Sharing some love for Gen Z's
I was asked what I thought about the current view on Gen Z's. Here's my answer.
So this question showed up in my NGL app on Instagram a couple of times - what did I think of Tjin Lee’s comments on “young Singaporeans’ focus on work life balance”?
Now I don’t follow Tjin Lee - although I do know she’s quite a renown woman entrepreneur in Singapore! - so I had no idea what the questions were talking about. After like three or four asks hit my inbox, I decided to finally google it and see what it was all about.
…There is this worrying trend on social media of people saying “I’d rather be on holiday than in the office” or “Work sucks: I just want to lie on a bed of moss with my lover and read art and poetry, and not hustle nor work hard”. We have all seen versions of this content online. SMEs (which make up 99% of enterprises and support 72% of total employment) are finding it increasingly hard to find motivated young people to work. Many Singaporeans in their 20s come for interviews asking about “work life balance” and “flexi working options” as first questions. As an employer, this worries me, not for my company, but for our country.
Ohhhh like this ah wtf.
To be honest, when I read the part she complained about young people asking about work life balance, I didn’t really see anything wrong with that. Does that mean I’m very young at heart LOLOL.
Jokes aside, I don’t know Tjin Lee personally but I think she must be a very smart, capable person to get to where she is today. Her views, whether you agree with them or not, whether she really meant what most people think she did, or she was misunderstood, are hers and they were probably informed by her personal experiences and observations. I sincerely doubt she meant to insult anyone.
I cannot emphasize this enough: our perspectives are always colored by our own experiences. Generation gaps are real; remember when our parents’ generation thought working hard means putting in long hours? Today, working late doesn’t necessarily mean you’re working hard but maybe you’re just not efficient or not working smart. It’s a whole different way of looking at things.
Anyway I can’t speak for Tjin Lee’s experience and views. But I can share my perspective!
It’s a refrain we often hear - Gen Zs are all about instant gratification, they’re aimless, they have no drive, they’re not serious about work, they only want to have fun, they’re not hard working, yadda yadda. The list goes on.
To be honest though, our experience at Colony has actually been quite different from it.
Our team is pretty young - the majority of us are in our 20s and 30s and a decent chunk of them are either gen Zs (born in 1997 onwards) or on the earliest cusp of it.
While we’ve had a couple of people with whom it didn’t work out with because of, um, differences in opinion when it comes to the level of work we do, these people were an anomaly, they were not the norm. We never noticed a trend in which these people were coming from a particular age group.
On the contrary, the majority of Gen Zs who have passed through our doors, or are still with the company, have been awesome to work with. Our team is really the best thing about Colony. I don’t know how to say this without bragging, really hahahaha. As a whole, they have been driven, motivated, excited about work, protective over Colony and just amazing colleagues. Some of our colleagues have to be nagged to take a break or pushed to work from home to give them a bit of a respite. That’s not a good thing either hahaha but its testament to their loyalty, resilience, and commitment. Qualities that aren’t usually associated with Gen Zs.
(That’s not to say that nobody has ever left our company, or that nobody has ever left on not-great terms. Of course people have left; maybe their personal goals have diverged from us, maybe they’re ready for new challenges, maybe they realized they’re not a good fit for us or vice versa. That’s normal and not a bad thing; we all need change to grow and learn from.)
But. BUT. People leaving us or staying with us aren’t confined to one age group hahaha. And it’s not often that they leave because they’re “unmotivated” or “lazy” or “snowflakes”.
I read an article some time ago about Gen Zs - I don’t remember exact wording anymore and I’m probably paraphrasing grossly, but the point of the article was that Gen Z is not allergic to work, different motivations for working hard just appeal to them compared to other generations. So the typical “rewards” like pay and bonuses may not motivate them as much compared to older folks.
To motivate Gen Zs, first we have to understand them. And to understand them, we first have to understand the world they live in and the circumstances within which they were born. Every generation of people is upwardly mobile, so in general most people are doing better than their parents. So Gen Z as the youngest generation in the work force tend to come from way more comfortable backgrounds than the generations before.
My parents view money as security, something to be saved for emergencies - for wars (touch wood wtf), for darurats, for accidents or mishaps. I, as a millenial, view money as a means to do whatever I want as long as I’m happy hahaha. I don’t know what views Gen Zs have towards money but it sure ain’t enough to keep them in a workplace where they’re not happy.
A couple of days ago I saw this Instagram caption from The Washington Post:
To Generation Z… money may not always be the top job priority. Instead, their list includes flexibility to work from the office and remotely, wellness and mental health initiatives as well as meaningful work and culture. And many are willing to job hop to find the best fit.
That’s basically it. I see it in our team members and it’s something that us older folks need to wrap our heads around.
I don’t take any credit for this because I don’t handle ops and running the company. That’s Fatty and our GM Nit’s scope, to build a company in which we ourselves would want to work in, and while I think we can continue to do better, we’re very much in the right direction! We really do care about work life balance - I myself have done flexible working since 2017; mental health and creating meaning in what we do.
A few things off the top of my head that I can think of that Colony does is:
Flexi benefits - we provide a choice of an array of benefits that include funds for self improvement, self care, mental/physical health, vacation fund, additional leaves for festive days, etc.
We stayed with remote working arrangements even post pandemic (unless the role is front facing and you have to physically be in the office)
The team has an approved budget to use called the Happiness Fund (max cap of RM 150/day per person) to make our guests’ lives better. They have the autonomy to decide how best to use the budget, without management breathing down their necks and tryna control things.
So many of our guests and clients rave about Colony’s service and care and attention to detail. Honestly I think a big reason is that the team find such meaning in their work and are so safe in their decisions that they’re able to play their best game. :3
I would also like to say that my social media manager who helps me with my clients and campaigns was born on the cusp of Gen Z and she is a hustler. Hahahaha.
So my conclusion, in my personal experience, Gen Z aren’t lazy or entitled - we’re just viewing them through the wrong lens. And employers just need to understand what makes this generation tick and work with that. It’s a different world today.
In my personal opinion, one of the reasons Gen Z values work life balance might be due to the fact that they have been "hustling" (in school, tuition, academic activities, etc) since they were young and was not afforded any breather. During then, they had to abide to the plans their parents set for them and did not have the autonomy to decide (might be attributable to some form of asian parenting). It was all 'less play, study hard'. Of course, parents mean well for them (as they want to give their children a fighting chance) because it is getting very very competitive out there (as one generation improves from the other).
So now that they are in their adulthood and in the workforce, they probably finally get to have the power to call the shots on when they get to have their free/personal time and what they want to do with it.
I'm not a Gen Z, but just from my observation on how children nowadays go through their typical day-to-day activities - school sessions in the morning, tuitions in the afternoon, then to another round of tuitions at night, one after another. Sometimes quite kesian.
But then again, doesn't matter which generation, I think everyone would value good work life balance if afforded to them.
Agree. I think us millennial needs to start shifting our management method / perception towards them. Otherwise the world is just going to stop making sense when we get older and refuse to see things from gen z perspective. Sometimes I admire their courage to pick what’s right for them! Which is what we are lacking in the past.