Workers Are Losing Confidence in Their Employers
How This New Technology Could Reduce Your Company's Dependency on Batteries
Employers: Parents Need Child Care Benefits Now More Than Ever
Having Trouble Raising Investment in Your Startup? Sofia Coppola Probably Understands How You Feel
The SBA Revamps the Federal Contracting Program for Small, Disadvantaged Businesses
The Best Super Bowl Advertising Strategy Doesn't Require a Celebrity Spokesperson
How a Hoodie That Says 'Everyone Watches Women's Sports' Sold Out in Minutes, Courtesy of Dawn Staley
Thanks to a parade of TikTok trends about young workers insisting on work-life balance -- from "bare minimum Mondays" to "lazy girl jobs" to "quiet quitting" -- a popular pastime of the older 30s has become complaining that kids these days just don't get it. Rather than put in the hard work that older generations did, this popular lament goes, Gen Z are lazy, entitled, or delusional about real life.
The latest ammunition in this tired conversation is a new survey of 916 adults aged 18 to 26 from ResumeBuilder that found fully 44 percent of Gen Z workers have taken "hush trips," i.e. a trip they didn't tell their boss about and went on pretending they were still back home. A few more statistics from the survey are sure to fuel even more hand-wringing about youthful slacking:
65 percent used a virtual background to trick their employer
One-third worked two hours or less per day
The majority report their deception was never detected
But if you as a business owner or manager are outraged by these figures, I (and a bunch of experts) would like to point out -- the problem is likely you, and not your young employees.
It is certainly not ideal that nearly half of Gen Z employees are lying to their bosses about their location, but this reality begs the question: Why do they feel they have to be dishonest? Since most hush trip takers are never found out, it's a fair bet that their productivity and output stayed high enough that no one noticed.
This reminds me of a grumpy older gentleman who stopped me in the elevator of my building to complain about my well-behaved little dog a full six months after I got her (as allowed by my lease). She would bark, he complained, and mess up the common areas. She's already been here half a year, I pointed out, and he hadn't even noticed. Didn't that undermine his argument just a little bit?
The situation is similar for those critical of Gen Z hush trip takers. If the impact on their work is so little they can easily get away with it, why do you as their boss think where they work for those few days matters in the first place?
And I am not the only one who thinks the hush trip mini-trend points more to poor management and outdated ideas about remote work than to young employees being lazy. Reddit/HumanResources hosted a lively discussion of the survey where many HR pros weighed in on the side of those taking secret trips.
"I can genuinely say good for them," says one such response. "I'm a firm believer that all that matters is if the job is getting done. If someone can take a trip and still get their job done, I'm fine with them doing so."
Offering further evidence that hush trips are likely more about controling bosses than employees shirking work, a recent survey from software companies Qatalog and GitLab found that remote knowledge workers waste more than an hour a day "performing" productivity for their boss. This involves doing things like sitting in on useless meetings, strategically timing updates, or responding to email or Sack messages that could wait just to prove you're at your desk.
"The dramatic workplace shifts of the pandemic gave us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how we work forever. We could have restructured work to be asynchronous, allowing us to build work around our lives, but we failed. Now, our research shows we're falling back into old habits--ones that should have been cast aside when we had the chance," commented Qatalog CEO Tariq Rauf in the report.
The rise of hush trips isn't evidence of Gen Z laziness. It's just another example of pointless productivity theater demanded by old-school bosses. If your employee can head off for a short trip and have it impact her performance so little you don't even notice, why would you stop her from going on the trip in the first place?
Sign up for our weekly roundup on the latest in tech
Privacy Policy
Almost Half of Young Workers Have Taken a 'Hush Trip.' They're Not Lazy, Their Managers Are
8
1
31.01.2024
Workers Are Losing Confidence in Their Employers
How This New Technology Could Reduce Your Company's Dependency on Batteries
Employers: Parents Need Child Care Benefits Now More Than Ever
Having Trouble Raising Investment in Your Startup? Sofia Coppola Probably Understands How You Feel
The SBA Revamps the Federal Contracting Program for Small, Disadvantaged Businesses
The Best Super Bowl Advertising Strategy Doesn't Require a Celebrity Spokesperson
How a Hoodie That Says 'Everyone Watches Women's Sports' Sold Out in Minutes, Courtesy of Dawn Staley
Thanks to a parade of TikTok trends about young workers insisting on work-life balance -- from "bare minimum Mondays" to "lazy girl jobs" to "quiet quitting" -- a popular pastime of the older 30s has become complaining that kids these days just don't get it. Rather than put in the hard work that older generations did, this popular lament goes, Gen Z are lazy, entitled, or delusional about real life.
The latest ammunition in........
© Inc.com
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
