One morning this week, I watched a short video on Brut Media called “Why Companies Are Struggling to Understand Gen‑Z Employees.” The clip opens with a group of young employees who have set up their manager. A Gen Z woman joins the meeting camera-on, wearing a bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a towel, a green masque spread across her face and then proceeds to answer every question thoughtfully, contribute sharp ideas, and participate fully. As if this were completely unremarkable.

The manager is in on nothing. He can see only what everyone else can see, and he has a decision to make.  Either push back and risk looking like he doesn’t get it, or play it cool and pretend a masque-in-a-meeting is just a thing that happens now. He chooses cool. “What’s in that mask that makes it green?” he asks. The room erupts in laughter. Prank landed.

The joke worked because both sides were performing a generational script. She was a perfect parody of her cohort — the blurred line between personal life and professional presence that is normal to many Gen Z workers. He was a caricature of a manager who wants to seem generationally savvy so badly that he’ll accept green goo on a colleague’s face rather than risk seeming out of touch.

This is more than a good joke.  Gen Z has grown up watching peers on TikTok and Instagram give career advice from in front of the bathroom sink, recount workplace drama from a pillow, explain their job search strategy while preparing food at the kitchen counter. The content is good and the format is personal, unfiltered, and physically intimate. This is what many Gen Z grew up absorbing as normal. So, when the line between “this is my life” and “this is my work” is difficult for the newest generation of workers to see, it’s because TikTok is their yardstick.

That same blurring shows up in what and how much early career professionals share at work. Mental health is no longer a taboo topic to Gen z.  Talking about work anxiety is largely a good thing because people can ask for support. But the same generation that normalized talking about burnout at work also unwittingly bring relationship drama, intimate personal details, and unprocessed emotional weight into the office. To a Gen X manager, that can feel deeply inappropriate.

I understand the friction.  I have an earlier generation’s script in my head put there by my family. I remember when I left for college, my mother lecturing me about oversharing. She said: “Never tell anyone anything.” She gave two concrete examples.

• “Don’t tell your girlfriends when you like a boy — they’ll sabotage it.”
• “Don’t tell your boss when something is wrong — you’ll get a reputation as difficult to work with.”

From her generational point of view, I absorbed the rule for the workplace.  Show emotional restraint, compartmentalize, keep your complaints and personal stories tightly contained. Vulnerability is a liability except in s very small, very trusted circle.

Gen Z grew up under a different set of rules entirely.

Recent coverage of Gen Z workplace culture notes that they feel free to discuss topics that are more personal than professional; they are not uncomfortable mentioning mental health, relationship struggles or personal problems in open settings. Psychologist Carrie Bulger observes that technology makes the blur between work and life feel normal, and argues that it flows in both directions: if work comes home with us in our pockets, why wouldn’t personal life come into the workplace the same way? A 2026 SurveyMonkey survey found that 33% of employees worry that hybrid work makes it harder to set boundaries between home and work time, which further normalizes the “sharing” bleed-through.

The result is a collision of expectations. Gen X managers who were taught “never tell anyone anything” are now leading a cohort that grew up treating visibility as a virtue.

What Gen Z is doing — and why

Oversharing, for Gen Z, is about authenticity as a professional value. They were raised in the “bring your whole self to work” era and interpret that as both permission and an expectation to be visible across contexts. They also grew up with TikTok and Instagram, where good advice and real talk get delivered from bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms by people who look just like them.

In hybrid environments, where casual hallway conversations are rarer, some Gen Z employees overshare to feel seen and included. The problem is that what feels like connection to them can register as overexposure to the colleagues and managers absorbing it.

Research on workplace oversharing warns that dropping heavy emotional material on colleagues without warning can erode trust over time and make people keep their distance. Content that feels fine at 23 has a way of feeling very different at 33, when the digital record is longer and the professional stakes are higher.

What Gen Z should do

The goal is not to share less. It is to share with more discernment.

Before disclosing something personal at work, it helps to ask who needs to know this. It’s likely that emotional details belong with a therapist, a close friend, or a trusted mentor  not the whole team or the public internet. A 1:1 with your manager is a safer container for a hard conversation than a team meeting. And a simple pause before posting can catch the overshare before it becomes permanent.

The same instinct that makes Gen Z good at building authentic connection online can work in their favor at work. The skill is learning to read the room who is in it, what they can hold, and what belongs somewhere else.

Also your digital history follows you. What you put out now shapes how you are perceived for years.

What Gen X managers can do

If you are leading a Gen Z-heavy team, you want to avoid the need to shut people down. In other words, aim to shape the environment before you must react to it in real time.

Name the norms explicitly. Rather than waiting until something feels like too much, say it proactively: “I love that people feel comfortable here, and I also want to protect you from sharing things that might hurt your reputation down the road.” Explain that you are speaking as a mentor; it is not a reprimand.

Creating clear channels helps too. Anonymous surveys, skip-level check-ins, and dedicated 1:1 conversations give Gen Z a place to be heard without requiring the whole team to hear. When people have a better outlet, they are less likely to use the team meeting as one.

And if you are willing to use your own story, use it. Saying “I was raised to never tell anyone anything, so this can feel disorienting to me; let’s figure out a middle ground together” turns a culture gap into a real conversation. It also signals that you are a person, not just a manager performing a role.

 

The bathrobe video got two million views because it’s funny. But the reason it’s funny is important.  Both the Gen Z woman and the Gen X manager were doing exactly what they’d been taught, and neither one authentically talked to the other. That is the gap. It’s the unspoken scripts running in parallel, and each side assuming the other is the problem. The managers who will close that gap aren’t the ones who appreciate green face masks. They’re the ones willing to say out loud: I was taught never to tell anyone anything, and you were taught that hiding yourself is dishonest , so let’s figure out what works here. That conversation is uncomfortable. It’s also worth having.

References

Business Insider. (2025, June 24). Make coworkers mysterious again: Why oversharing at work is on overdrive. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/overshare-work-office-hr-communication-coworkers-employees-gen-z-internet-2025-6

Business Insider. (2025, June 27). Gen Z won’t stop oversharing to their coworkers about intimate personal details. [Facebook post]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider/posts/gen-z-wont-stop-oversharing-to-their-coworkers-about-intimate-personal-details-i

Brut Media. (2026, March 24). Why companies are struggling to understand Gen Z employees. Retrieved from https://www.brut.media/in/articles/india/society/why-companies-are-struggling-to-understand-gen-z-employees

FinanceY!. (2025, July 5). The oversharing phenomenon: Why Gen Z struggles with discretion at work. Retrieved from https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oversharing-phenomenon-why-gen-z-050102104.html

HR Dive. (2024, November 6). Gen Z is stressing managers out. Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/gen-z-is-stressing-managers-out/732254/

INC. (2025, June 26). Your Gen‑Z workers are oversharing in the office. Here’s what to do about it. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/your-gen-z-workers-are-oversharing-in-the-office-heres-what-to-do-about-it/91206987

JMSR (Journal of Management & Social Research). (2025, September 22). The role of emotional intelligence in managing Gen Z workforce. Retrieved from https://jmsr-online.com/article/the-role-of-emotional-intelligence-in-managing-gen-z-workforce-373/

NYSSCPA. (2024, March 14). Gen Z managers emphasize empathy in the workplace. Retrieved from https://www.nysscpa.org/article-content/gen-z-managers-emphasize-empathy-in-the-workplace-031524

SurveyMonkey. (2026, March 5). The workplace today: 2026 remote and hybrid work trends. Retrieved from https://www.surveymonkey.com/learn/employee-feedback/remote-hybrid-work-statistics/