The NextGen Hub / Vol. 01 / The Loyalty Contract
Driver 03 of 03
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Driver 03 of 03
A company can build a culture.
Whether anyone belongs in it is a different question.
The stakes
7.3
Integrating NextGen talent into the team: organisations rate themselves a 7.3, one of their highest-scoring challenges.
6.8
Retention: a 6.8, joint lowest of the five, tied with progression to management.
24%
24% even name NextGen's positive impact on culture as a clear benefit: they see the value, they just can't hold on to it.
Different questions, same survey. For 7.3 and 6.8, we asked employers to rate how their organisation is performing on each talent challenge, on a scale of 1 to 10. These two are the averages. The 24% comes from a separate question, which benefits young talent brings, and is the share of those who picked its impact on culture. We put them side by side on purpose.
Put both sides at the same table and they describe the same workplace from opposite chairs, in different units.
The organisation:
"We've built the culture. Onboarding, team events, a buddy system, an open-door policy. We improved it on purpose. And they still leave."
Reflecting the 35% of organisations that actively worked on company culture, 57% among Ormit Talent clients.
NextGen talent:
"Belonging isn't the Friday drink or the buddy system. It's whether someone here knows who I am. Whether my idea gets picked up or politely ignored. Whether, six months in, I matter, or I'm just filling a seat."
— Young professional, mid-twenties
processes on one chair, moments on the other, and only one of the two ever shows up on a dashboard.
That's the contract. Loyalty isn't dead, but the default kind is, and what's left is conditional. The organisation provides two of those conditions, a manager worth staying for and a path worth walking. Belonging is the third clause that decides whether anyone feels like they are in the right place.
The most reliable source of belonging is a person. A work bestie, the colleague who makes the day feel lighter and is half the reason you log on at all. Sounds small. But their presence, or precisely their absence, is a key factor in work happiness.
The data confirms its importance:
26%
Of people thinking about leaving, 26% name "better colleagues elsewhere" as a pull.
7%
Of people staying, only 7% do.
Two groups, one question. We asked working young professionals why they'd change jobs, then split them into those leaning towards leaving and those leaning towards staying. Each number is the share of those who picked "nicer colleagues". The gap between the two is the point.
One anchor only holds if it stays put, and in plenty of places it doesn't. To plenty of organisations, this can sound a little precious. So swap chairs for a second. Picture watching a dozen colleagues leave since you started, about one a month.
"I've seen 12 or 13 people leave, about one a month, and I haven't seen nearly as many join."
— Young professional, mid-twenties, from Qualitative research among Gen Z professionals, 2026
How connected would you feel? New people arrive in groups of ten to fifteen, then many are gone within a year or two. Contract insecurity makes it worse: if you suspect your own contract won't be renewed, you stop investing in the people around you. Gone in your head long before you're gone from the building.
That's the spiral. Every departure nudges the people left behind to wonder if they should go too, and turnover feeds turnover. So here's the lever hiding in plain sight: the "precious" feeling employers roll their eyes at isn't softness to manage around; it's what stops the bleed. Protect team stability and you protect belonging, every colleague you keep is an anchor for the one still deciding whether to stay. What looks like fragility is really a clear-eyed read of a place that won't sit still.
There's a half of belonging that's easy to under-read. It isn't only the colleagues beside you. It's whether you can see a version of your future in the building, someone a few steps ahead who looks like you, took a path like yours, and proves people like you grow and stay.
This is where belonging meets growth: a role model is what Driver 02: Where Are We G(r)owing calls a path you can see, made human, and the first one most people get is whoever runs their 1:1, the subject of Driver 01: The Manager Effect.
Part of it is timing. NextGen talent lands in a team that already feels "finished", the codes are set, the hierarchy is informal, the inside jokes are ten years old. So two different questions get asked across the table. The organisation asks, "will they fit in?"; and it's not an idle worry: 25% of organisations name a mismatch between talent and team or company culture as a top challenge. The newcomer asks, "is there room for me?"
"I just feel like it's always an older white man. Nine times out of ten."
— Young professional, mid-twenties, from Qualitative research among Gen Z professionals, 2026
The qualitative signal from interviews at a multinational is consistent: an old guard holding the senior roles, and silos that leave newcomers without cross-team connection. So the isolation people describe isn't a headcount complaint about "not enough young people." It's the absence of someone a few steps ahead who looks like them and is worth walking toward.
The fourth person doesn't sit beside you or ahead of you. They just notice you. Recognition is what makes the other three add up: feel recognised and you feel seen, feel seen and you belong, belong and you stay. NextGen talent doesn't only want it for hitting targets, but for the effort, the initiative, the showing up. Miss that, and what lands instead is "just a number."
The ironic part: 21% of organisations name "the need for clear structure and a lot of feedback" as a challenge with NextGen talent, usually with a small sigh, as if it were a chore. That "chore" is exactly what's being asked for. Feedback is the coaching mechanics of it, Driver 01: The Manager Effect's territory.
"If there were more recognition of someone's potential, people would be far more driven to do better."
— Young professional, mid-twenties, from Qualitative research among Gen Z professionals, 2026
So this doesn’t get misread: recognition isn’t constant reassurance, and it isn't an applause machine. The kind that works is direct and results-driven: it names what went well when there's a success to celebrate, without staying quiet when there's a lesson to be learned from a miss. Give credit where credit is due.
Recognition can feel like a cost, but it works like an investment. It can also be as simple as passing on compliments about your team member's work and telling them you made sure the credit went to them.
What organisations measure vs what talents feel
Organisations are most confident exactly where they're weakest.
7.3
Integrating NextGen talent into the team: organisations rate themselves a 7.3, one of their highest-scoring challenges.
6.8
Retention: a 6.8, joint lowest of the five, tied with progression to management.
26%
"Better colleagues elsewhere" as a reason to leave, 26% of leavers vs 7% of stayers
39%
Confidence at work, fell from 59% to 39% in one year
Two sides, one chart, so a little harder to read. The white frames are the employer side: they graded their own organisation on each talent challenge, from 1 to 10, so those are averages. Everything below is the Gen Z side, measured in two ways. First, we asked why they'd change jobs and split leavers from stayers, so the two numbers compare groups. Second, we asked the same confidence question a year apart, so that pair is a shift over time, not two groups. The point is the distance between what employers rate and what Gen Z feel.
The confidence is on the left, the leak is on the right, and both come from the same people. One side is counting activities. The other is reading whether four people are in the room.
Belonging is a feeling worth measuring, and nobody gets to outsource their half of it.
Belonging isn't handed across the table, and it isn't owed to you. Half the build is yours, so build it.
Connections form at lunch and on the coffee run, not in the calendar invite. Find the two days a week the team is actually in the office, and be there too, protect them like meetings.
In your first months, ask one colleague for a 20-minute coffee a week. Once you've found your feet, be that colleague for whoever starts after you.
End your 1:1 with one concrete question, "what's the one thing I should do differently?", instead of "was that okay?". Specific asks get answers you can act on; reassurance gets you nothing.
If there's no anchor, no path, or no recognition, say so in your next 1:1, not in the exit interview. Name the specific thing while there's still time to fix it.
You can buy a ping-pong table. You can't buy the feeling. So stop spending on the proxy and start measuring the thing.
"How many afterworks did we host?" is the wrong question. Put it on a recurring eNPS-style pulse: once a quarter, ask every team three plain questions, do you have a person you connect with here, do you feel seen, can you picture your future on this team, score them, and hand each team lead their own number. When a team dips, treat it like a missed target.
Track tenure and avoidable churn team by team, the way you already track headcount. Where rolling short contracts drive the spiral, people check out the moment renewal looks shaky; fix the contract structure before you blame the culture.
If NextGen talent can't see someone like them up the ladder, the path isn't real to them. Put one NextGen profile in a room where real decisions get made this quarter, and give the cohort a standing place to meet so the community forms on purpose, not by luck.
Name one specific thing that worked in every 1:1, concrete, not "good job", and keep it out of the once-a-year review so it isn't rationed. It's the bridge between belonging and performance, not a soft extra.
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