4 Reasons Gen-Z Employees Are
Finally Returning to the Office
Business
owners looking to attract, engage and retain these critical workers need a
hybrid plan in place and a comprehensive program to address all of their needs,
desires, and expectations.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN
Aug 19, 2025
A new Gallup report
suggests that the work-from-home tide has decisively turned among younger
employees, and the Gen Z newbies in particular are now the group of employees
most interested in flocking back to the nest—at least on a hybrid basis. It
seems that the bloom is finally off the rose and the gig economy fantasy of
working—occasionally in your PJs and according to your own schedule and
timetable—has collided with many of the immutable facts of life concerning how
the world and especially hierarchical and bureaucratic organizations actually
operate.
I’ll detail these
epiphanies and painful discoveries later because smart employers need to
address them, but, as the pitiful saying among the now-disgraced and departed
heads of some of our grandest academic institutions used to go: “the context
matters.” And the story starts with COVID, which for about half the country’s
workforce looked for a moment like this century’s great
emancipation.
If you asked owners and
managers about their entire COVID experience, many would tell you their biggest
issue was they couldn’t get rid of their kids quickly enough by sending them
back to their schools which were closed. As a result, they had to deal with
childcare issues that they had never imagined. Pets were much less of an issue
since you could just bring them to the office, as long as you had an office to
go to rather than a grocery store or a factory floor.
This is why the Gallup
survey showed a rock-solid 35 percent of Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials who
were perfectly happy to continue working exclusively at home. They had their
homes, their positions and perks were secure, they didn’t feel like they had a
lot that was new to learn, they were totally invested in preserving and
protecting the status quo, and frankly, they really didn’t want to deal with
all the noise, angst, confusion and anger that’s
a growing part of the new normal in the workplace.
On the other hand, less
than 25 percent of those born after 1997 which is to say the bulk of the
workforce of the future — were interested in remote employment and permanent
WFH. The overwhelming majority of Gen Zers—more than 70 percent—said that
a hybrid solution was the only way to go. They also clearly said that they
don’t want to return to the office full time. In fact, between 4 percent and 10
percent of all the cohorts surveyed said that they had no interest in ever
returning to the office on a full-time basis and working on-site
again.
So, it’s abundantly
clear that new business leaders — along with any entrepreneur or business owner
looking to attract, engage and retain these critical workers and their inchoate
talents — needs to have a hybrid plan in place and a comprehensive program to
address all of the needs, desires, and expectations of the new wave of workers
as they return to the office.
Of course, planning in a
vacuum without clearly understanding what these folks are looking for is like
winking at your date in the dark. You know what you’re doing, but no one else
does. You can plan all the plans you like, but you can’t plan results without
the appropriate inputs and data.
Here are the four most
repeatedly expressed concerns that are driving the Gen Zers back to the office.
Your plan, approach and strategies should address as many of these issues as
possible. In addition, regularly acknowledging these issues and reinforcing the
newbies’ belief that they are critically important matters is crucial to your
success in demonstrating to these team members that you’re listening, that
they’re being heard, and that you’re taking action to address each of these
areas.
1. There’s no one at
home to learn from. There’s no watercooler.
It turns out that you
can’t learn everything from books, manuals or YouTube. You learn a great
deal by doing, but the real key to stepping up your game is by watching,
listening to, and learning from older, smarter and more experienced players in
your company. Examples, war stories, tried and true solutions to recurring problems,
and even just gossip around the watercooler or the Keurig machine are all
essential tools and channels to gather additional knowledge, “tricks of the
trade” and important cautions and instructions on how and when to deal with
certain others in the firm or tough customers out in the wild.
Needless to say, you get
next to none of this at home sitting in front of your monitor. It’s long been
known that far more communication and intelligence is passed between peers
before and after meetings (or Zoom sessions) than when the meeting is going on
and the whole world is listening and watching what’s being said. You’ve got to
be there to be part of the informal conversations which is where the real
action always is.
2. There’s no one at
home to share the ups or the downs with.
Entrepreneurs learn
early on that it’s not smart, helpful or productive to bring your problems home
from work. Sharing the pain and the bumps in the road just multiplies the
people with bad stomachs and sleepless nights. And frankly, new business
builders also learn that bragging about the wins doesn’t buy you much goodwill
at home either. Doubling the sales at Smart Mart doesn’t really matter to a
spouse stuck at home with a sick kid while you’re locked in the basement on a
customer call.
It’s your peers and
buddies at the office—the other soldiers in the struggles—who can really
understand and appreciate what you’re going through and what you’ve
accomplished as well as the sacrifices that those things have entailed and
required. Company, community and camaraderie are a far more important emotional
component of our work which we don’t appreciate and value enough until we’re
without these things.
3. No one’s a hero at
home. Out of sight is out of mind.
Not surprisingly, feats
of remarkable salesmanship, clever coding solutions and great marketing ploys
aren’t really understood or appreciated at home by your spouse and kids. You
just don’t get the strokes. They’re civilians, not sophisticates, supplicants
or soldiers. There’s no one at home who sees how hard you’re working or frankly
always understands why it matters.
And, even more
importantly, absence these days doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, it makes
you forgettable and invisible to the guys in charge, the ones handing out new
projects and assignments, and those making promotions. It’s dawning on people
sitting on the sidelines that the bus is passing them by.
4. There’s no one at
home to keep you on task. It’s too easy to lose focus.
Chores, calls, errands
and kids are all flow busters and make it far too easy to get distracted,
interrupted and pulled away from getting the work finished that needs to get
done in a timely and professional fashion. It’s no longer cute to have your
kids or your cat busting into your conference calls. It’s a reminder to others
– like it or not and accurate or not – that you’re not fully engaged, totally
focused, and a serious player anymore. It’s also too darn easy to take a break,
spend an hour online doom scrolling, watch a zillion videos on YouTube, catch a
ball game, or just kick back and take a crack at your favorite video
game.
Needless to
say—productivity problems aside—none of this is a good look for those looking
to get ahead. Boston Consulting Group released a report a little while ago that
75 percent of employees working at home were just as or more productive than
they were in the office. I’d like some of what they’ve been
smoking.
The bottom line is, the
newbies are coming back because they’ve realized that it’s lonely at home, that
you can’t do much of anything important all by yourself, that your friends and
family aren’t a substitute for being an important part of the team at the
office, and that, if they want to get ahead, they’ve got to be in the rooms
where it happens.
