I relish working from home.
I enjoy taking calls while wearing pajama pants. I love being able to take snuggle breaks with my dog, midday hot yoga classes, and making myself delicious smoothies whenever the mood strikes. Most importantly, as someone with a neurodivergent brain, working from home enables me to create a productive environment that suits me best instead of the other way around. Having been in the workforce for well over a decade, I don’t feel as if I’m missing career opportunities because I only have virtual interactions with coworkers. But there is an entire cohort of young workers who do feel they’re missing out — because, in some ways, they are.
A recent study from the career site Indeed reveals that 92% of Gen Z employees who have never worked full-time in an in-person office regret missing out on a more traditional work experience. Eighty-five percent of them worry that starting out as remote employees have set them back in developing professional “soft skills.” They’re not necessarily wrong.
Many younger, white-collar workers graduated during the pandemic and started their first jobs from their bedrooms. Fast-forward two years: They are still working from home. The problem is, while some younger workers may be eager to return to the office to learn from and engage with colleagues, their senior peers — those already equipped with institutional knowledge, strong professional networks, and refined management skills — are not.
This resistance makes sense. After all, senior employees tend to be juggling more commitments and different priorities, such as families and care-taking responsibilities. The promise of free pizza or a post-work happy hour isn’t enough to lure them back into enduring a long commute to the office.
But this puts their younger peers at a disadvantage. While the absence of casual conversation in the kitchen or a spontaneous office drop-in with the boss may seem trivial, these are actually crucial for building relationships, community, and ultimately, career development. Not having your team present makes it difficult to spark the small interactions that can have a major impact.
Ashley Whillans, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies the modern workplace, confirms in her research that younger folks, earlier in their careers, have “missed out” during the past couple of years, especially in creating social connections, gaining competency skills, and learning to lead teams.
“Informal learning moments go missing in virtual,” Whillans says. There are often more people on virtual calls, but there are fewer people who have an understanding of what a given meeting was about, she explains.
Whillans also notes that younger people who have been promoted to management positions may lack key management skills involving social interaction and team-leading: “They might be so focused on the to-do list that they’re missing out on relationship-building.”
As companies continue to debate what the workplace should look like in 2022, Gen Z'ers are struggling to find opportunities to meaningfully connect with their team members virtually. “If everyone on the team signs on and then signs off, you don’t really feel like you’re part of the culture,” says Annie P., a 27-year-old who works remotely as a user-experience designer, who asked to withhold her full name to speak candidly about her career.
“When you’re in the office, you can jump into a conversation more easily,” she continues. “When you’re doing this virtually, it’s this intense one-on-one situation.” In her previous job, Annie says, she never had the chance to get to know her boss, a “legend” in the agency world, because everyone was working remotely.
“I only got to talk to her when we had an actual meeting scheduled on the books,” Annie recalls. “It was rough. I mean, we did schedule one-on-ones, but it’s not like I could hear something funny she had said [in the hallway] and bring it up or even ask her, ‘Hey, do you want to grab coffee?’”
Forcing employees to return to the office will not fix this. But listening to them and being open to offering different incentives for managers and junior folks might. “People do what they’re measured on, so maybe if you had a [key performance indicator] for the number of times a manager comes to the office and has a lunch with their team…” suggests Whillans. “Could they get a bonus based on the number of team meetings they have in person?”
Whillans warns that companies will have to maintain a “delicate balance” because flexibility does benefit people, whether it’s “people from minority groups who might not feel as accepted in their organization” or working parents who rely on flexible work policies to help them take care of their kids while also fulfilling their job requirements.
Younger workers, too, likely enjoy the option to work remotely while on a trip with family or friends, or simply to avoid dull office chit-chat or a long commute. And now that mask mandates have been lifted in most workplaces, employees with disabilities or chronic illnesses may feel safer or more comfortable continuing to work from home. Adds Whillans, “An organization would have to be careful that the incentive felt like a reward as opposed to a punishment.”
For younger employees who crave community or are concerned about missing out on growth, Whillans suggests they create interaction opportunities, even if it’s not with people directly on their team. Could you go into the local office? Are there a couple of people who also go in on a regular basis who are adjacent to your team or you could go to lunch with? Is there a separate workspace you could visit, like a WeWork or coffee space, that would make you feel more strongly connected to a community that isn’t necessarily your office?
It may seem scary to be the one suggesting new ideas if you’re more junior, but Whillans is a proponent of speaking up. “We often worry that asking for a change in the way our team is working will negatively reflect on us,” she says. “But our managers actually see us more positively and [as more] committed.”
If you ask your manager to meet up and can tie it to a specific reason, like to debrief your quarter as a team or celebrate a win, that’s even better. “You could even say, ‘Hey, I've been reading some research that brainstorming meetings are more generative together,’” says Whillans. “‘Do you think we could try to organize as many people [as possible] who could make it for a meeting that's our white-boarding session in two weeks? Could we try to do that in person and then go to lunch?’”
“The more initiative younger people take, they shouldn't feel like it will be received as a signal of discontentment or that they're complaining,” Whillans says reassuringly. “Rather, their manager will think of them favorably for asking as opposed to it coming at the cost of their reputation. Don’t be afraid of negotiating what you want your work to look like.”