Mind the Gap: I’m Mr. Lonely: Gen Zers are running the numbers on remote work

CURATED READS FOR GEN Z—AND THEIR Z-CURIOUS COLLEAGUES

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Global leaders, Industry & Capabilities Practices

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Illustration of a two women working on compters

Consider this: you start a brand-new job. Your only introduction to coworkers is an email with your professional bio and that one cringeworthy headshot. The “tour” is a training packet that tells you where the online files live. And the watercooler is your own kitchen sink (dishes included).

Maybe you’d be a little lonely, right?

It’s an intergenerational problem, but some Gen Zers may never have known any other way to work. Even if you schlep to the office a couple of times a week, our research shows you might still feel isolated; in the Asia–Pacific region, more than half of hybrid workers report feeling lonelier lately, and 68 percent say they have fewer work friendships since the pandemic.

Senior partners John Parsons and Bill Schaninger and coauthors deem rebuilding pandemic-lost social capital an “imperative,” but younger workers are looking forward, too: one survey found that 81 percent of employees under age 35 feared loneliness from long-term remote work situations.

And it’s not just today’s workers—in the US and UK, 60 percent of high schoolers were already fretting about feeling lonely, anxious, or stressed about the prospect of working primarily from home. A majority thought remote work might make it harder to feel like part of the team, and one in four worried it’d be more difficult to find a mentor.

(For many of these students, their first taste of remote work was learning math online—no wonder they’re worried.)

Choosing a career has always included a lifestyle calculation; these days, there are even more factors to crunch. Fully digital roles in industries like tech, media, and customer service have seen employers ditch the office floor plan permanently, and it’s feasible that a new graduate hired today will never work in person.

While that flexibility can help reduce stress and burnout, less than 29 percent of Gen Z would pick a remote-only gig.

Those jobs can make it harder to build your support network—research from McKinsey Health Institute coleaders Erica Coe and Kana Enomoto and senior partner Martin Dewhurst shows that less than a third of Gen Z would share mental-health struggles with coworkers—and just having work friends has a big effect on happiness. In extreme cases, isolation can be as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

That may sound dire, but it shows the importance of work relationships. One study at a seafood processing plant in Vietnam found that workers (single, entry-level ones in particular) would sacrifice a nearly 5 percent share of their income to work alongside their friends, and McKinsey research shows that strong bonds can make or break a team.

You can still form those bonds virtually—a quick check-in can work wonders—but distance can wear over time.

So should lonely workers just pick a different career? Senior expert Phil Kirschner reminds us that we weren’t in the office 100 percent of the time anyway, and that wanting flexible work predated the pandemic. Plus, young people are finding strengths in hybrid work: Gen Zers in London found it easier to volunteer for tasks and ask questions remotely—such as sending a message rather than raising a hand—even if older colleagues viewed the same circumstances as a barrier.

Every Gen Zer will face these calculations at some point as they try to find their own perfect balance. If you’d rather stay home, there’s a remote job out there with your name on it—and, who knows, maybe we’ll all be working in a metaverse office soon anyway.

QUOTE US ON IT

“I have just found—probably since the mid ’90s, once email came into our personal and professional lives—that there really was no longer that delineation between your ‘work self’ and your ‘home self.’ So instead of running from it and hiding from it, let’s just be our real selves.”

–Author Susan McPherson, in an Author Talks interview on building meaningful relationships