Gen Z: breaking the 9 to 5 Premium

This ‘high-maintenance’ generation speaks up for self-reliance, isn’t okay with inflexible work environments, and wants to retire by 35. There’s a lot that corporates can learn from them too: from transparency to pay equality

Just five years ago, Elon Musk was tweeting how “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”, suggesting a work week of 80-100 hours. “Pain level increases exponentially above 80,” he warned. The young workforce responded with cheer and admiration — after all, they were part of a millennials-fuelled hustle culture punctuated by #ThankGodIt’sMonday hashtags.

Things are different in the post-pandemic world. Today’s youth, the infamous Gen Z, don’t react kindly to 77-year-old billionaires or anyone else telling them to work 70-hour weeks. Their priorities are different, to say the least: they don’t want to be 9 to 5 “corporate mazdoors”; they’ll avoid working overtime unless “the world is falling apart”; they’ll talk to the director of the company as casually as they do a co-worker; they all seem to have side-hustles, or at least side-dreams that they nurture in anticipation of future fruition. All in all, there’s a sense of limitless possibilities. As one Gen Zer put it, there are so many choices that it’s paralysing because “we could be so many things right now”.

The flip side, however, is that the retention rate for Gen Z employees tends to be quite poor. Most stay on at companies anywhere between one and five years — the number often being closer to one. This generation is also the most susceptible to ‘corporate despair’ (videos of youngsters screaming in panic rooms, for instance, are doing the rounds on social media). According to data from LinkedIn, 94% of Gen Z professionals are considering a job switch in 2024. Their top priority, the platform found, is work-life balance, with 20% listing it as their main career goal and 36% leaving their current jobs for it.

It’s important to acknowledge, as many of these Gen Z professionals do, that they are part of a relatively privileged minority. Even as unemployment among the rest of India’s youth is rampant, almost touching 46%, with every new day bringing news of job cuts and digital disruptions — like Reliance Industries reportedly cutting 42,000 jobs in FY 2024 — this select group of highly educated youngsters float above it all. Their parents, benefiters of India’s steadily growing GDP over the last 20 years, have acquired sufficient wealth and security that their children can now afford to demand better, raise the bar higher, and if not met, quit jobs that don’t suit them.

Employers, for their part, are having a hard time dealing with this new, ‘high-maintenance’ generation. Very few are equipped for these fresh-from-college graduates talking about mental health, toxic work culture, and choice of pronouns.

Part of the “COVID-batch”, Nadia Khatib’s college years were spent online. Amid Zoom classes and Google Meet study sessions, the 24-year-old started creating food videos and offering restaurant reviews and recommendations on Instagram. Before she knew it, she had become a social media influencer for all things Goa. Her job as a social media marketing associate at MindShift Interactive, a digital marketing and branding agency, was an extension of this — and it was great. The job was remote, the company was filled with Gen Z employees, and Khatib’s boss was open to creative ideas, even when it involved luxury clientele such as Taj who usually have strict, staid brand guidelines. The company also had no problem with Khatib being a ‘creator’ on the side. “There were so many days that I worked from an event with my laptop,” she recalls.

Eighteen months later, she moved to a different marketing company (the workload not aligning with her health), but this time around, her experience was very different. She was the only Gen Zer there, the rest being millennials. There was a lot of micro-managing and doing things the long way. “Gen Z, we like to close our work as efficiently as possible. But I find that millennials will have doubts, will rethink things, and end up doubling the work,” she says. (On the contrary, Khatib’s former boss, Marilyn Pinto, 31, believes Gen Zers tend to overthink, especially since, for many, it is their first job.)