Lazy, flaky and entitled? It’s time to ditch Gen Z’s unfair reputation

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of the things that have been said about Gen Zs in the workplace: they are lazy, flaky, transient, unengaged and think they’re entitled to the boss’ desk yesterday. They want a promotion in the first year, praise three times a week, and if you don’t align with their tightly held values, they’ll be straight out the door.

Does any of that sound familiar? Gen Z, roughly aged from teenagers to late twenties today, are a convenient scapegoat to pile our grievances onto. They are arriving into the workforce in large quantities, and by the end of this decade, they will make up around a third of all workers.

Gen Z workers are a convenient scapegoat to pile our grievances onto.Credit: istock

Gen Z are also the most misunderstood generation when it comes to their attitudes towards work. Think they’re lazy? Well, they might just want a life outside work. Reckon they’re flaky? They don’t want to burn out so incorporate things like mental health days into their schedule. Call them entitled? Gen Zs bring fresh thinking to old problems to show that intuition can be just as valuable as experience.

The newest generation are approaching work differently to other generations. Many Gen Zs have watched their older siblings and parents sacrifice everything on the altar of work – including time, health and happiness – and they don’t want to do the same.

Research from earlier this year showed 75 per cent want hybrid work to stay, ideally spending two or three days in the office, and a new study shows that the stereotypes we hold about Gen Z are just not accurate.

A recent Employee Experience Trends report by Qualtrics found that, contrary to popular belief, Gen Z employees are actually some of the most engaged, motivated and optimistic members of the team. In fact, the only employee experience indicator where the younger generations lag, unsurprisingly, is their intent to stay in a role.

If we’re really honest, we can all learn something from the Gen Z approach to work.

“They’re the first generation who rightfully believe they won’t have the same level of wealth, comfort and prosperity as the generations before, so they had every reason to be pretty negative about employers, their work, their careers and the future,” said Dr Cecelia Herbert, Workplace Behavioural Scientist at Qualtrics.

“Yet we saw the opposite. We saw that they were the most engaged group out of all the age groups we looked at.”

Dr Herbert’s research of 35,000 people across 23 countries – including 2040 from Australia – showed that, despite some loud criticism that they are flaky and unengaged at work, Gen Zs actually tend to have the most positive outlook of an organisation’s future, as well as their own role in it.

“They didn’t feel as silenced as other groups. They felt more vocal and more invested,” said Dr Herbert, concluding that the findings filled her with a lot of hope for the next generation. “I’m just so proud of them being able to see through [all the noise] and say, we are going to make something of this.”

Gen Z are not the first generation to be maligned primarily for their age. Millennials were infamously called the “Me Me Me Generation”, Gen X were “slackers”, and even Baby Boomers were labelled by Time Magazine in 1967 as naïve and idealistic in their outlook.

But what sets Gen Z apart is that they are entering the workforce during a historically volatile time. From external forces like labour shortages and swift technological advancements, to internal ones like their own complicated relationship with work, they are dealing with rapid changes as best as they can.

So how about instead of reflexively viewing their actions negatively, why don’t we question some of our preconceived notions about them? Because, if we’re really honest, we can all learn something from the Gen Z approach to work.

Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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