Gen Z wants to make their office jobs more like driving for Uber.
Business Insider has previously reported that younger professionals are increasingly prioritizing their work-life balance, and unlike their elders, eschewing management roles to better preserve their mental and physical well-being. Research shows they also lean toward gig work more than other generations, with more than half of all Gen Z professionals taking up freelance positions in 2023 rather than traditional 9-to-5 jobs, according to a survey from the jobs platform Upwork.
When they do take a corporate gig, workplace culture experts told BI that Gen Z workers prefer roles that are dynamic and flexible, allowing them to develop specialized skills and offering them more control over their career trajectory — and the business leaders who hope to recruit and retain younger talent should get used to it.
“Early career professionals want variety,” Kathryn Landis, an executive coach and New York University professor of marketing and public relations, told BI. “They want to see different parts of the business. It’s kind of that trend of the gig economy coming to corporate America.”
Shorter, more specialized, stints
Landis said Gen Z professionals are increasingly pursuing certifications over advanced degrees, or showing an interest in going to trade school rather than sitting in class. She added that workplace loyalty also appears to be a thing of the past — one of Landis’ Master’s students recently told her that she was looking for a “good job” where she could spend six months building skills to put on her résumé before finding her next role.
“When I was growing up, five years at a job was the minimum before you’d consider jumping ship — I feel like you don’t even know where the bathroom is after six months,” Landis said. “But that was a reasonable threshold for her to put it on a résumé, get some experience there, and then move on to the next role. Two years might be more average these days, but the mentality is just very different.”
Ryan Leak, an executive coach and the author of “How to Work With Complicated People: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with (Nearly) Anyone,” told BI the gig economy mindset being perpetuated by Gen Z may stem from watching their friends without degrees be successful on social media.
“So you go see a really great school, perhaps go and get your Master’s — if you’re super ambitious, you go and get your Ph.D., and yet, your high school dropout buddy is a multimillionaire, while you’ve got half a million dollars in student loans,” Leak said.
In a recent study Leak conducted, Gen Z was the most likely generation to say they want to be stretched at work. Nearly 40% of Gen Z respondents said they seek assignments that help them grow quickly, even if those assignments fall outside their job description.
“I think that speaks to a mindset that really values experience over stability,” Leak said. “They view themselves more as free agents building a portfolio of skills. They look at it as if they’re designing a career. So what older generations may have seen as job-hopping, I think Gen Z sees as career design. They aren’t chasing titles. They’re chasing impact. They want their job to really matter.”
Gen Z’s preference for workplace flexibility also appears to extend to their benefits. Leak said the companies he works for that have the best retention rates often offer benefits packages that include optional perks like gym memberships, childcare, and even dry cleaning services, often at the request of younger workers.
Payday all day
Tate Hackert, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of ZayZoon, a software company that provides employees with access to their earned wages before payday, told BI that 55% of the company’s customers are 34 years of age or younger.
While the trend may be in part caused by younger workers needing more flexible cash flow, Hackert said he believes it’s driven partially by younger workers’ desire for better control of their finances — a preference they picked up from gig work.
“If you’re an Uber driver, you can actually get paid out five times a day, so you can do a drive and immediately get paid for doing it, and many of these other side gigs provide instant gratification of pay,” Hackert said. “So if you’re an employer, your competition isn’t just the brick and mortar employer across the street, but it’s actually the gig economy. And so I think instant access to pay through benefits is more and more important.”
While many businesses still require traditional markers of success and professionalism, like a Bachelor’s degree, to get hired, Landis said some of the companies she works with are approaching early career professionals with their preference for flexibility in mind.
“Once they have Gen Z in the door, the way that they work with them is different,” Landis said. “They might be more prone to hiring them as contractors, and letting them work three days a week. Or, if they hire them full time, they’re putting them on these ‘Tiger Teams,’ where it’s a lot of rotation.”
Landis said the Tiger Team approach allows younger workers to rotate through different projects more quickly than they would in a traditional role. It offers both variety and mentorship opportunities, which a Deloitte survey found 86% of Gen Z workers crave.
Ultimately, as Gen Z makes up a growing portion of the labor market, businesses are being forced to adapt to their work preferences, or risk being stuck with higher turnover and a short leadership bench to build upon.
“The organizations that can move quickly, and are agile enough to say, ‘Hey, we can’t solve every problem. We can’t meet every request,’ but are identifying the things they could actually change and then actually doing something about it,” Leak said. “I think the more companies and leaders who think in that way are going to find themselves creating the kind of cultures people want to stay in.”
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