There is a particular silence that settles over a Gen Z’s office desk at five o’clock. For one generation, that silence used to be a quiet competition, for who would be the last to switch off their monitor, who would answer the late email, who would be ‘seen’ staying.But for the youngest people now entering the workforce, that ritual is starting to look strange. They are not staying late to prove a point. When the clock runs past their shift timing, so does the workday.Gen Z grew up watching their parents invest their evenings, weekends, and sadly, their health for jobs that did not always love them back.And, this generation is the one that has experienced a rollercoaster ride while growing up, through the pandemic, a rise in expenses, costs, and an unstable job market that has rarely felt dependable.That backdrop has quietly rewired how they think about work, not as the centre of a life, but as one part of it. They arrive with questions older colleagues never thought to ask out loud, and a willingness to walk away from situations and setups that don’t respect their time or their wellbeing.And what follows is more or less a retrospection of how this generation is changing, or at least trying to do away with the unwritten rules of the workplace.Probably, this is why an empty desk in the middle of the afternoon may say more than it seems.
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“I don’t see the point in appearing busy for the sake of it and not being productive”
Today, we might often walk down many office bays and spot a tidy workstation, logged off, and empty while the day is technically still running. For a growing share of Gen Z workers, it’s simply the look of someone who finished what they came to do and probably did not see a second reason to perform the rest.Gen Zs born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, is the first generation to grow up fully surrounded by the internet, smartphones, and social media, which innately makes them true digital natives.As a result, they tend to be tech-savvy, socially aware, and comfortable with rapid change. Gen Z is also popularly referred to as the most diverse generation in history, and many of these people are now either entering or are already a part of the workforce.
Work matters, but it is not everything!
According to Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, just 49% of Gen Z said work defined their identity, compared with 62% of millennials. Rather than identifying themselves with their job designations or long hours, this group is more inclined towards admiring peers who have built a healthy work-life balance.As Abha Khanna, a counselling psychologist, explained, “Gen Z believes in prioritising self, they have a clear concept of Weekends rather than work-life balance….Millennials are a generation that learned your job is ur identity, which is now an alienated, outdated thought; hence Gen Z value their time and prefer putting it into different activities, this in no way means they lack results.”She also says that Gen Zs are also about making the most out of what they get as quickly as possible. “Earlier, appearance used to matter, but now with the help of technologies, everything is getting quantified, which has reduced everything to numbers. So productivity is good business, achieving targets and making money.”
How do GenZs look at ‘presenteeism’ and being ‘performative’ at the workplace?
Presenteeism is the habit of being physically present at work, or staying logged on, without actually being productive, more often than not, just to look committed.Similarly, being performative at work is like the quiet ‘theatre’ of appearing busy, lingering at the desk, or sending late-night emails to just appear being dedicated or doing more than the others. For many Gen Z workers, this feels pointless and even dishonest. They’d rather finish the job well and log off than perform loyalty by the clock.Anusha who recently joined her internship as a journalist intern at the desk, explained her take on this. ” After completing my work, I would inform my manager and leave, because I don’t think there is any need to stay here after my work is done. I have other things to do, that’s why I think it is important to leave after finishing my tasks. It’s better to do something productive than just be here to just be present or pretending that I am very busy”, she said.None of this means Gen Z is allergic to effort. In fact, they might happily work evenings or weekends when something genuinely needs it. What they resist is the theatre of busyness for the sake of staying visible long after the work is done, just to look committed. The empty desk at 3 PM, in that sense, isn’t laziness. It’s a refusal to pretend.
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Does working long hours just to look busy and dedicated impact people in the long run?
The stress picture explains a lot. Deloitte’s 2022 survey found that, among those who regularly feel stressed, 34% pointed to their workload and 32% to a poor work-life balance as major drivers of anxiety. Apart from this, one in four said simply not being able to be themselves at work weighed on them.For a generation that keeps guards on burnout up close, that boundary feels less like entitlement and more like self-preservation.Khanna adds, “In order to keep up with the office appearance the person misses out on well-being, on the personal front, and dissatisfaction sets in. It often results into an internal conflict of ‘what I want to do and what I should do’, leading to frustrations and ultimately causing many issues in life.”The instinct to question pointless effort doesn’t switch on the day someone gets a job offer. If grown professionals are quite unwilling to ‘perform’ busyness, it’s worth tracing where that refusal first takes shape, long before the first paycheck. For many, the answer reaches back further than the office, all the way to the classroom.
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So, does this mindset appear in folks as early as school?
Schools are often the cradles of mindset or where basic values first take root. Today’s students are far quicker to ask ‘why’ is something done only in a particular way, rather than simply following it, and they tend to prefer getting things done efficiently over sticking to routine for its own sake.Where earlier generations accepted “because that’s how it’s done,” this generation wants a reason that fits in logically or reasonably. That questioning instinct doesn’t fade after graduation, it follows them straight into the workplace, where Gen Z resists busywork, rigid hierarchies, and tradition without purpose.As a school Principal with over 19 years of experience in the field, Shilpi Nigam explained, “Dealing with students for nearly two decades now, I see a visible difference between how students were earlier and what their mindset is now.”She adds, “Earlier, if we told students this is the rule, they would just follow it. Today, they want to know the reason behind it. They’ll ask, ‘But why do we have to do it this way?’ Sometimes, I feel it’s a fair question. If not being difficult, they might just want things to make sense to them before they accept them, and this could just be the dawn of a brighter future rather than just following norms blindly.”Gen Z isn’t taking a U-turn from working hard; they’re changing the perspective of what it should look like. They’re asking questions about purpose, boundaries, and honesty in the workplace that every generation has perhaps quietly felt, but rarely said out loud. And in doing so, they might just be calling out to the rest of us toward a healthier conversation about what work is actually for.
