The office is perceived very differently by younger people than by previous generations. It offers an experience that was once quite banal, but is now special.
What motivates Gen Z to go to the office? For young people, the office is a place to express themselves more personally than was perhaps common in previous generations. Currently, the hashtags #cubiclelife and #worklife are booming. At its core, it’s about personalizing the workplace and understanding it as an important place in life – and sharing its creation with others, possibly going viral in the process.
Like the following TikTok video from Maïa Maury, a 25-year-old French woman living and working in America. It has since accumulated over 10 million views. She invested around 200 US dollars in furnishing her workspace.
Who exactly is Gen Z? Also called Zoomers, all individuals born between 1996 and 2012 belong to this group. Before them are the Millennials (Y) starting from 1980. The birth period of Generation X is from 1965 to 1979. Anyone born after 2012 or who will be born in 2024 is part of Generation Alpha.
A completely new experience
Why does Generation Z perceive the office differently? Generally, there are two main reasons for this, as Business Insider points out. On the one hand, a significant portion of young people has not experienced working in an office, at their own desk outside of home, until now. The pandemic forced newcomers to stay in home office. Anyone under 30 who has studied has likely spent little time in an office outside of a school internship before the pandemic.
Moreover, many younger people more frequently share spaces or means of transport with others than older individuals. For them, arriving at and having a space just for themselves at work is an exclusive experience.
On the other hand, the importance of the so-called work/life balance has changed (via Gruender). Therefore, the idea of having a personal, customized desk in a room with colleagues-friends is welcomed by many young people – far more enthusiastically than by older ones.
Is having a personal desk an enticement in jobs? Yes, experts at Business Insider point this out as well. For companies, it may be worthwhile to offer private and not shared desk spaces, even in hybrid work models. In times when home office is perceived as the standard, this is a real added value and not a given.
But isn’t it still just a workplace that can also be taken away? There are cautionary voices under Maïa Maury’s video. The tense economic situation has led some to warn of layoffs under the aforementioned TikTok. No one should feel that comfortable at their workplace. However, the influencer has a clear response to this:
This idea that a job is only there to pay the bills is a problem. If you think of a job that way, you will hardly enjoy what you do.
Surveys among employers in the United Kingdom currently paint a less than glamorous picture of the time Generation Z spends in the office. However, there are also good reasons and factors that relativize the not entirely unfounded accusations of older generations: Generation Z is often late, wastes work time, and frequently drops out due to mental health issues, surveys show.
