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A sweet salary and benefits package isn’t cutting it anymore, especially for Gen Z employees. That’s according to a recent SurveyMonkey survey of 1,222 US workers.
Gen Z employees are more likely to value work-life balance than their millennial and Gen X colleagues, with 32% ranking it as the most important aspect of a job, versus 28% and 25% of the older generations. Millennial and Gen X respondents, meanwhile, said compensation and benefits are most valuable, with 30% and 29% ranking it in first place, compared with 20% of Gen Z employees.
Career over company. Gen Z employees’ likelihood to value work-life balance over total compensation reflects shifting expectations about how work fits into life, Wendy Smith, SurveyMonkey’s senior manager of research science, told HR Brew. Work-life balance wasn’t a significant topic of conversation when Gen X and millennial employees were younger, she said, but in recent years, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and popularization of remote work, it’s come to the forefront.
“People didn’t really talk about work life balance. You had work and then you had your life, and depending on how much you wanted to be successful, you would dedicate all of your hours to your job,” Smith said. “And so, I think with new attitudes and fresher culture coming in with the younger generation, it’s changing things.”
Gen Zers may care more about their career paths than their employers. For example, 22% of Gen Z respondents ranked career growth as important in a job, compared to 13% of millennials and 9% of Gen X respondents. Meanwhile, just 8% of Gen Z respondents said they value company culture, compared to 10% of millennials and 15% of Gen X respondents. And in a separate SurveyMonkey survey, 55% of Gen Z respondents admitted to spending more than one hour of their shifts on non-work activities, versus 48% of millennials and 30% of Gen X respondents.
But don’t assume younger workers don’t care at all about their jobs, Smith cautioned.
“They want to show up. They want to learn from older generations. They want to grow in their careers. It’s just that they have, maybe, a different way of approaching things,” she said. “They are used to multitasking a lot more. They’re not the company people, buying into some of the corporate culture [that] companies have promoted for so long.”
Zoom out. HR professionals hoping to attract Gen Z candidates may want to rethink recruiting tactics that emphasize company culture as a selling point.
“I would imagine the free meals and ping pong tables at work would be less appealing to Gen Z, who want more flexibility, want more work life balance, who want more time off,” Smith said. “I see with the shifts with generations, that for recruiters, it would be more important to focus on the more individualistic aspects of the benefits of taking a job.”