Meet the ‘gen Z whisperers’: the young advisers helping companies understand their employees

Jenk Oz set up his first website aged 12 and now, at 19, runs a behavioural insight consultancy advising Google, Ford ands Coca-Cola. Photograph: Sonja Horsman/The Observer

If Appius Claudius Gaecus had got his way, there would be no gen Z. The Roman censor banned the letter Z from the Latin alphabet some time around 300BC, apparently because the shape of the mouth when making the sound reminded him of the “teeth of a corpse”.

Forbidding workers from using a letter is exactly the sort of move that would get a modern manager labelled the boss from hell by younger employees. Fortunately, executives can now call on a new wave of advisers to help them understand how to deal with unhappy young people – the gen Z whisperers.