‘Okay Zoomer’. How Gen Z have mastered the work/life balance

A recent survey said that one in three Australians would quit their job, or start looking for a new one, if their employer announced they had to return to the office full-time. The stats tell a similar story in the US where, in Washington, D.C. – the city in which I live – nearly half of all workers are working remotely. That’s seven times more than before the pandemic.

Even as Joe Biden declares the pandemic “over” and the World Health Organisation announces we are approaching the beginning of the end, it’s clear that COVID’s impact on work is more monumental than we could ever have imagined. A couple of incidents lately have highlighted this massive cultural shift for me.

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The first came during a conversation with a colleague about how we could possibly educate younger employees about the mysterious ways of office work. You know the drill: pencil skirts, sad desk salads, photocopier paper jams and loading the dishwasher. But there was a problem: the Zoomers didn’t seem interested in coming into the office. They were fine to, well, Zoom.

“How will we teach them to be professional?” I wailed. “Maybe our version of ‘professional’ is just out-of-date,” my colleague countered. Maybe, we concluded, the Gen Zers could teach us elder Millennials a thing or two about work in the virtual era.

Such as respecting others’ boundaries. This has become more important as the line between work and everything else blurs. Life is now about looking at one big, bad screen. Which brings me to my second realisation. Pre-pandemic, I rolled my eyes when 20-somethings talked about work-life balance. What are they doing in their spare time that’s so important anyway, was my unkind thought.

One distinct memory I have is editing Amy Winehouse’s obituary in the back of a rental car while touring the Kalamata region of Greece.

But as COVID dragged on into year two and now – impossibly – calendar year three, I started to see their point. My younger colleagues diligently updated their status on work email and messaging services whenever they were away from their desk. They let everyone know what they were up to, whether that was a dentist visit, a walk or a quick jaunt to London.

This radical disclosure was jarring for me. Millennials came of age in workplaces where time away from the desk was a source of shame. You hid when you were away from it, and you stayed until after your boss went home to prove what a good worker you were. To that end, I used to spend holidays checking my phone for work tasks. One distinct memory I have is editing Amy Winehouse’s obituary in the back of a rental car while touring the Kalamata region of Greece. Another is ruing the lack of phone reception in an especially remote area of Ireland because I couldn’t download an email from my boss.