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- The return-to-office mandates aren't slowing down, but these Gen Z'ers say they don't mind.
- For the right company, some members of Gen Z say they're willing to abandon remote work.
- About 81% of Gen Z workers think in-person office experiences are important, a survey says.
It seems like more and more CEOs are calling their employees back to the office — and some Gen Z workers couldn't be more happy about it.
We talked to Gen Z workers — defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 — who say they don't mind working in the office. In fact, they prefer it.
In a recent survey from Adobe, 63% of early-career Gen Z'ers said they already are working in the office full-time. And about 81% said they considered the experiences they gained in an office to be important. Adobe surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z workers in September at medium- and large-sized companies in the US for its Future Workforce Study.
Goldman Sachs has one of the strictest RTO policies among large companies. Its employees are "encouraged" to be in the office five days a week.
Louie Chavez, a 24-year-old analyst at Goldman, has been with the company since July 2022. He told BI that efficiency is one of the best parts about being in-person.
Chavez said he values being able to get responses to his questions "in real-time," but said there's also an added social benefit of "being around your colleagues and being able to joke with them."
His colleague, 25-year-old associate Mary Kate Viceconte, said she appreciated being in close vicinity to more senior coworkers.
"I feel like, at this point in my career, I'm able to kind of learn directly from really talented seniors who've done this job for a long time," Viceconte told Business Insider.
At Google, Andrew Abraham, 22, said that his dreams came true when he received a full-time offer at the end of his internship. A recent survey said that Google is the second most prestigious internship to have on your resume, according to ratings from 13,000 professionals.
As an intern, Abraham told Business Insider that he was offered the option of remote or in-person work, and he chose to be in-person. Now, he works as a project manager and said he enjoyed the perks of Google's Atlanta office.
The office is a great place to build relationships with colleagues, Abraham said, but he said it's also a draw because he can take embroidery classes, get a massage, or grab a free coffee from the on-site barista.
Abraham said spending some time in the office is "the best way to go" for early-career professionals. But, he said he also appreciates flexibility — and the option to work from home when it's needed.
Another Gen Z'er, Zachary Timms, a 25-year-old project engineer, has been with his Texas-based company for nearly two years. The graduate student said he spends Monday through Thursday in the office with a half day on Fridays. (He didn't want to share the name of his employer, but BI has verified his information.)
Timms said he enjoys the fast-paced environment of his company and the access he has to his coworkers because the office has an open floor plan. The work would become overwhelming if he worked from home for the majority of the week, he said.
"If I didn't work in person, I wouldn't have relationships with my coworkers," Timms said. "Just today, we were talking about joining a recreational volleyball league as a company, which I am very excited about."
Some Gen Z workers have previously told Business Insider that going into the office helps provide a social network — to stave off the loneliness that sometimes comes from working from home.
And for some workers, coming into the office isn't really a choice. Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle, for instance, said he thinks remote work makes employees lazy and unproductive
Of course, not all workers are rushing to get back to the office, with some saying the work-from-home flexibility has changed their lives for the better. And whether RTO is truly better for employee productivity — and happiness — continues to be a hot topic of debate.
For these Gen Z workers, the debate is settled.