Why Gen Zers aren't going to stop advocating for their mental health at work
courtesy of Ang
- Gen Z employees entered the workforce amid a time of understanding and empathy from managers.
- Many young workers now expect open conversations, mental-health support, and flexibility.
- As some of these empathetic values fizzle out, Gen Zers are fighting for them to stay.
Alyx Ang would sit on the floor of her room and cry so hard she would shake.
A month into a summer internship last year, Ang wasn't sure she'd chosen the right career path and felt uncomfortable in her new surroundings across the country from where she'd grown up. It all made for debilitating anxiety, she said.
Ang knew she needed a change. Eventually, she asked her boss for a meeting. Ang was experiencing intense mental-health challenges that were preventing her from completing some of her work, she told her manager, and she needed some accommodations.
"The response to that was her opening up about her mental health, which I did not expect," Ang said of her boss. "For her to be like, 'I completely understand you. Here's how I feel,'" proved to Ang the power of speaking up for what she needed, she told Insider.
Ang is one of many Gen Z employees advocating for themselves on the job — whether it be over flexible schedules, mental-health support, or meaningful work. And she and her peers aren't likely to go back to a suck-it-up version of "professionalism," even as some of the touchy-feely openness that has defined pandemic-era workplaces shows signs of receding.
Many Gen Zers, whose oldest members are now 26, entered the workforce amid COVID-19 lockdowns and a wave of social-justice movements. At that time, asking for what you needed became the default for many workers.
"What the pandemic did was it took the armor away," Davina Ramkissoon, a workplace psychologist in Dublin, told Insider. "Leaders were able to be vulnerable because they were suffering themselves; we were all going through the same thing in a parallel process."
Gen Zers might seem fearless, but they know the realities of speaking up
While some older generations gripe that Gen Zers are hard to work with because they're "entitled" or oblivious to long-standing workplace norms — such as swallowing concerns about personal challenges that bleed into the office — many Gen Z workers know the risk of asking for what they need.
"I have fear of advocating for my mental health," Ang said. "A lot of people have fear."
But for Ang, it was worth it. Two weeks after her conversation, she moved home to finish the internship remotely.
Lana Ivory, a 25-year-old author of a newsletter about Gen Z and an employee at Amazon, said the most important things for her to fight for were being given meaningful work, mentorship, and fair compensation, because those are the most crucial for her success.
"When you're new into your career, you can be tasked with mundane or tactical initiatives, but I think it's super important to learn how to flex those strategic muscles early on," she said. She also isn't scared to say no, she added.
Ivory's manager once told her, "The job will take whatever you give it." Ivory said she held on to that insight: "This means that you have to set boundaries and prioritize your tasks; otherwise, you will end up working endlessly and feeling overwhelmed and undervalued."
While she does good work on the projects she's responsible for, she said, she's aware of her workload and commits only to projects she has the time for so she can avoid burnout.
"The more I practiced advocating for myself, the better feedback I received, and the more comfortable and confident I became doing it," Ivory said.
Gen Z grew up talking about mental health
Ramkissoon said young workers had the language to express emotional needs but that doing so in a professional setting was sometimes jarring for older generations.
"They were like, 'Wait, hang on a minute. My professional hat is on. This is going a bit deeper. I didn't know we were meant to be talking about these things,'" she said.
"What's really interesting about Gen Z is, before you even got into the workplace, you were one of the first generations that were taught about social and emotional intelligence — and at a much younger age," she added.
Many workers were happy to see more empathy enter the workplace earlier in the pandemic, Ramkissoon said.
"Some of those defenses are slowly going back up again, but it's really important that we continue that conversation around mental health because we need it to survive," Ramkissoon added.
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