For decades now, American workers have adhered to an unspoken deal that, in order to be successful professionally, some sacrifices need to be made. Whether it be checking work emails after dinner, taking work calls while on vacation, or being willing to be available to your boss on a Sunday, these behaviors became commonplace demonstrations of professional commitment. No one ever said any of it out loud, but through osmosis, employees came to accept that behavior as the standard in order to glean the professional rewards that they were conditioned to value.
But what if all those sacrifices weren’t worth it?
A new report from Software Finder, a software comparison platform, poses some interesting questions about the deal we’ve made with the workplace. In a survey of 1,006 American workers, 71% of respondents felt pressured to be available outside of working hours. Millennials and Gen X reported slightly higher levels of pressure, with 72% stating they felt pressure to respond to work after hours, compared with 65% of Gen Z. However, the real takeaway might be that 69% of respondents felt that their after-hours availability had not meaningfully impacted their careers, and just 8% directly linked a promotion to being available outside of working hours.
We’ve grown accustomed to the narrative that Gen Z is breaking workplace norms, often speculating that they lack the ambition or commitment of their predecessors. However, these numbers make us think: Rather than wonder why Gen Z seems less willing to conform to a workplace culture that expects them to be always on, maybe we should be wondering why older generations are still conforming to a workplace culture that seems to offer little reward.
The workplace bargain we inherited
Millennials and Gen X might’ve come into the workforce under different circumstances, but they both found themselves in an environment that seemed to demand a certain kind of professionalism. Someone who was dependable, loyal, and even willing to do more than what was asked. Technology enabled those behaviors to extend beyond the office. Instead of working late, you could work at home.
Now, is there anything wrong with occasionally making yourself available outside working hours? Of course not. Some responsibilities require flexibility, and different stages of our careers come with different demands. The issue isn’t with occasionally being willing to be available outside working hours. The issue is when that willingness becomes an unofficial barometer of professional commitment in an environment where no one has ever really defined what you’re expected to do and what you can expect in return.
Which brings us back to these generational differences. Gen Z hasn’t shown that they don’t value hard work, and the survey certainly can’t support the claim that they’re resisting workplace norms. However, younger workers may be coming into the workplace with a different set of assumptions about professional commitment and personal time. Having seen the effects of burnout and economic instability on older generations, they may be more likely to question whether constant availability is a fair exchange for professional success.
Performative availability
There’s another angle to this conversation that I think is critically important. In many workplaces, responsiveness has become synonymous with responsibility. If you respond to a message at 9 p.m., you’re a dedicated employee. If you respond at the start of the next workday, you’re lazy.
I call this performative availability , the compulsion to demonstrate professional commitment based on visibility instead of the value or importance of your contributions.
This matters because organizations don’t always recognize the behaviors that they claim to value. Managers will tell you that it’s not about the hours, it’s about the results. However, they might also tell you that you’re a dedicated employee because you respond to messages late at night. Another manager might tout work-life balance, only to send employees emails on the weekend and expect immediate responses. These contradictions create expectations that aren’t written down, but that can be remarkably influential.
Software Finder’s survey responses complicate matters further. While most respondents admitted that their after-hours availability had not meaningfully impacted their careers, some employees who identified as always on reported that their constant availability had meaningfully helped them in their careers. This suggests that the rewards might not be nonexistent, just uneven.
Are older generations compounding the issue?
The most intriguing possibility is that millennials and Gen X aren’t just experiencing these workplace expectations. In fact, as they ascend to supervisory or leadership roles, they might be compounding these expectations.
Imagine a manager who spent their career answering emails on weekends, saying yes to last-minute requests, and making personal sacrifices in order to be professionally successful. Even if they now recognize the cost of those behaviors, they might still equate availability with commitment because that was what they were taught throughout their career. Unintentionally, they’re asking younger employees to demonstrate professional commitment in the same way.
Again, this isn’t necessarily hypocritical behavior. This is how workplace norms survive. Employees observe what behaviors are rewarded and, over time, internalize those expectations in order to pass them on to others. Practices that weren’t formally expected become an organization’s definition of professionalism.
In my own research on Gen Z leadership preferences , this emphasis on fairness, structure, and clear expectations has come up time and again. These qualities are important because employees shouldn’t have to read between the lines to understand whether looking at messages during dinner will impact how they’re evaluated by their supervisor. Employees shouldn’t have to make personal sacrifices in order to demonstrate that they care about their work.
Leaders can start to fix this by differentiating between actual performance needs and performative expectations. They can set guidelines for after-hours communication, stop rewarding performative availability, and start rewarding employees for their actual contributions to the organization instead of how often they make themselves available.
A question for every generation
Workplace disagreements can easily devolve into generational disagreements. Gen Z won’t just abide by workplace norms, millennials are burned out, and Gen X just learned to deal with the demands of professional life. However, these broad brushstrokes miss the forest for the trees. Employees of all generations are dealing with workplace expectations that were formed by organizations, not employees.
Gen Z may not have uncovered a game-changing approach to work. Younger workers may simply be questioning workplace norms that previous generations didn’t have the opportunity, or willingness, to question.
And maybe that’s the opportunity. Perhaps organizations can start questioning some of the workplace norms that employees are expected to conform to.
Because if employees are being evaluated on how available they are, and not on what they’re actually capable of contributing to an organization, it’s not a generational issue.
It’s a managerial issue.
