Corporate Can't Sit With Us

Inside the new Gen Z mindset on work-and how it just might change the future for everyone.

- JESSICA GOODMAN

PUT A FINGER down if you've been personally victimized by a recent trend report about the ways in which Gen Z does and does not want to work. Put a finger down if you're way too familiar with boomers philosophizing about how you do your job, make your money, and live your life (millennial here, can relate). Put another finger down if you've heard the "findings" that your generation is coddled, that you expect upward of 364 mental health days a year, and that you'll only work for a company that gives out free merch and massages. (I mean, sure, but how about full-coverage health care?)

Of course, and speaking of assumptions, every generation is known to poke and prod at the one before it, ragging on how different things are from how they used to be. But here's a better idea: Why not just...ask? Find out straight from the source what Gen Z really thinks about the current state of the workplace, about stuff like hiring, hybrid offices, and paychecks? *clears throat* I give you Cosmopolitan's Future of Work survey, administered to actual members of Gen Z (and also to millennials for comparison) during a kinda fraught "post"-a pandemic landscape where companies are reorienting how they manage employees and office life.

The results are a study in contradictions. Gen Z workers want cash, but you don't want to work at the same place for more than a few years. You want your careers to have capital-M meaning, but that meaning shouldn't bleed over into your personal lives. "I think our predecessors saw their jobs as part of their identity," writes one survey respondent. "We don't see ourselves as our jobs-our jobs are just something we do. Gen Z also places a greater emphasis on company culture and values. And if we're investing our time and energy into a company, we want to see value in return."