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Forget the career ladder, many Gen Z workers seem more interested in the career lily pad. These workers are looking at the path to the corner office with skepticism, which makes sense given that the economy is shifting, job security is in question and work-life balance is a struggle. Under the circumstances, taking on traditional management roles may not necessarily to be the best path forward for them or even for the broader economy.
The reading on Gen Z ambitions come partly from a new survey by Glassdoor Community, which found 68 per cent of Gen Z workers (defined as those born between 1997 and 2012) say that they would not pursue management were it not for the higher paycheque or the title.
Although the cynical reaction to that might be the ask “what else is there?” the reality is that wanting to scale the corporate ladder has been a long-held practice that few have traditionally questioned. In the current labour market, however, there is a lot of questioning going on.
Some call the shift away from managerial ambitions ‘career minimalism’, the idea that work is for the money and life happens outside of the office.
At its extreme, that means disengaged workers making scathing TikTok videos about how much they hate their employers. For most, however, career minimalism is much more subtle. Gen Z may never have expected the jobs-for-life model of their grandparents or even the reality that their parents faced with recessions and layoffs dotting their careers. Still, having already experienced a pandemic and on the brink of the artificial intelligence revolution, minimalizing their career ambitions with any organization and trying to build their own safety nets makes sense.
The Glassdoor survey noted that 70 per cent of Gen Z say that AI has them questioning their job security, which in turn is causing them to make different choices than might have been true a few years ago. Increasingly, new grads are flocking to sectors such as health care, skilled trades, government and education, hoping that they might give them the job security that tech and consulting seem to no longer provide.
The reference to the lily pad model of work comes from the fact that Gen Zs are also apparently looking to breadth over hierarchy, which has them building diverse skill sets and multiple income streams as protection against job disruptions.
In fact, the trend of younger workers (Millennials as well as Gen Z) having side hustles has been around for a decade or more. According to a 2024 study from the Harris Poll, 87 per cent of Canadian job seekers say they have worked a side hustle at least once, with 29 per cent saying they have done so while having a primary job.
The figures are much higher for younger workers, with 41 per cent of Gen Zs and 47 per cent of Millennial job seekers. This might mean the full-time worker delivering Uber Eats on the side in order to pay rent or it might mean a savvy young worker running a profitable store on Etsy that might one day become their full-time job.
The reality though is that the available technology has made it easier for workers to have more than one job and that means their loyalty toward their primary employer might end up being diluted.
Given the attitude shift, it will be interesting to see what the recent return-to-work mandates mean for worker loyalty and performance. To be sure, many Gen Zs will welcome the chance to spend more time with colleagues but what is also clear is that work-life balance and flexibility are high on the list of the things they consider important.
Even if being back in the office is not necessarily a negative (a recent survey by Robert Half found 59 per cent of Gen Z workers said they have placed an increased value on physically being in the office and being able to work with people) the more rigid rules around work hours and arrangements are unlikely to be viewed very positively.
In fact, career minimalism may not be the correct term at all to describe the way Gen Z views work. Not wanting to give their all to an organization does not necessarily mean being work shy or achievement shy. Instead, it might be more of a reaction to an economy that seems to be putting them at a disadvantage and to organizations that seem to have minimal interest in making a long-term commitment to them or their ambitions. Those organizations that do want workers to embrace more traditional career paths need to communicate that and clearly show the path.
For the broader economy, it is not clear whether a lily pad model of human capital acquisition will be any worse than the traditional one. As long as workers are acquiring skills and contributing to the economy, there will be growth and, in the AI-altered future, it may well be more efficient for workers to not throw their fortunes in with a single organization. Workers will need to be adept and flexible in future, and questioning the traditional method of career progression will likely be just one of many changes yet to come.