Hello Reader,
​
Something has shifted in how a generation communicates - and it's showing up loudly in the workplace.

The Phone Is Ringing. Nobody's Answering

One of Britain's largest accounting firms, Forvis Mazars, recently announced a firm-wide investment in "relationship skills" training for its Gen Z staff. The curriculum includes everything from simulated client meetings to lessons on, as their CEO put it plainly, "picking up the phone."

A high school in Lancashire built a six-month program that started with mock university interviews and workshops on email - and worked its way up to calling an actual bank for practice. That's how significant the gap has become: making a call to a customer service line is now a milestone skill, not a baseline one.

And the stats back it up. Since 2019, phone calls to UCAS (the UK's university admissions service) have dropped by a third. Their CEO is now pushing to digitize the entire clearing system - not because it's more efficient, but because, in her words: "That is how difficult teenagers these days can find how to make a phone call."

What the Reddit Threads Are Telling Us

I've been spending time in the Reddit threads where this plays out in real time - and what people are sharing is fascinating.

A 21-year-old calling 50-100 students a day at a university described students who answer the phone and then say nothing. Just silence. Background noise. Breathing. She now has to leave a note on student accounts flagging that they answered but wouldn't speak - because, she wrote, "What if we were an employer calling?"

A retail store owner described Gen Z employees who can open a call with "Thank you for calling X" - but cannot close one. Every conversation ends in "okay…" or "so, yeah…" followed by dead air. Scripts help with the beginning. Nobody taught them the ending.

And on the other side of it, Gen Z voices in those same threads aren't being defensive - they're being honest. Many say phone calls feel like a loss of control. With texting, you can draft, delete, rewrite. A phone call means being present, unscripted, in real time. For a generation that has managed most of its social life through asynchronous communication, that's genuinely uncomfortable - not a character flaw.

There's also a practical reason some younger people go silent when they answer: the volume of scam calls has made "hello" feel like a security risk. Several people in these threads mentioned that saying your voice out loud confirms to a bot that a human answered. That's a real concern - even if it creates strange professional situations.

What I keep coming back to is this: it's not a values gap. It's a practice gap. These are not unintelligent or disrespectful people. They simply never had the repetitions.

What I'm Building

My programs have always included elements of this - how to introduce yourself, how to conduct a professional conversation, how to write a professional email, how to answer the phone. But what I'm seeing in the research is nudging me to go further.

I'm currently developing a complete early-career communication package specifically for new Gen Z employees - one that treats these skills the way that Lancashire school did: as something worth building deliberately, with structure, practice, and real stakes.

That means role-playing conversations, not just scripts. It means working through the anxiety, not just the words. It means calling an actual customer service number together, practising how to wrap up gracefully - "Thank you for your help today" - and knowing what to do when the person on the other end isn't perfectly pleasant.

Because that's the moment that matters. And right now, too many young employees are handing the phone to their manager instead of handling it themselves.

A Question for Hiring Managers

If you're reading this and nodding - if you've sat across from a brilliant candidate who stumbled on a phone screen, or watched a great new hire go silent when a difficult customer called - I'd love to hear from you.

I'm exploring what this package looks like in practice, and I want to build it around the real gaps you're seeing. If this is something you'd want to bring to your team, please hit reply. Even a few sentences about what you're observing would be incredibly helpful.

The ability to hold a conversation, read a room, and solve a problem out loud - these aren't soft skills anymore. As one recruitment founder put it: "If they can't add value through communication... their role in the professional services value chain becomes increasingly hard to justify."

That's a problem worth solving together.

Have You Listened to My Podcast on Small Talk at Work?

I'm a huge fan of the art of small talk. In this episode I'm sharing three stories that prove small talk is anything but small - plus five practical approaches to make it feel natural. Have a listen, and if you like what you hear, please subscribe and review it!

Stay Connected

If you're enjoying these insights, I'd love for you to follow along on other platforms:

📺 Subscribe to my YouTube channel for video content on workplace skills and professional development

📱 Follow me on Instagram for quick tips and behind-the-scenes glimpses of my work

Have you noticed phone anxiety in your team? I'd love to hear what you're seeing.

Warm regards,

Trina Boos
​
Founder & CEO
Boost Academy of Excellence
​boostacademyofexcellence.com​