Gen Z and Employee Burnout

    I'm taking a management class and was assigned a blog statement (like here!) and decided to talk about Gen Z's employee burnout and mindset in the workplace, i thought it would be cool to copy and paste it here :)     

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    Gen Z started working around 2017, and with their entry they introduced a new mindset to the workplace: boundary setting and strong values. If employees don’t feel valued in their office, people often job-hop to find new positions that offer better pay and workplace wellness. However, this could be seen as disloyal, disrespectful, and lazy by other older generations, such as Boomers, who grew up with a hustling or grinding culture. The differing mindset in the workplace creates a tense atmosphere for almost everyone, but it primarily falls on younger workers.

By rejecting the hustle culture, younger employees feel the need to slow down and focus on who they are outside of their job, which allows them to find the energy to continue working the next week. Gen Z’s mindset of prioritizing themselves directly contradicts the current workplace industry, where employees are expected to pour more energy into overtime, and it’s hard to keep these values in check, leading to burnout. Gen Z employees face burnouts not even a decade later, and they experience the highest rate out of all age groups. Andrea Yu wrote the article Why Gen Z workers are already so burned out and stated, “A 2021 survey from jobs website Indeed showed millennials and Gen Z workers were reporting the highest rates of burnout, at 59% and 58% respectively. Reporting rates among Gen Z were increasing fastest; in 2021, 47% of Gen Z said they were burnt out, compared to 53% of millennials.” With employees feeling this burnt out already, it’s important to consider other factors that directly affect their mental health, such as the current economy.

Andrea Yu continues to talk about the different stressors that Gen Z has, specifically the lack of financial instability at the normalization of hustle culture. Gen Z has to pay for all the typical necessities: housing, transportation, student debt, and healthcare, but the problem really stems from how the cost of living is rising faster than salaries. Employees are forced to pick up more hours, which is almost expected nowadays, but with a new emphasis on mental health, employees are left feeling more exhausted than ever and almost hopeless. Yu states, “…A US census data analysis shows median home prices increased 121% from 1960 to 2017, while median household income only increased 29%. Currently, rising inflation is pushing up prices around the world, and worker pay is not keeping pace, intensifying struggles.”

Even with extra hours at work, it’s typically not enough for people to live, which leads others to pick up side hustles or second jobs, and even with those extra efforts Gen Z still faces backlash from older generations, saying that they don’t work hard enough and that they’re unloyal to companies, but with the way that employees are being paid it’s understandable to job hop to places that offer more pay and workplace wellness. Once you’re burnt out, it feels almost impossible to continue doing what you need to do, and with the added stress of side jobs, financial instability, and people insulting your efforts it’s understandable to put more emphasis on your well-being.