By Edward J. Defort

Business owners, operators and organizational leaders must rethink how they attract, engage and retain younger professionals. When speaking at the recent NFDA Leadership Conference, Chris Yonker stated that the rising workforce is not inherently defective, lazy or uncommitted; rather, leaders must understand what younger workers value and then build workplaces worthy of their trust and commitment.

A certified family-business advisor with experience in leadership transition, succession and family-enterprise conflict, Yonker posed the funeral service workforce challenge as a leadership and cultural issue. 

Drawing from his own family’s experience with funeral service, Yonker shared that the week of the presentation marked the one-year anniversary of his mother’s passing. He recalled the funeral home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that served his family with what he described as a “very high level of love, care and just general respect.” 

Rather than approaching funeral service as an abstract industry case study, he reminded the audience that funeral service work happens where heightened emotions, grief, logistics, dignity and family dynamics converge.

After his personal opening, Yonker segued into his broader point: Leadership in funeral service must be anchored in purpose and meaning. He said people often ponder, “What’s this all for?” and suggested the professionals being led might be asking the very same question. 

By doing so, he placed the workforce discussion within a larger frame. For Yonker, the answer to retention and engagement is not merely better scheduling, clearer policies or stronger compensation; it also is helping employees internalize the human significance of their work.

Throughout the interactive session, Yonker posed questions to attendees. Early on, he asked whether retention, engagement and recruiting were on participants’ minds. The response from the room confirmed that all three are pressing concerns. He then asked them to examine the “beliefs” they hold about those issues. According to Yonker, people assign meaning to their experiences, and those meanings shape their reality.

His conversational approach broadened the scope of his message beyond a list of management tips. He asked leaders to examine the stories they tell themselves about younger employees. One example he gave was a business leader who claims “kids” do not want to work. His response to this claim: “Boy, do you have a hiring problem!” This elicited a laugh from the audience, though it was a somewhat pointed remark. The implication is that leaders who hold contemptuous beliefs about younger workers should not be surprised when those younger workers do not want to join or stay in their organizations.

“These challenges that you’re experiencing may have nuances of uniqueness in your industry, but they’re not unique challenges,” Yonker said. “These are challenges that exist in all scopes and landscapes of different types of businesses. Recruiting, retention and engagement problems exist across many industries, but funeral service faces them in a context that is emotionally demanding, schedule-sensitive, and often family-owned or closely held.” 

Encouraging attendees to accept that the pace of change is accelerating, Yonker added, “The landscape is going to continue to change.”

During his discussion of generational change, Yonker contrasted the baby boomer expectation of securing a good job, staying for decades and retiring with a pension against the expectation of millennial and Gen Z workers, who often move on when a workplace does not meet their needs. When millennials began leaving jobs sooner than expected, some older managers reacted by asking, “What is happening?” They blamed younger workers rather than adapting their leadership practices.

Yonker’s core warning was that leaders cannot successfully recruit or retain the next generation while resenting or misunderstanding its members. He assured the audience that there are people available to hire and retain but those people are looking for a workplace that reflects a different set of expectations.

What Younger Workers Want

Yonker identified several qualities that matter deeply to Gen Z and millennial workers. First, he said, “Purpose matters.” Younger employees want to know that their work is more than a paycheck and that it makes a meaningful impact. In fact, Yonker cited that 89% of Gen Zers and 92% of millennials say that purpose matters more to them than money. “This should be a powerful advantage because the profession serves families at an extremely significant time of life,” he said. Therefore, leaders need to speak more often with employees about the impact they are having on families.

Second, Yonker said younger workers want to be coached rather than controlled. “They don’t want control; they don’t want to be managed. They want to be developed,” he said. There’s a big difference. He drew a sharp distinction between the management and development of an individual. 

“Coaching carries an assumption that I believe in the future version of you,” Yonker said. When leaders coach, they communicate faith in a person’s potential; when they simply correct and control, they communicate distrust or impatience.

“Recruiting, retention and engagement problems exist across many industries, but funeral service faces them in a context that is emotionally demanding, schedule-sensitive, and often family-owned or closely held.”

Third, Yonker said younger employees want a clear career path. He asked audience members whether they had started out at a lower level than where they are now. He then used that response to suggest that leaders should be more explicit about the ways in which people can advance. Yonker invited the funeral service leaders before him to identify the sources of meaning, advancement, belonging and identity that have sustained their own careers.

Next, he addressed mental health and well-being. Yonker noted that Gen Z and millennials report higher levels of anxiety and, in some cases, depression, and he warned against dismissing these realities with a “suck-it-up” mentality. His point was not that leaders should solve every employee’s personal problems but that they must create enough capacity, empathy and support to work with the whole human being. Employees cannot simply leave their lives at the door.

Fifth, Yonker emphasized that younger workers want to enjoy life outside work. He contrasted this expectation with older models of sacrifice, security and delayed enjoyment. Funeral service does not and cannot operate on conventional hours; however, Yonker urged leaders to examine staffing, flexibility, time off and whether said time off is actually honored. 

Sixth, he stated that younger workers “crave belonging.” Yonker posed, “How good are you at taking people into your team and your family? How long do they need to be with you until they feel like they belong?” This point is especially relevant for family-owned or closely knit funeral businesses, where insiders might feel like family but newcomers might not know when or whether they truly belong. The broader implication was that a sense of belonging must be intentionally created.

Finally, Yonker said younger workers expect technology. He used the example of running a business “like it’s 1955” to challenge organizations that have yet to modernize their systems. Technology cannot replace the human care at the center of funeral service, but outdated tools and processes can signal to younger employees that the organization is not prepared for the future.

“What I’m encouraging you all to do is design a workplace worthy of the rising generation,” Yonker said. “Leadership [is] no longer about getting the people to follow you and to do what you say. It’s an environment, or an ecosystem, to help people grow and eventually lead.”

“How good are you at taking people into your team and your family? How long do they need to be with you until they feel like they belong?”

So, why do people leave? 

According to Yonker, people usually leave because they don’t feel trusted; they don’t feel heard; or they don’t feel developed, appreciated or connected.

Yonker claimed that employees carry with them three questions, whether or not they consciously articulate them. The first is, “Can I trust you?” For Yonker, trust is built through alignment between words and actions, transparency, humility, consistency, and the ability to tell the truth without fear. He asked leaders to consider whether people know which version of them will show up to work each day. Inconsistency creates volatility and distrust.

The second question is, “Can you help me become who I want to become?” He urged leaders to know the aspirations, interests and motivations of their staff. “Think about your staff right now,” he said. “Some of them may not know where they want to go. But are you clear on what their aspirations are? What are their interests? What are their drivers in relationship to where they want to be?”

He shared an anecdote about an employee who wanted to buy a home. The story ultimately demonstrated how personal goals can connect to business goals. Once the employer understood what the employee wanted, the company aligned compensation, performance targets and motivation in a way that increased engagement from the employee.

The third question is, “Do you truly care about me?” Yonker treated this as a practical leadership question rather than a sentimental one. He asked the audience how their employees know they care. His example of the business owner who stopped, backed up his truck and took the time to actually listen to an employee illustrated the importance of slowing down. Care must be visible in behavior.

Yonker rejected the idea that leaders should view themselves as victims of generational change. “The fact of the matter is, if we’re experiencing a challenge in our business and our ecosystem, and the challenge is called engagement, recruiting and retention,” he said, “then we can either be a victim or we can take ownership.” For Yonker, leaders cannot complain about engagement, recruiting and retention while refusing to examine their own behaviors, culture, systems and assumptions.

Comparing leadership to parenting, he suggested this work begins with the leader’s own development. This is consistent with his broader philosophy: Organizational outcomes are shaped by the inner condition, beliefs and behaviors of those in authority.

Practices for Leaders

Leaders must prioritize clarity so employees understand expectations and the reasons behind them. They must foster belonging by intentionally drawing people into the team and culture. They must develop people rather than simply assign tasks. They must build trust through consistency, vulnerability, dependability and transparency. Finally, they must think like stewards, viewing the business as an ecosystem for which they are caring over time.

The stewardship theme was especially resonant with the funeral service audience, as many firms face succession questions, ownership transitions and continuity concerns. Yonker asked leaders to consider whether they are caring for their business in a way that supports long-term continuity and whether their business will be sold, passed to a family member or transferred to a key employee.

“ ‘How are we stewarding that business for the long haul?’ is a question to ask yourself as a key practice as a leader,” Yonker said.

He offered a practical diagnostic framework for understanding why employees fail to do what leaders ask. The first is an education issue. Employees might not understand the task, the process or the expectation because the leader did not slow down enough to explain it clearly. Yonker acknowledged that his own fast-starting personality occasionally causes him to assume others can read his mind.

“I’m what they call a ‘very fast start,’ meaning that I jump into things. I get going with them, I explain it very quickly, and then I always expect someone to read my mind and take over,” he said. 

The second is a systems problem. Are employees even able to follow through? In these cases, the employee might understand the request but lack the tools, authority or information needed to complete it. 

The third is a motivation issue. Yonker stated that leaders sometimes have to explain why a task matters and how it affects the families being served. 

The fourth is a fit, or culture, issue. The person might be in the wrong seat or the altogether wrong hire. In these cases, he said, leaders do the employee a disservice when they fail to address the mismatch.

This framework helps translate Yonker’s human-centered themes into day-to-day management decisions. Instead of assuming laziness or defiance, leaders should diagnose whether the problem is education, systems, motivation or fit. This diagnostic discipline supports the trust-based, developmental leadership model Yonker promoted throughout his presentation.

Yonker connected broad generational trends to the specific emotional and operational realities of funeral service. His repeated references to purpose, family impact, trust and care fit the profession well. Funeral service is not merely transactional; it involves guiding families through loss, ritual and remembrance. Yonker’s insistence that leaders connect employees to that purpose was both philosophically compelling and practically useful.

Further, Yonker did not reduce generational leadership to stereotypes. Although he generalized a bit about Gen Z and millennials, he repeatedly returned to the universal human themes of trust, growth, care, belonging and meaning. His comment that the three employee questions are “true across the spectrum” prevented the presentation from becoming a complaint about younger generations or a trend report. Instead, it was a broader argument for more conscious leadership.

Yonker ultimately challenged funeral service leaders to move from authority to influence, from control to coaching, from complaint to ownership. His central claim was that the next generation will respond to workplaces that offer purpose, trust, development, care and belonging. For professionals who serve families in times of profound loss, this message was especially resonant. He said, “Leadership is not measured by how indispensable you become; it is measured by how well the organization performs when you’re no longer in the room.”

Edward J. Defort is editor of NFDA Publications.