In the “Gen Z vs OHS” series we are not asking when safety culture came into being. We do not play favourites; we look objectively at who follows OHS rules, and how, in everyday work.

In workplaces, sixty-, forty- and twenty-year-olds often work side by side, each with different experiences and a different approach to procedures, rules and risk. Each of them entered the working world in completely different circumstances. The technology was different, the legal requirements were different, employers' attitudes to safety were different and, above all, society's attitude to risk was different.

The experienced worker and the trap of routine in OHS

Imagine a worker with 30 years of service who knows their job perfectly. They know what to do and how to do it so that it keeps working for ages. You cannot learn that from a presentation during initial training. Such experience and knowledge is of enormous value, but it can have a flip side too. “I've done it this way for 30 years and nothing has happened.” That is perhaps one of the most dangerous sentences you can hear in OHS. In itself it does not mean the worker disregards safety. Perhaps they really have performed a given task this way for thirty years and there has never been an accident. The problem arises when we start treating the absence of an accident as proof that the risk simply does not exist. Even if the probability is 1 in 100,000 and nothing happens for several decades, it will never be zero.

A more experienced worker may, on the one hand, be better at identifying hazards at work, but at the same time may be used to them and accept a certain amount of risk. It is hardly surprising if they learned the job in conditions where there were no requirements like today's, protective equipment was often only a suggestion, there were fewer procedures and the person was considered part of the machine.

The young worker and OHS: theoretical knowledge versus lack of experience

Today a young worker starting their career meets occupational risk assessment, personal protective equipment, near-miss reporting procedures and a safety management system from the very first moments. OHS is far more present in organisations, and far better understood, than it was a few decades ago, and the new generation never knew a working world in which many of these elements simply did not exist or mattered much less.

A young worker may have very good theoretical OHS knowledge yet lack the experience that would let them carry out an LMRA (Last Minute Risk Assessment) properly before starting a task. In a few hours of training we cannot pass on knowledge comparable to the experience of a worker who has watched the same job for a dozen or more years and has learned to recognise a hazard before it appears in an obvious way.

What does the data show? Gen Z, Millennials and the sense of safety at work

The data from a survey carried out in 2026 is interesting here. According to the Envoy/EHS Today report, 82% of Gen Z said they had avoided work because of dangerous conditions. For Millennials it was 81%, for Gen X 69% and for Baby Boomers 62%. The answers about feeling safe are equally interesting. 68% of Gen Z felt they lacked a sense of safety at work, compared with 59% of Millennials, 52% of Gen X and 41% of Baby Boomers. Does this mean Gen Z is more aware of hazards? Perhaps. But we cannot draw such a simple conclusion.

And here we arrive at an interesting paradox. A younger worker may be more aware that something breaks the rules, yet not have enough experience to assess the hazard properly. An older worker, in turn, may understand the hazard perfectly, but over the years have learned to live with it.

Safety culture is not created by employees alone. It is not enough to have young people who are aware of hazards or experienced workers who know the process inside out. What is needed is an organisation that can make use of both. An older worker can teach a younger one to notice hazards that do not show up in procedures. A younger one can, in turn, draw attention to things that have been treated for years as a normal part of the job: overwork, stress, lack of recovery or other threats to mental health. One person's experience and the other's fresh perspective can together create a much better approach to safety.

Perhaps that is exactly why, instead of wondering which generation is better, we should start looking at how they complement each other. A mature safety culture cannot be built with a single training course, another instruction or the purchase of new protective equipment. It takes the commitment of the whole organisation, from the worker to top management. Safety has to be present not only in documents but above all in the decisions made when pressure of time, money or results appears. Safety culture does not have one age. It has different experiences, different habits and different languages. In the end, it is not important how old an employee is; what matters is how the organisation has taught them to look at safety