Dogs & cats living together...mass hysteria!
Or: Junior AND senior employees will drive changes in #TheNowOfWork
A couple of weeks ago, Optionality’s Conversationality featured a post-webinar deeper dive interview conducted by Optionality member Joanna Bloor with our advisor
and his colleague (both from The Harris Poll). Hearing Libby speak about a generational shift in perspectives about work and its role in one’s identity and what percentage of one’s life it should consume, I had a bit of an epiphany (and prediction). Those who are most senior and most junior in today’s workforce are actually going to work in tandem to rewrite the rules of work.If any organization’s leadership thinks they can simply replace senior people who are pushing back on continuing 20th century work standards by hiring a bunch more junior people who make much less, they may be disappointed.
Backing up: When Jory and I launched Optionality, we talked a lot about how people like us…Gen X and Young Boomers who have spent 2-3 decades in the workforce…have reached a point in our lives and careers where we no longer want to pursue business as usual.
Hear more of the Optionality origin story on the Hidden Human podcast, which features Kelly Meerbott in conversation with Elisa and Jory.
We’ve learned our lesson about putting all our eggs in one employment basket.
We’ve learned our lesson about sacrificing personal needs for professional ones.
We’ve learned how much we crave meaning and purpose.
So we want more options, more irons in the fire, more diversified revenue streams, more interests and pursuits.
Some or all of the above.
Whether any one of us is pursuing an optionality-driven path at any given moment, Jory and I believe that most of us who are seasoned in the workforce are, at least, optionality-curious.
Don’t miss next week’s Optionality’s member webinar, Managing the Anxiety of an Optionality-Driven Life. Featuring Morra Aarons-Mele and Minaa B, two experts at the intersection of mental health and work. Join us on Wednesday, May 22nd, at 12PM PT/3PM ET for tips and tactics to handle it when an optionality-driven life brings freedom...and fear. Or allows for balance...and pushes buttons around boundaries.
But The Harris Poll data reminds me that it’s not just us. Those who are newest to the workforce, the Young Millennials and Elder Gen Zs, have already observed what it may have taken me and my cohort a decade or two to realize.
How so? According to The Harris Poll data, Americans in general have rethought what makes a happy life thanks to the new ways many of us figured out how to work in the wake of pandemic lockdowns. Americans in general have also evolved their view of what defines success and quality of life, moving away from defining it as what you do, how much you make or can spend, or who you are as a worker.
For Millennials and GenZ the numbers skew higher than the total numbers.
Here are some specifics from a LinkedIn post that Libby published post-Conversationality:
--> ⏳ 71% of Americans say the quality of life today is determined by “how you spend your time” rather than “how much money you make.”
--> 💨 61% of Americans agreed that the “concept of what a happy life would mean for me has shifted during the pandemic” (Gen Z: 68%, Mill: 74%),
--> 🤥 55% of Americans thought they “have been sold false promises around what will create happiness in life” (Gen Z: 66%, MLS: 70%).
--> 👟 68% of workers care more about who they are outside of work than they do about their work identity.
--> 🌲 68% agree that their work doesn’t dictate how successful a person they are overall (Gen Z: 76%).
It’s clearly not just seasoned professionals who will be a forcing function for new ways to work. We'll be joined by the newest generation in the workforce because they have seen the down side of the traditional approach to work from the get-go as they enter the workforce. To Libby’s point, “they've learned from their Gen X/Young Boomer parents and are wearing different colored glasses .”
Think about what someone coming out of college this year will have seen in their 23-ish years: Disruption after disruption:
· They were born just before or in the wake of 9/11
· 9/11 occurred in the middle of a dot.com bust that took down more than tech
· 2008’s financial crash and ensuing Great Recession tightened the job market and access to capital
· It also gave birth to the gig economy…moving more and more workers from employee to contractor, with fewer benefits and less upside potential
· More layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, automation; less unionization or employer-based retirement provisions
· And, of course, the pandemic, the lockdown, the Great Resignation, the Not-So-Great RTO Pushback™️, and everything we’re living through now
Plus: During these past 20+ years, there has been ever more access to and conversation about wellness, mental health, the importance of connection and community, the existential climate crisis, and so much globalized information that has delivered tremendous hope or generated outrage and fear.
They obviously weren’t in the workforce during all of those big moments, but they were observing them and seeing how they affected their role models, older siblings, parents, etc. Those events formed a worldview and a sense of self. Is it any wonder those entering and relatively new to the workforce are motivating, measuring, and centering themselves to meet a different moment? (I realize that no generation escapes momentous life, national, and world events, but come on…the last 20 years have been a lot! And I say that as someone who was working in some form or another for the previous 20 years too.)
So, here we are. Perfectly positioned to link arms to rewrite the rules of work. Together.
Here’s the part where I ask you: If you are new to the workforce or have hit an inflection point as an experienced professional, do you sense this commonality when you speak to people outside your generation? Can you envision Get Off My Lawn Boomers + Entitled Whippersnappers working together to change the world of work to benefit us all? I can, and I’m pretty excited by the idea; how about you?