Listening and innovation drive the choices of GenZ who, according to the 2026 edition of the Best Workplaces for GenZ 2026 ranking, compiled by Great Place to Work Italy, place Edera Nordest, a Venetian financial services company specializing in loans dedicated to employees and pensioners, on the podium, followed by Bending Spoons, the company that acquires and enhances digital sector companies and has just been listed on the NASDAQ in New York, and the Monza-based Quantyca, an IT consulting company specializing in data management, advanced analytics, and data streaming.
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Alessandro Zollo, CEO of Great Place to Work Italy, explains that “young people born from 1998 onwards no longer settle for old professional paradigms, but seek transparency, fairness, and above all leadership capable of listening and guiding with consistency.” In a context of demographic aging, where the Italian population decreases by about 2 million people every 10 years, “the ability of companies to attract and retain junior profiles is the real concrete competitive advantage, because it will be precisely these profiles that will help the technological transition of the more experienced population in companies with an increasingly high average seniority – continues Zollo -. Companies that know how to interest, intrigue, and inspire young people will be those that manage to capture a generation that will decrease in numbers and cost increasingly more in terms of investment.”
Asking a sample of over 5,000 Generation Z workers about the strategic levers companies must activate to attract and retain them, Great Place to Work found that listening and valuing employees’ contributions reach 90% in the best companies versus 28% (+62%) of the Italian norm, and similar trends are recorded both for promoting innovation and experimentation (83% versus 26%, +57%) and for opportunities for growth and professional development (84% versus 29%, +55%). The gap increases when analyzing factors related to leadership: management competence reaches 93% in Best Workplaces compared to 36% of the Italian norm (+57%), followed by the consistency of managers (91% versus 33%, +58%) and the impartiality of managerial behaviors (86% versus 29%, +57%). The overall quality of the work experience is rated highly by 86% of young people in excellent companies, compared to 29% in an average Italian company (+57%).
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The data also highlight a clear gap regarding innovation opportunities: in the Best Workplaces for GenZ, almost one in two employees (48%) declares having “many” innovation opportunities, against a marginal 6% recorded by the national average. Conversely, more than half of young people in companies belonging to the Italian average complain of having “few” (36%) or even “no” (16%) opportunities to innovate. In the 20 excellent companies, this perception of closure and dissatisfaction drastically drops, stopping respectively at just 9% and 2%.
Completing the ranking of the 20 best companies for GenZ by Great Place to Work are Jet HR (information technology), Accuracy (professional services), Groupe ISAGRI (information technology), Hilton (hospitality), Méthode (information technology), Kiabi (retail), Octopus Energy (manufacturing & production), Florence One (information technology), Auxiell (professional services), Fiabilis Consulting Group (professional services), Aton SpA (information technology), GLAS Italy (financial & insurance services), Reverse (professional services), Caffeina (advertising & marketing), Up2You (professional services), Gruppo Breaders (hospitality) and Sector Alarm (retail).
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