Gen Z staff need to be within the workplace—however don’t need the startup perks of yesteryear.
“Students tell us: Cool, your ping-pong table with kombucha-on-tap is really nice, super fun, but I want to know what’s going to make a difference in my life,” mentioned Handshake cofounder Ben Christensen onstage at Fortune’s Office Innovation Summit on Monday. “They’re looking for things like learning and development opportunities. They’re saying: ‘Where’s your stipend that can help me invest in myself and my growth a few years from now?’”
Scholar mortgage compensation is also “essential to them as they think about their next job,” he mentioned.
Christensen added that, opposite to standard perception maybe, Gen Z overwhelmingly needs in-person engagement at work.
“We actually have seen that 81% of students are interested in having some degree of in person connection in their first role,” mentioned Christensen. “47% of them expect to continue to want that throughout their career. And so whether you’re an in-person company, a hybrid company, or a remote company, you should think about how you foster those in-person connections—especially as they’re coming into that first job… They’re looking for people to be their mentors, to learn from, to understand how to navigate the workplace. They’re eagerly and overly seeking that.”
Gen Z’s need to go to the workplace is inherently located in a a lot bigger discourse round workplace versus distant work. As that battle performs out, Marcelo Lebre, cofounder and president of Distant, advised the viewers that what we perceive because the distant workforce has advanced solely.
“The pandemic showed the world that working distributed and lean was possible,” mentioned Lebre.
“That sort of created this immediate boom where everyone was hiring everywhere. And I mean anywhere. Then, people started to learn from them, right? For some companies, it does work. We’re no longer talking about the freelancer margaritas, going to Bali or something like that. We’re talking about full, massive workforces distributed across the world.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
