The experience gap is also a trust gap

Editor’s note: We spend a lot of time in HR talking about Gen Z. For this piece, I wanted to hear directly from someone at the very start of working life. Reese Marrow is a 17-year-old high school senior in New York who has been working since she was 14. After noticing how much trust, managers and relationships shaped her own experience of work, she turned that question into an independent research project. I invited Reese to write about what she found, in her own words.

Once a week at the deli where I worked, the same two men would come in together. One was an older regular. The other would drive him there, spend time with him, and buy him a $100 gift card. They weren’t related. I remember being surprised when I learned that. I had assumed they had to be family, mostly because I couldn’t imagine why else someone would keep showing up for another person week after week when there was no obligation to do so.

I started working when I was 14, and moments like that changed what I paid attention to at work. I had thought a job was mostly about the work you were assigned to do. Instead, I kept noticing how much of people’s experience depended on things that weren’t written into anyone’s job description: who noticed you, who took time with you, who trusted you, and who made you feel like you mattered.

I noticed it in my own experience too. Working behind a deli counter, there were obviously things I didn’t know how to do yet. I was young. Sometimes I was doing something for the first time because, quite literally, I had never been given the chance to do it before.

But that created a problem I didn’t have language for yet. I learned fastest when someone actually let me try. Being given a real responsibility, knowing what was expected of me, and being corrected when I got something wrong taught me much more than being kept away from something because I was inexperienced.

Later, coaching gymnastics made me see the same idea from the opposite side.

I worked one-on-one with a gymnast I became incredibly close with. She was always excited to see me, and I quickly learned that knowing gymnastics wasn’t enough to coach her well. I had to learn her: what motivated her, when she needed encouragement, when something wasn’t working, and when she needed me to stop helping and give her room to try.

That last part was harder than it sounds. When you’re responsible for someone else’s progress, the natural instinct is to step in. But constantly stepping in didn’t necessarily help her improve. Sometimes my job was to explain something, let her attempt it, correct what went wrong, and let her try again. Supporting her didn’t mean doing things for her. It meant creating enough structure for her to do more herself.

Eventually, I started wondering why we don’t always think about inexperienced employees in the same way.

Young workers face a strange Catch-22: we need experience to be given trust and responsibility, but we need trust and responsibility to gain experience.

That question became part of what pushed me to conduct an independent mixed-methods study of employee experience. I surveyed 273 people across different ages and work backgrounds and interviewed organizational leaders from several industries. The study looked at relationships, communication, recognition, leadership, growth opportunities and age-related differences in the workplace. I wanted to know whether some of the things I had started noticing in my own jobs appeared in other people’s experiences too.

I expected relatively straightforward answers about what makes work better. Instead, the research made the question more complicated.

Relationships stood out. In my survey, 83.3% of respondents selected the highest rating when asked whether relationships with coworkers improve their job satisfaction. Growth opportunities also emerged as one of the strongest drivers of workplace experience.

What interested me wasn’t just the number. It was what findings like these might mean for people my age.

When an employer says a 17-year-old worker lacks experience, they’re probably right. I’m 17. There are countless things about work I don’t know yet, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t help me or an employer.

The problem is what happens after that observation.

Someone has to let you do something before you can have experience doing it. Someone has to give you useful feedback before you can learn from getting it wrong. Eventually, someone has to give you a little more responsibility before you can demonstrate that you’re capable of handling more.

That doesn’t mean handing a teenager responsibilities they aren’t prepared for. Trust shouldn’t mean lowering standards. If anything, my experiences have made me think the opposite. Young employees need clear expectations, honest feedback, and managers willing to tell us when we’re getting something wrong.

But there is a difference between having high standards for someone and assuming they cannot meet them yet.

Young workers can feel that difference very quickly.

When you’re treated as someone capable of learning, making a mistake can actually teach you something. You try, get corrected, adjust, and try again. When you already feel categorized as inexperienced, even asking a question can feel like you’re proving the assumption that you aren’t ready.

That’s where an experience gap can become a trust gap.

A young employee doesn’t have much experience, so they’re given less meaningful responsibility. Less responsibility means fewer chances to develop judgment and skills. Fewer chances to develop those skills means they remain inexperienced. That continued inexperience becomes another reason not to give them more.

No one in that cycle has to be acting unfairly on purpose.

That’s something my interviews with organizational leaders made me appreciate. Managers have legitimate reasons to care about experience. They’re accountable for outcomes, and giving responsibility to someone who isn’t ready carries real risk. A problem that can feel simple from the employee side becomes much more complicated when you’re responsible for an entire team or organization.

So I don’t think the answer is simply, “Trust young people more.”

Trust has to be earned. Young employees have responsibilities in that process too. We have to show up, listen, ask questions, accept feedback, learn from mistakes, and prove that we can handle what we’re given.

But employers control whether we get meaningful opportunities to prove those things in the first place.

Those opportunities don’t have to be huge. Give a young employee ownership of one small part of a project instead of having them watch someone else do it. Include them in a conversation where they can learn how decisions are made. When they make a fixable mistake, explain what went wrong and give them another attempt.

None of that requires lowering the bar. It gives someone a way to learn how to reach it.

I’ve now experienced this from both sides. I’ve been the young employee waiting for someone to let me try, and I’ve been the coach deciding when helping someone meant stepping in and when it meant stepping back. Both taught me something my research later helped me understand more clearly: trust and accountability work best together.

When I think back to starting work at 14, I don’t remember every task I completed. I remember people. I remember watching someone come into the deli every week because another person could count on him. I remember what it felt like when someone trusted me enough to let me figure something out. And as a coach, I learned what it felt like to be the person who had to give someone else that room.

My research didn’t give me a formula for fixing the experience gap, and I don’t think 273 survey responses could do that. What it did was make me look more carefully at a contradiction I had already begun noticing at work.

Employers need young people to become capable, experienced workers. Young people need workplaces where they can become them.

That process can start surprisingly small: give us something real to do, tell us what good looks like, and hold us accountable for what happens next.

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About the author: Reese Marrow is a 17-year-old high school senior in New York. She began working at 14 and recently completed an independent mixed-methods study of employee experience involving 273 respondents and interviews with organizational leaders across several industries.