Young people want to change the world of work with new ideas. A current survey shows exactly how.
What exactly does “work less” mean? A recent survey by Generation Lab of 1,033 people between the ages of 18 and 34 in the US revealed telling facts about how the youngest workers view the job market.
Due to the age structure chosen for the sample, the majority of those surveyed belong to the so-called Generation Z. However, the oldest among them are so-called Millennials.
What is Gen Z again? They were born between 1996 and 2012. Before that, the Millennials or Generation Y were born in 1980. The baby boomers began their life in the post-war period. 1965 to 1979 is the birth period of Generation X. For people born since 2012, we speak of Gen Alpha.
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Generation Z with new ideas for the world of work
What does Generation Z want? 81 percent of participants say they prefer a 4-day week. They are also convinced that this is beneficial for general productivity. But is that true?
The data on this is ambiguous because the procedures used in the studies are also different. In addition, it is not easy to introduce for all professional groups. But there are definitely confirming trends, as reported by the Tagesschau, for example. A study in Great Britain, for example, has shown that the number of days absent falls significantly when a 4-day week is practiced.
In general, only time and more research will show whether Gen Z and the youngest part of the Millennials are correct in their beliefs.
Where do the young people work? The vast majority of those surveyed work in the office. About half as many are at least partially or even completely working from home. However, the picture shifts somewhat when we look at where they think they work most effectively: although 60 percent are convinced that they can perform at their best in the office, 40 percent believe that this is the case when working from home.
That is more than twice as many as recently worked from home in Germany, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office. In this article we will introduce you to how bosses of large companies feel about working from home – in short: there is a risk of conflict with Gen Z.
The look at the data above gains depth when we consider another response from the survey. Only around a third of those surveyed currently work full time. Another in an unspecified part-time position. The rest don’t go to school at all or go to school. So only a little more than half have any work experience at all.
From this it could be deduced, at least mildly, that the move towards 4-day weeks and home offices will increase rather than decrease as more members of Gen Z enter the job market.
Things are completely different for the employees of an important industrial nation, which has also achieved and continues to achieve an enormous amount for gaming. Here they could work less, but they categorically reject this: In one country, people work more than they have to and voluntarily give up the four-day week