Generation gain
Those born between 1997 and 2012 now make up more than a fifth of the workforce – and while they might have strong opinions on your jeans, it’s not the only thing they care about. From healthy boundaries to prioritising mental wellbeing, WH makes the case for growing down…
Things that keep you up at night: climate change? Obviously. Trump’s 2024 electoral prospects? Naturally. Gen Z? Admit it, you’re as baffled by the generation behind you as you are about NFTs. But while their TikTok dances warrant an eyebrow raise, there’s one area they’re smashing. Some 70% of them describe themselves as healthy*, with over half using wearables to monitor their health and a majority putting emotional wellbeing at the heart of their identity. ‘They’ve grown up observing our worklife balance and relationship with social media,’ says Eliza Filby, a (millennial) historian of contemporary values who studies generational differences. ‘And they’ve decided to take a new approach.’ So in matters of physical and mental health, is it time to be more Gen Z?
LESSON 1
STOP OBSESSING OVER YOUR JOB
Unlike millennials, who grew up with a lopsided work ethic that saw them toil away at the expense of their wellbeing, Gen Z have figured out how to stand up for themselves. A 2022 survey by the online learning platform TalentLMS found that they’re willing to hold out for the things that matter to them: paid mental health leave, hybrid or remote work and greater diversity and inclusion. If they don’t get them, they’ll walk away – and in the meantime, they’ll ‘quiet quit’, scaling back to doing their salaried hours and nothing more. Which, in truth, is how people used to treat work in the olden days. ‘The overwork culture started amid the economic upheavals of the 1980s, where there were no longer “jobs for life”, and the digitalisation of the workplace in the 1990s aided by the rise of the BlackBerry,’ explains Dr Filby. ‘Millennials grew up with work being central to their identity, but without the traditional rewards of the employment promised after university – job security, housing, high wages – due to the recession in the late 2000s.’ Gen Z, she notes, took one look at us and said ‘no thanks’. As Dr Filby points out, ‘Their boundaries for work-life balance are a clear reaction to that girlboss, hustle culture.’
Be more Gen Z:
✚ Ignore work emails when you’re OOO. ‘Recognising the negative impact overwork is having on your life will help you to stop glamorising it,’ explains Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist and co-founde
