The young ones these days don’t want to work hard!
So often, as I am talking with business leaders about productivity and reducing work time, I hear complaints about “the young ones”.
“The young ones these days don’t want to work hard!”
We forget, as we take our careers to the level of leadership, that stage of life is often just as important as age in life. The young ones I talk to all want to work productively, they want valuable work where they feel they are valued and their employers care about more than just making money. They also value being engaged with their families, communities and their health. Read more about ‘What is work?’ here in my article from last month.
We hear the phrases the Millennials and Gen Z use to describe the workplace culture they experience, they are naming Quietly Quitting, the Great Resignation – all over TikTok. They are calling out to be valued and listened to. I’m a Gen X and do you know the phrase that we, and our friends, the Boomers, named? BURNOUT.
And the Millennials and Z’s are our children. They watched us over value work, over value it above our health, our community, the planet and, most importantly, them. They want a different way of living, a way that has work in its place – important but not overwhelming. Valuable and valued.
And we should want it for them because they are the parents of our grandchildren.
During our careers through the 80’s to 2000’s we lost all sense of proportion with work to the point where it impacted on us greatly- our health, divorce, community breakdown and crime statistics bear this out. The workplace of the 21st century requires us to view work differently, and I sure know a lot of Boomers and X’s who also want to work less now too.
Throughout human history, we have always wanted our children to have better than we did. From our days in the caves to after the second world war, this meant better food, better health, better housing, education and opportunities. However, all we are offering the 21st century child in the developed world is MORE. More food – hello obesity epidemic! See this fantastic interactive map which shows the increase in obesity in the world between 1975 and 2016. More housing – does everyone really need their own bathroom? More consumer goods, the latest gadgets, more cheap clothes and shoes. More, more, more. When really the only thing our children want more of… is TIME – and when we give them more time, they do better.
Our 4 Day Week Global research shows that when organisations work on their productivity so they can reduce work time, their people spend more time with their families, we see an increase in the amount of time that men spend looking after their children.
So let’s give the young ones, who are our future leaders, a voice in how the workplace of their future will impact on them, on us, on our communities, our businesses and the planet.
“As business leaders we need to remember that we borrow our people from their lives.”
If you would like to read the rest of our July newsletter, you can see it here.
