As CEOs battle to get their employees back to the office after years of homeworking, one generation is surprisingly eager to comply.
Gen Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — is leading the charge, new research from property group JLL shows.
Young workers attend the office 3.1 days a week, compared to older age groups who show up between 2.5 and 2.7 days a week, the survey found.
Many Gen Z employees have only known remote or hybrid work, having entered the workforce during or after the pandemic.
Prominent voices such as JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have warned that homeworking is holding younger workers back.
‘The young generation is being damaged by this,’ he said in a leaked recording of a private meeting. ‘They’re being left behind socially, in sharing ideas, and meeting people.’
For 22-year-old sports marketing agent Lucy Blitz, the office makes everything easier.
‘Actually being able to speak to my colleagues and managers face-to-face if there’s an issue is easier than communicating over Slack, which I can’t stand,’ she told the Financial Times.
Gen Z are the most enthusiastic about office attendance, according to a recent survey
Strategy analyst Johnnie Dowd, also 22, said that one of the motivations for younger workers attending the office is living in small apartments without comfortable home offices.
‘I basically end up hunching over my laptop, whereas I can go into the office, have a huge desk with all these monitors and a really well-regulated temperature,’ Dowd explained.
The young worker also wants to ‘interact and be social . . . my vision of my twenties is not being sat at home with lots of Zoom calls.’
However, while Gen Z were the most enthusiastic about returning to the office, they also appreciate flexibility.
The group said their ideal number of days in person was 2.6, rather than returning full time.
Company wide mandates for minimum office attendance are becoming more common.
Most recently Google announced that many workers who had previously been cleared for home working would now have to attend the office for a minimum of three days a week.
If staff do not comply they will face losing their jobs, the company said last week.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is in favor of return to office mandates
Younger workers appreciate a flexible arrangement with some days working from home too
Bryan Berthold says in-office mandates can make workers feel they’re not trusted
Google is forcing some remote workers to return to the office for at least three days a week
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However, Bryan Berthold, global lead of workplace experience at Cushman & Wakefield told the FT mandates can make workers feel they’re not trusted.
‘You’ve let the cat out of the bag — it’s like going from high school to college, no one’s checking in on you,’ he explained.
‘The mandates are like going back to high school. It’s hard to build trust.’
18 per cent of Gen Z respondents to a Deloitte survey that employer mandates meant their productivity had actually decreased.
As well as private companies the federal government is also pushing workers back to the office.
‘Study after study shows that employees are more productive, more focused, and more collaborative when working in the office rather than at-home,’ a White House spokesperson said in January.
‘It’s one of President Trump’s top priorities to make the federal government more efficient for American taxpayers.’
An eagerness to return to the office might convince bosses that young staff are not all bad – after recent research said companies are axing Gen Z workers in record time.
A survey by Intelligent.com in September found that six in ten employers had already let go of some of the college graduates they hired earlier in 2024
One in seven the employers said they also might not hire fresh college grads next year after finding a raft of problems with young workers.
Business leaders listed concerns in areas such as communications skills and professionalism that made them wary of hiring Gen Z.