Analysis: Gen Z are a generation who have quickly realised work should not be the centre of your life and does not define your worth
Until recently, it was widely believed that employees should give the interests of the organisation priority. When some workplace emergency arose, the thinking went, they should drop everything else and rally to the firm's aid. Gen Z workers are starting to argue that workplace emergencies are rarely important enough to disrupt the rest of their lives, and it makes no sense to drop everything else to complete some silly project or report before some arbitrary deadline passes.
Rather than making the sometimes pointless demands of your workplace a top priority, increasing numbers of Gen Z workers are engaged in 'quiet quitting' (doing what your job description requires but nothing more) or 'coffee badging (making a big deal of showing up at the office, then dodging out for a cup of coffee and skipping out to do your work remotely). This generation has largely given up on the idea that your work defines your worth.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, how coffee badging became a new workplace trend
The Gen Z revolt against making work your top priority is part of a larger societal change. The pandemic changed many things, some for the better and some for the worse. I count the "pandemic reset" as a change for the better. During the lockdown, many workers who shifted from a traditional office to remote work quickly found out some key things. For a start, the tasks required by their jobs could often be done in a half to a third of the time when working remotely, without all of the hassle of commuting to an office, working fixed hours or dressing up for work.
The main reason for this gain in efficiency was that remote work largely did away with the most annoying and most pointless parts of the normal workday: those meetings where much is discussed and nothing is decided. Once you get used to flexibility, autonomy and a life where meetings are rare and office politics is no longer a key concern, it is hard to go back to the daily grind of the office. The growing realisation that much of what we do in the office is rather pointless busywork has helped fuel the revolt against the corporate culture that led earlier generations to put work ahead of family and community.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, why micro-retirement has become a new workplace trend for Gen Z & millennials
If it's clear what Gen Z is against, it is less clear what they are for. What should replace the traditional corporate culture, where facetime in the office and the appearance of busyness was so highly valued? Ideally, we might move toward organisations in which achievement trumps activity. There are still businesses where high involvement is prized. Some companies are pushing a 9-9-6 culture, where employees are expected to work 72 hours a week (9am to 9pm, six days a week).
But there is also growing awareness that such work arrangements are unhealthy and unsustainable. Many years ago, my father was interviewed for a job and they told him that it was expected that he would have to take work home with him in the evenings. I have always admired his response: "if I cannot perform this job in 40 hours each week, you should not hire me". Employees in organisations that require long hours and expect employees to make the demands of the firm their first priority were once lionized, but they are increasingly seen as objects of pity.
Moving an employment strategy that emphasises achievement over facetime and performative busyness (the appearance of being busy) is going to present a series of challenges for management. Rather that simply rewarding employees for spending time at the office (or punishing them for not spending time at the office), managers will have to develop and build buy-in for clear, well-defined performance expectations.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, Prof Kevin Murphy on the motivations, purposes and challenges about why we clock in from 9 to 5 (or 9 to 9)
Moreover, they will have to spend as much time working on why as on what. That is, it will not be enough to simply assign projects, deadlines, and the like. If you want to build true engagement, you will have to make a clearer case to employees about the importance and meaning of what they are doing, and this will not always be easy.
However, I think it is well worth the effort. Imagine an organisation that doesn't say they expect you to be in the office 72 hours a week, grinding away at whatever tasks are assigned to you. Instead, you're hired by a business that asks you to do things that are important and worthwhile and gives you the tools, support and autonomy to get those things done.
Moving an employment strategy that emphasises achievement over facetime and performative busyness is going to present challenges for management.
I spent over 40 years in an academic career largely because it involved doing things that were interesting and sometimes at least moderately important. The general rule was that my job was to get things done, not to show up at set hours and grind away at tasks I loathed. To be sure, the academic job imposed plenty of structure. There were classes to teach, papers to grade, and service requirements, such as serving on departmental and university-wide committees).
But the main draw of this career was that I was always responsible for accomplishing specific things (e.g., publish in well-respected journals, get grants to support my research, review academic articles, write for RTÉ Brainstorm) and given substantial autonomy in terms of when and how I got these things done. I think Gen Z is looking for the sort of thing I experienced in my career: flexibility, autonomy and interesting work. I hope they succeed in moving more organisations toward the sort of model that I had the very good luck to work under.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
