My kids grew up with screens in their hands. So did yours, most likely. And somewhere along the way, a lot of kids started believing that playing a game online with a headset on counts as hanging out with friends.
It doesn’t.
Watch a teenager’s face when you ask them to call someone instead of texting. For a lot of kids, that dread has nothing to do with shyness. Nobody ever sat them down and walked them through it. In our house, that meant real, unglamorous practice. Role playing what to say when you call to make a doctor’s appointment. Making a teenager order their own food at a restaurant instead of pointing at the menu. Sitting through the awkward silence of a phone call instead of rescuing them with a text. It wasn’t always comfortable. But, it worked. Our kids can walk into a room, make a phone call, and hold a conversation with an adult, because they got reps in. This is one way parents can help close the growing workforce communication skills gap at its roots.
That’s a parenting story. It’s also a workforce problem, and the numbers make that clear.
The gap doesn’t stay home when kids grow up
According to a British Council report on Gen Z in the workplace, 70 percent of business leaders now name poor communication as a top soft skills gap among younger hires. Indeed’s survey of employers found that 47 percent believe Gen Z lacks satisfactory communication skills, compared to just 11 percent who say the same about Gen X. The numbers highlight the workforce communication skills gap facing new generations today.
A Harris Poll conducted for Fortune put a number on what that looks like day to day: 82 percent of managers say new hires from Generation Z need additional support, time, and training to build basic soft skills, and 65 percent of young employees admitted they don’t know what to talk about with coworkers. Workforce communication skills gap solutions start with early and intentional training.
None of that is a character flaw. It’s a training gap, and it starts long before day one on the job. Kids who grew up connecting through a screen never got the practice that used to be standard: picking up the phone, sitting through an awkward silence, reading a room. Then they walk into your workplace and everyone wonders why onboarding feels harder than it used to.
What this costs a workplace
A lack of communication skills doesn’t stay contained to one uncomfortable meeting. It shows up in missed deadlines because no one wanted to speak up early, client relationships that stall because a phone call felt like too much, and teams that quietly disengage rather than have the direct conversation that would fix the problem. Communication style clashes are now cited as the single biggest challenge facing multigenerational workforces, ahead of nearly every other workplace friction point leaders are tracking in 2026. Addressing the workforce communication skills gap should be a priority for any organization aiming for long-term success.
Organizations that treat this as an HR footnote are underestimating it. The organizations getting ahead of it are treating communication as a trainable, coachable skill, the same way they’d train a technical competency, instead of assuming it should have arrived pre-installed.
Respect yourself enough to have the hard conversation
This is the first pillar of my REAL Method®, Respect Yourself. Respecting yourself starts with believing you’re worth showing up for, fully present, in a real conversation, not hiding behind a screen name, a Slack message, or an email you keep rewriting instead of just picking up the phone. That applies to a sixteen-year-old learning to order their own food. It applies just as much to a twenty-four-year-old avoiding a direct conversation with their manager.
Here’s the encouraging part. This is trainable at any age. A few places to start, whether you’re raising kids or building onboarding for a team:
- Make phone calls and face-to-face conversations the default, not the exception. Normalize picking up the phone instead of defaulting to the message that’s easier to send.
- Practice the awkward moments on purpose. Give feedback, ask clarifying question in a meeting, and have conversations that are easier to avoid. Rehearse it like you would rehearse anything else worth getting good at.
- Name the difference between staying connected and being present. A shared Slack channel has real value. However, it is not a substitute for the trust that gets built in a real conversation, and teams need to hear that distinction out loud.
- Let people sit in the discomfort. The instinct to let an easier channel absorb a hard conversation is real. Resist it. That discomfort is where the skill gets built, for a sixteen-year-old and a new hire alike.
The goal isn’t zero screens, at home or at work. The goal is making sure people still know how to look someone in the eye, pick up the phone, and hold a real conversation when it matters. That’s not something anyone picks up by accident anymore. It has to be taught, and it pays off long after the kid becomes a colleague. Ultimately, closing the workforce communication skills gap will benefit current and future generations.
Simone Knego is the USA Today bestselling author of REAL Confidence and co-host of Her Unshakeable Confidence. She speaks internationally on turning potential into performance through the REAL Method®.
Many young employees grew up connecting primarily through screens rather than face-to-face or phone conversations, so foundational communication skills like making a phone call or navigating a hard conversation were never explicitly taught.
Yes. Communication is a trainable, coachable skill, not a fixed trait. Organizations that build it into onboarding and L&D see measurable improvement in collaboration and retention.
The REAL Method® is Simone Knego’s framework for turning potential into performance, built around four pillars: Respect Yourself, Embrace Your Failures, Ask Yourself What You Want, and Live Without Limits.
