Earlier this month, People Management published my article “Gen Z faces a broken career ladder – it’s time to fix it.”
I wrote it because I’m increasingly concerned that many organisations are making a series of perfectly rational short-term decisions that, taken together, are creating a long-term capability risk we won’t see until it’s too late.
Across my career — and now in my work as an Executive Coach, Fractional Executive and Strategic Business Advisor — one theme comes up repeatedly:
Talent and leadership capability are what keep senior leaders awake at night.
Yet at the same time, entry-level and graduate roles are quietly being redesigned out of existence.
Rising employment costs, tighter expectations around time-to-value, and rapid advances in AI are changing the economics of junior work. Individually, each decision makes sense. Collectively, they are hollowing out the very roles where judgement, tradecraft and organisational memory are formed.
This is why I deliberately framed the issue in the article not as a “Gen Z problem”, but as a system design failure.
AI will undoubtedly remove or compress many traditional junior tasks. But in my experience, AI is most effective as a sparring partner, not a substitute for developed human judgment. The uncomfortable question leaders need to ask is this:
If we remove the roles where judgement is learned, how will future leaders know when AI is wrong, incomplete, or blind to nuance?
The risk is not immediate. That’s what makes it dangerous. Capability pipelines collapse slowly — and are slow and expensive to rebuild.
For business leaders, this is a question of stewardship.
For policymakers, it is a productivity and growth issue.
For organisations, it’s the difference between creating talent and becoming perpetual, costly consumers of it.
You can read the full article here on People Management:
Gen Z faces a broken career ladder – it’s time to fix it
If this resonates, I’d encourage you to reflect on one simple question in your own organisation:
Are your early-career roles being intentionally redesigned for an AI-enabled future — or quietly removed by default?
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Craig Pattison FCIPD
Executive Coach, Fractional Chief People Officer and Strategic Advisor
Creator of the Root-to-Result® coaching model
