Work like millennials and Gen Zers

  Work like millennials and Gen Zers

“Kids today just don’t know the value of hard work!” is something you’ve probably heard older adults mutter about younger adults. Maybe you’ve muttered it yourself! But that “get off my lawn” attitude, as Bruce Feiler, author of The Search, calls it, fails to appreciate one of the great gifts millennials and Gen Zers have given their elders.

 When they embarked on their careers, many people now in their 40s, 50s, and 60s initially “got on what I call the ‘should train.’ I should be doing that. I’m expected to follow this path. I had to sell my soul to a company. I had to do what my parents wanted me to do,” says Feiler, 58. But Gen Zers and millennials have led the charge to push employers to provide more fluid schedules and prioritize positive contributions to their industry or community, and they’ve normalized changing jobs frequently to find work that aligns better with their values. 

These cohorts, Feiler says, have actually “saved work in a lot of ways. We’re lucky to be learning from the younger people around us to embrace change more often. It’s a very positive thing.”