The Big Fit: People Are Re-Evaluating Their Relationships With Work

A lot of things are uncertain about the future of work, but I know one thing for sure: people want work to fit into their lives, not the other way around.

And this really isn’t the way it felt to me growing up. That wasn’t really the sentiment until just a couple years ago, if we’re being honest. How many times have you met someone and the first thing they ask is what you do for a living? How many times have you asked that of someone else before learning anything else about them?

It’s happened to me countless times. I’ve asked the question countless times! But somewhere along the way, I started to bristle at it, just a little bit. We of course are more than what we do professionally and when we take the time to learn about the whole person, we have a better understanding of what motivates and moves them as well as what could be holding them back. When I have been in environments with managers that enabled me to manage my life better, I performed better. And like so many, I wanted a career that gave me the opportunity to make an impact in the areas I care most about.

And when I look at the results from The State of Work and Career Success, I see a workforce that is redefining the way they want to work so they can be their best selves:

• 75% of workers report that ‘it is important to have boundaries with work so it doesn’t interfere with my personal life.’
• 66% think ‘my work should accommodate the way I want to live my life.’
• 64% say ‘I work best when I can work anywhere I want.’?
• 62% say ‘I work best when I can work when I want.’?
• 52% agree that their professional ambition isn’t tied to being part of a company, and that number goes up among those in their 30s.
• Over 60% feel work and life are already integrated, and this sentiment goes up to almost 70% among Millennials and Gen-Z.
• 65% of workers say it is important that they work in an organization that aligns with their personal values.

A huge part of re-evaluating our relationship with work and redefining the way we want to work is finding the right fit. The good news is that things are trending in the right direction. In 2023, more people reported that the job they are in is a better fit than a year ago, which is likely due to greater workplace flexibility, as well as workers taking more control over their career paths.

The not-so-good news is that we’re still only looking at 54% of the workforce feeling like their job is a good fit.

I think that last bullet above is a likely culprit for those that don’t feel a good fit — although nearly two-thirds of the workforce thinks that alignment with organizational values is important, only 17% indicate that their workplace currently aligns with their values.

And I think this is going to be a sticking point as Gen-Z becomes a bigger part of the workforce. I recently had a conversation with Audrey Micay Wisch, who co-founded Curious Cardinals while she was taking a gap year from Stanford during the pandemic. Audrey is uniquely positioned to understand what Gen-Z wants as they go into the workplace — not just because she is part of Gen-Z but because she spends her day talking to young people about what they want and care about. And they seem to care quite a bit.

My conversation with Audrey will be released as an episode of Strategic Momentum next Tuesday (May 9, 2023) if you want to hear her story and her perspective on the youngest generation in the workforce.

Audrey told me that, today, “It's not just about an opportunity to make money, that's not enough. It's also about belonging to an organization whose value set you ascribe to and believe in.”

So, if we want to attract Gen-Z to our organizations and get the most out of them and empower them to, in turn, get the most of us, how we manage people is going to have to change — we’re going to have to get really clear on what our organizations’ values are, we’re going to have to intimately learn what workers want on an individual level, and we’re going to have to learn how to communicate how working within our organizations aligns to workers’ goals, priorities, and expectations.