Survey: Gen-Z Is Having A Harder Time With Work-Life Balance During Pandemic

The pandemic has completely transformed the global workplace environment, making remote work the new normal and shifting business communication and resources from offline to online.

Professionals of all ages have had to adapt to the new digital workplace, and a new survey by CommercialCafe found that Generation Z (Gen Z) professionals are surprisingly having the most difficult time balancing work life and home life under the new conditions.

The survey included 1,549 professional respondents and asked several questions about life in a socially distanced workplace. The survey found more than half of respondents are still working from home at this point.

Work-Life Balance: Gen Z, professionals born after 1996, were by far the least satisfied of any age group with their current work-life balance. The results are somewhat surprising given Gen Z grew up in the internet age.

While 75% of Baby Boomers, 68% of Gen Xers and 73% of Millennials reported being satisfied with their current work-life balance, only 45% of Gen Z respondents felt the same. At the same time, 27% of Gen Z respondents reported being dissatisfied with their work-life balance, 11% higher than any other generation.

In addition, 37% of Gen Z professionals say their work-life balance has gotten worse since the pandemic began compared to only 22% of Millennials and 24% of Gen Xers.

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Work Stress Carrying Over: Gen Z professionals are also the worst about allowing workplace stress carries over into their personal lives. The survey found 56% of Gen Z respondents say workplace stress impacts their personal lives either “some” or “a lot.” That percentage is significantly lower for Millennials (46%), Gen Xers (45%) and Baby Boomers (34%).

TV was the most common way for employees of all ages to de-stress after a long workday, but Gen Z professionals also rely much more heavily on video games to de-stress than other generations.

Gen Z professionals report getting roughly the same amount of sleep as the other generations, yet 40% of them still report feeling tired compared to 29% of Millennials, 31% of Gen Xers and just 19% of Baby Boomers.

Benzinga’s Take: It’s difficult to draw any conclusions about why Gen Z professionals are more dissatisfied with their work-life balance without additional information. Younger employees may simply have higher expectations than older generations, they may be facing a more demanding workload or they may simply not yet have learned how to balance work and personal life in a healthy way.

(Photo by Grzegorz Walczak on Unsplash)