A (non) lazy girl who waged her act

Do you know what "lazy girl job" or "acting your wage" mean in the Gen Z lingo?

Of course you do - if you are a regular reader of this weekly blog!

These are the ways that some - not all - members of Gen Z view their relationships with their work. "Lazy girl job", for example, refers to the roles that are decently-paid and mostly remote (to minimise coworkers interactions, no doubt), but, crucially, offer much flexibility and a strict end time. Clearly, the lazy girl in question would not be seeking dizzing career heights, but as long as the job pays the bills...

As for acting your wage.. “If you're acting your wage, that means the amount of labor you're putting in reflects the amount you're getting paid,” TikTok creator Sarai Soto explains.

As a Gen X, I am not on board with neither of the concepts. Never been, and I guess it's too late for me to start now. So on this jolly photo, I am reclining on my office chair, and it's 9.45pm on a Thursday. Still some time to go before I can log off without feeling the pangs on guilt for leaving behind an unfinished important piece of work. How many of you are there with me??

That evening, I missed out on some fun (post-conference drinks), I rocked up at home late, I had a banging headache by the time I finished my close-to-midnight dinner and crawled into bed, ex-haus-ted.

Yet - this girl is not lazy. And she's never acted her wage - even, and especially - during the five years when the said wage was so tiny that it barely covered my miniscule rent and pasta-for-dinner kinda expenses.

Ah, perhaps we got it all wrong though! Perhaps there's a lot to learn from the generation that refuses to credit their employer with the dog-like loyalty until the employer has proven that they're worth it.

Perhaps wanting to have a healthy dinner at home at 6pm and crawl into bed for a 9pm Netflix-n-chill is not such an atrocious proposition.

Perhaps not wanting to socialise with all and sundry by the watercooler is not a clear symptom of sociophobia, but a protective mechanism of being choosy about who we interact with, and when.

Perhaps being concerned with the state of your mental health and thus living one's life with that in mind is a better option than self-medicating and binge-drinking.

I don't know.

I think Gen Z have a point. And I think there's much for us to learn from their approach to working life. We could learn. But perhaps we're too stuck in our way of wanting to inject grit into everything we do. After all, it has worked in many wonderful way. Yet it has also crushed too many of us, bodies, minds, spirits and all.

So if Gen Z are onto something with their approach, what's the catch?

There is one, for sure. Through the reality of growing up with the always-on technology and relying a tad too much on social media for human contact, coming of age in the pandemic and joining the workforce in the "age of remote", their interpersonal relationships-building skills have been under-developed. I am sure there are exceptions, but this generalisation is applicable to the majority of Gen Zedders.

If we - the leaders - do not help our Gen Z to develop these vital connections-making skills now, we are creating the workforce that will struggle to communicate and be akward to relate to. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.

Let's act now - by 2025 Generation Z will make up around 27% of the workforce. Wow.

Get in touch for a keynote or a masterclass on Connecting with Generation Z. Lots of progressive leaders are acting already.

I'm at [email protected]