How Gen Z are proudly shirking from home – and taking the economy down with them

Three years have passed since Boris Johnson solemnly ordered the first lockdown, and offices across the country shut down.

Britons were told to work from home where possible, while companies scrambled to reorganise themselves around a workforce primarily operating from home offices, spare bedrooms and kitchen tables.

In London, panicked white-collar workers scurried to trains far from the capital, their arms laden with laptops, monitors and keyboards. It’s hard to imagine that what followed was only supposed to last a few weeks before everything returned to normal.

But two years on from the last Covid restrictions, remote working still remains. Economists now fear the WFH revolution is helping to fuel Britain's productivity crisis.

Since January 2022, as much as a fifth of all jobs posted on job site Reed were either remote or “hybrid” roles (where workers can split their time between the office and home at their discretion).

For Generation Z, those born from 1997 onward, “hybrid” models of home and office work are all they have ever known.

Today’s 23-year-olds finished university degrees from home; took final exams in their bedrooms; and attended graduations over Zoom.

Now starting their first jobs, those same young people accept remote working as the default model. Most, figures suggest, seem to prefer it. A survey by Reed found just one in five preferred to be in the office full-time.

'I want to leave work at 4pm and go open water swimming'

But a glance at social media site TikTok shows all is not well in the home offices of twenty-somethings. Home working, or to be more accurate, home shirking, is a common pastime.

In one video, a corporate lawyer tracks his dwindling enthusiasm for keeping up appearances while working from home.

He begins in 2020, wearing a smart shirt and frantically typing. A year later he’s ditched the shirt, starting work late, and in the following year he’s working directly from his bed. By 2023, he’s simply on a stroll, headphones on and coffee in hand – his laptop nowhere in sight.

Another clip, by Canadian influencer Leo Haley, takes the form of a roleplay in which she discusses staying late to work on a project, under the proviso she will take the time back the following day.

Over a mock-up video call in which she plays both parts, Haley says to her manager: “Yes, I’ve arranged to stay late so I can assist with the launch. I will be ending work at 2 o’clock on Friday because I work a 40-hour week and, since overtime isn’t available, I’ll just take the extra hours that I’m working on Thursday and take the time off my day on Friday so it all evens out.”

When her manager protests, she continues: “I do care about this project, but I will not be donating my personal time to this company for free. Toodaloo!”

Videos tagged #wfh have been viewed close to 10 billion times, according to the app. Clearly, many of the clips are tongue-in-cheek and not intended to be taken seriously.

But a common thread begins to emerge watching them back-to-back – that of young people showing a reluctance to work beyond what is expected of them, particularly if they work from home. Much of the language is couched in terms of “asserting boundaries”, “knowing your worth”, and other ideas of self-care popular among Gen Z.

One 23-year-old, who spoke to The Telegraph anonymously, fearful of a reaction from his employer, denies a refusal to work overtime is evidence Gen Z is lazy.

He says: “I do what’s required at the moment because I’m of the view that, if I’m on minimum wage, I’m not gonna work myself to the bone if I’m not compensated for it.

“Frankly, if I don't get paid for overtime why should I be expected to provide more of a service? It makes no sense to do that. Ultimately I have the view that if I dropped dead my job vacancy would be up the next day.”

Lockdown, he argues, changed his perspective on working beyond the boundaries of a job description. “I realised I didn’t want to be working my life away achieving nothing,” he says.

“I don’t want to get to my death bed asking why at 22 I was working a little more for a company and making a little extra money. I won’t remember that – I’ll remember leaving at 4pm and going rock climbing and open water swimming.”

But experts worry that economic disaster looms unless young people are hauled back into the office – whether they like it or not. Liz Emerson, of the Intergenerational Foundation, a think tank that champions young people, argues young workers are missing out on crucial development by not being in an office.

She says: “Reduced participation in company culture and not being seen in the office may both hinder promotion for those staff members who choose to work from home.

“Younger workers also risk losing out on training, mentoring, and career progression if they are less visible in the office than their older colleagues. Do not underestimate water-cooler moments and the unconscious bias that comes from knowing one face over another.”

Andrew Monk, chief executive of investment firm VSA Capital, has long been a critic of home-working and mandates employees to be in the office. He says: “There are an awful lot of jobs where you need to be in the office swapping ideas. Younger people need to be learning from their elders.”

Once bustling city economies, Mr Monk adds, will be choked by fewer workers using trains and buying lunches locally. “You’re just at home vegetating and losing your social life,” he says.

It is against this backdrop that productivity in Britain has slumped. Historically, productivity, measured by how much output is produced for an hour of work, has grown by about 2pc every year. But in the first three months of 2023 output declined by 0.6pc compared to a year ago, and 1.4pc when compared to the end of 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Britain lags behind on the global stage. Of all the G7 countries, the UK ranks fourth in terms of productivity – 12pc behind France and 19pc behind the US, which ranked first. Meanwhile, Britain outperforms Canada and Italy by just 3pc and 6pc respectively, according to ONS data from 2021.

Grant Fritzner, the ONS’s chief economist, told the House of Lords Committee last month that countries with higher productivity rates “can afford higher rates of tax, they can afford to pay for better public services, and they can probably afford to have a better standard of living”.

Facing falling productivity, and an already tenuous position on the global stage, experts fear a generation reared on remote working will not be able to turn the tide.

‘I’m saving less money now, but it’s an investment in my career’

Niamh Cashell, 26, started her first job as a housing officer from home at the height of lockdown restrictions. The organisation had shuttered its offices to cut costs, opting instead for cheaper-to-run “hubs” its employees could use on an ad-hoc basis. “It was basically all home-based,” she says.

Ms Cashell recalls doing her job from her rented flat in Glasgow, sitting on a plastic kitchen chair in her bedroom, and taking distressing phone calls from vulnerable and sometimes suicidal tenants.

“I struggled to separate work from home,” she says. “When I was supposed to be working I was distracted by washing and doing stuff around the house, then working late to compensate. It affected my sleep and I wasn’t able to switch off.”

The experience proved isolating – Ms Cashell says she spoke to her managers once every two weeks. “I went whole weeks without speaking to another colleague. There was no one to ask questions to.”

When Ms Cashell voiced her distress, the company offered her free mindfulness sessions – but even these were done via video link. She has since started a PhD and chooses to go into the office every day, which she says has improved her mental health.

Jack Spriggs, 28, has also made a conscious decision to return to the office five days a week, even though his job only requires him there for two. The public affairs consultant recalls being inducted virtually, but growing tired of remote working.

“I got bored of opening my laptop in the same room I ate and slept, not going to the pub, then going to bed.”

Mr Spriggs, like many his age, lives in cramped rented accommodation with no living room, and finds the prospect of working from his bedroom “miserable”. Commuting has come at a cost, but he argues, “I am saving less money now than when I was working from home but it’s an investment in my career.”

As a young millennial, Mr Spriggs sees the generational divide between attitudes to office work.

“It’s such a boomer argument but if you are in the office you do pick up more about interpersonal relationships,” he admits.

“A lot of my younger colleagues have only known the era of remote working but it’s hard to see the value of the office if your first experience is a hybrid model.”

‘This is a huge problem for the individual and the economy’

Ms Cashell and Mr Spriggs illustrate what many #wfh TikToks also seem to suggest: that working from home leads to a sense of disenfranchisement with work itself. So why then, do so many young people seem to want it?

One reason may be the so-called talent war, which has seen companies offer unprecedented flexibility to lure in hires – companies that increasingly see hybrid working as an essential bargaining chip rather than a perk, lest they lose out on top talent.

Last year, Adzuna said over 120,000 listed vacancies advertised “flexible working”, making it by far the most frequently cited perk.

But Nina Jörden, of the Productivity Institute, says the enduring commitment to flexible working principally benefits older workers who want to balance family life – and is “not important” for the Gen Z age group.

“Young people are the most enthusiastic for hybrid working but at the same time they would benefit the most from being in the office,” she says. “It’s a confusing picture.”

Like Ms Emerson, Ms Jörden worries that young workers will miss out on developing their careers if they are not in office environments where they can mix with their older colleagues.

“There needs to be a value from coming into the office,” she adds.

Figures show that young people are in fact leading the charge back into offices. Jon Boys, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, says this is likely out of frustration over online induction and training.

Young people also move about jobs more frequently – as this is often the fastest route to salary growth. Mr Boys says these two trends are linked: “Onboarding and training is a higher proportion of your time when you’re young versus when you’re old.

“To me, onboarding is a challenge for companies to do remotely – one that young people experience more than older people.”

But what value awaits young people who do make the return to the office?

“I observed one organisation where all the grads came into the office for a week, but the whole middle management team didn’t show up because they were working fully remotely,” says Ms Jörden. “After a few weeks, none of the grads wanted to come back, since there was no value in it for them.”

Mr Boys says hybrid working is likely to remain popular with older workers who have to balance care responsibilities, and who are more likely to have the space to set up a home office. “Middle-aged people are really gunning for home-working,” he says. “It’s a case of two groups' interests working against each other.”

Laziness while working from home, while satirised by TikTok’s overwhelmingly young user base, is “cross-generational,” argues Mr Monk. “I do not believe anyone working from home works as well or as efficiently,” he says. “Abuse is rife – people nip out to the shop, or go for a coffee with their wife.”

The hybrid system, he adds, is unfair to younger workers who don’t know what they’re missing. “I know a few very senior well-respected fund managers who work from home all the time,” he says. “But they’ve learned their trade and they have big houses where it’s easier to do so. How do younger generations learn if their seniors are sitting at home in their garden offices?”

The negative effects of remote working – both on socialisation and on well-being – could prove disastrous for productivity unless a balance is struck, Ms Jörden warns.

Mental ill health costs the British economy around 5pc of GDP a year. “While productivity remains the same when working from home, the effects could be damaging for Gen Z long term, who could be working in this way for their whole career,” she says.

“There are skills young people need to acquire, and it won’t benefit organisations to hamper their development.”

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