Gen Z And The Great Office Debate Won’t End In 2023
Gen Z And The Great Office Debate Won’t End In 2023
Deciding whether to work remotely or in-office is a complicated decision that will require innovative solutions.
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Gen Z refusing to telework is something I didn't expect but understand.
Yeah. How?
I'm curious on your opinion, because it feels like this article is fairly light on data supporting the assertion. (This is genuine interest, I'm not here to start an argument.)
It at least feels like another corporate "we're going to spin the data the way we want it" kind of situation, where they're making leaps to the conclusions they want based on data that may not support that.
It’s Forbes.
Right, which is a big part of why I feel the way I do about it, but I'm at least trying to engage with the OP here.
Fair enough
It is. Don't forget younger people have less leverage in job negotiations. I'mbfine with working in person because I have no relevant job experience and need to take whatever wages and working conditions I can get to score a job that's not minimum wage trash
Gen Z dealt with the horrors of online school. It's understandable if they prefer not having ptsd teleworking, alone, and depressed like in 2020.
I'm further curious about this, because I completed a collegiate degree during COVID and the remote aspect made it one of the best school experiences of my life. Arguably, I am a millennial, and I had previously dropped out of school twice due to a combination of doing poorly in school because I was working so much, and not really making enough money to keep going without incurring massive debt to achieve it. COVID was the first time for me where everything came together well enough for me to be able to work, go to school, and not be at the mercy of an overburdened personal schedule to achieve it, because of how much time being school-from-home saved me in transportation time.
I heard about some online school horror stories for like... elementary school kids. You know, when teachers didn't understand that not all computers could do the fancy Zoom backgrounds and stuff, and gave some kids their first taste of what it feels like to be a have-not among a group of haves. A lot of crying and wondering why they couldn't do something other kids could do, because the old teacher who wasn't familiar with technology was oblivious and did something dumb in an attempt to get kids excited about online school. Sure, if this was your first school experience, it sucked.
I heard far fewer horror stories about middle-school/high-school kids, but if you've got some, I'm willing to hear it out (Full disclosure: I don't have kids, so I don't have direct experience). However, I am certainly hoping for a more detailed response than a single sentence saying they were all alone and depressed with ptsd. Because I didn't feel disconnected from my friends, although I do live a "digital native" life and so do many of my friends simply out of necessity as adults because we became separated physically over time as our jobs took us to different places in life. COVID didn't knock me on my ass and make me feel isolated, because US life had already forced me to adopt such things, but maybe I'm in the minority here.
I was in university during the 2020 lockdowns. I hated it. Not because the teachers were technically inept (they were not, far from it) but because sitting alone in my one bedroom apartment all day with no real social interaction is just depressing af. The mixing of work and home just weakens both for me. I cannot get as productive at home as in a dedicated work space and I also cannot get fully comfortable at home if it is a work space for me. As long as I can go to a physical work location, I will. I might work from home once in a while but not primarily. I enjoy the casual interactions with collegues far too much.
Gen Z refusing to telework
I'm not convinced that's even true.
The study forbes referenced appears to be essentially “how to design offices for gen z”, presuming they really want to use an office.
The tips to drive virtual engagement are pretty standard management material at this point.
Would have liked to see some real evidence to “boomerang” being philosophical, that felt like a cheap misuse of the term to seem more relevant than “what kind of games should be in the break room”
They're misinterpreting their own crappy chart. Gen Z falls between Millennials and Gen X, but somehow the author lumps them in with boomers, and then makes up a whole rationale.
You can probably explain the discrepancy completely by accounting for the people in Gen Z that probably still live with parents/roommates where WFH is impractical compared to going into the office/coworking space.
Perhaps but I for example hated working from home even when I lived in my own one bedroom apartment. I need the casual interactions with collegues that you don’t really get online and a dedicated workspace where I can get into „the zone“ and don’t get distracted that easily.