weak spot. It ranked among this workforce’s three biggest development areas in our Workforce Intelligence Report, and it’s declining further, not recovering.

Innovation and Analytical & Quantitative Reasoning both sit just above average, a good rank. But a competency doesn’t have to be a weakness to be a warning sign. Both of these competencies are moving in the wrong direction while the world is asking more of them.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

AI is already automating the routine: pulling data, drafting first passes, summarizing information. What’s left for people to do is harder: judging what the data means, spotting a flawed assumption, generating an approach nobody’s tried yet. Those are precisely the competencies declining here. The data doesn’t tell us why, and it doesn’t tell us that this is caused by AI adoption. Correlation across one year of data isn’t causation. But the timing is worth taking seriously, because if this trend in the Gen Z and Millennial workforce continues while AI keeps absorbing routine tasks, the gap between what the technology can do and what your people are equipped to do on top of it will only widen.

Related reading: Cangrade’s Gen Z and Millennial AI Readiness Report maps this same decline to a Human-in-the-Loop Framework: the specific oversight responsibilities that fall to people as AI adoption expands.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 6/9

Novelty Is Fading, Structure Is Rising

Novelty ranks last of all 16 motivations, in both 2024 and 2025, and it’s declining faster than anything else in this dataset at -1.60%. Structure, the preference for defined processes and predictable environments, sits in the middle of the pack at rank 11 and is rising at +0.60%. Paired together, they tell a specific story: the Gen Z and Millennial workforce is craving stability.

Novelty is already last, and the gap is widening. It scores 31% below the average of all 16 motivations, and the distance between Novelty and Comfort, the top-ranked motivation, grew from 67% to 70% in a single year. Even though this motivation is dead last, it’s still falling.

Structure is rising against one of the most persistent narratives about young workers. The claim that this workforce resists structure and craves fluid, fast-changing environments doesn’t hold up against the data. These generations want clear frameworks, not a free-for-all.

A 2025 Randstad study of more than 11,000 workers found that Gen Z and Millennials’ departures are caused by advancement gaps, not a need for change. Peer-reviewed tenure research found early-career tenure today is nearly identical to that of Baby Boomers at the same career stage in 1983. Two independent data sources, behavioral motivation and actual job tenure, are converging on the same answer.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

Job descriptions that advertise “fast-paced” and “constantly evolving” environments as selling points may be screening out the workers most likely to stay and perform. For the Millennial and Gen Z workforce trending toward stability, not away from it, that language reads as a warning, not an attraction.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 7/9

Competition Is Climbing

Competition, the drive to outperform peers, ranks 12th of 16 motivations and is rising at +1.35%, the second-fastest movement of any motivation we track. This trend confirms the rise in outcome orientation surfaced in the competency data. Results Orientation, Negotiation Skills, and Persuasion are all climbing on the competency side in the same year Competition climbs on the motivation side. Both point to an increase in self-reliance at work rather than teamwork. 

It’s important to note that Competition still isn’t a dominant motivation. Only about 5% of workers list it as their top driver, and it ranks in the bottom half of all 16. But a minority motivation moving this fast is worth watching.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

The Gen Z and Millennial workforce is trending towards competitiveness and outcome-orientation, at the same time. Ignoring Competition as a motivation because of its rank means missing a real behavioral shift in how this generation wants to be measured against its peers.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 8/9

Compensation Is Surging

Compensation posted the single largest year-over-year increase, at +2.26%, ahead of Competition’s +1.35% and more than triple the movement in Structure. It’s at the bottom of the list, but it’s moving faster than anything else in the dataset.

Compensation ranks 15th of 16 motivations, meaning it’s still not what most Gen Z and Millennial workers say drives them day-to-day. Only about 1 in 14 workers in this dataset name it as their primary motivational driver. That lines up with what Cangrade’s Workforce Intelligence Report and research on Gen Z and Millennial workplace myths found: compensation behaves like Frederick Herzberg’s classic “hygiene factor.” Adequate pay prevents dissatisfaction, but raising it above a competitive threshold doesn’t reliably increase engagement or performance. 

Compensation also carries the highest individual variance of any motivation we track (SD = 0.63, against an average of 0.44 across all 16). The population-level rank is low, but that average conceals a large spread. Some Gen Z and Millennial workers are substantially pay-driven, but most aren’t. Applying the group average to any one candidate or employee is exactly the kind of error that variance warns against.

The rising intensity most likely reflects financial pressure rather than a shift in what this workforce wants from work. Deloitte found 48% of Gen Z and 46% of Millennials don’t feel financially secure, up sharply from the year before, alongside a tight economy. Financial pressure and financial motivation aren’t the same thing. A workforce can be under real economic strain while still being primarily motivated by something other than pay. This data captures both at once: rising pressure, without compensation displacing what actually drives performance.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

Below-market compensation produces attrition regardless of every other condition. But raises above a competitive baseline aren’t likely to solve engagement problems rooted in job design, management quality, or working conditions. Organizations that reach for compensation as a fix when the real issue is elsewhere are treating the wrong variable. If you watch the trend, not the rank, it will tell you how financial pressure is impacting your workforce.

ACTION STEPS

FINDING 9/9

Appreciation Is Declining

Appreciation, the desire for recognition from others, is declining at -0.73%, the second-largest motivation decline after Novelty. The clearest explanation sits in this generation’s rise in outcome orientation and in Cangrade’s research on Gen Z and Millennial workplace myths.

The Millennial and Gen Z workforce is increasingly driven by Excellence and Results Orientation, both rising, rather than by external validation. Workers motivated by doing high-quality work don’t need to be recognized for it to stay engaged. A declining desire for praise here isn’t disengagement. It’s consistent with a workforce that’s setting its own bar rather than looking to others to set it.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HR

A declining desire for external recognition doesn’t mean this workforce doesn’t want feedback. It means generic praise and recognition programs are a weaker match for what actually drives them than specific, quality-focused feedback tied to real standards.

ACTION STEPS