How to Motivate the Zoomers

As Gen Z enters the workforce, it is facing various challenges. The Zoomers have faced an extremely volatile job market, and an undergraduate degree at a prestigious university is no longer a ticket to getting a good job. After multiple rounds of interviews and finally landing a “dream” job, an increasing number of people find that the job was not as expected, or soon face burnout due to a lack of motivation or difficulty responding to job demands. 

Zoomers will one day serve as the foundation of society, leading future generations. Therefore, it is crucial that they find their place within the current workforce. Nevertheless, they are struggling and appear jaded. There needs to be a sense of direction for building a healthy workforce, serving as a framework for future generations facing unprecedented AI competition and similar hardships. 

This is not to suggest that life should be made easier for this generation as they enter the workforce. Rather, it is to suggest a framework that better suits the generation designed to work at a different pace and style, ultimately leading to a more efficient and healthy work life. Zoomers grew up with the hyper-efficient digital tools, often finding the traditional 9-5 work style illogical and inefficient. Offering a framework for asynchronous work and an objective-based approach, as many companies are already doing, could reduce the unnecessary stress associated with work-related tasks. 

To find a more fundamental solution, however, we have to look deeper. What is going through the minds of the Zoomers? Even if they work hard, it goes through their minds whether they can afford to buy a house, raise children, and pay all the bills. Financial stability should not be the sole driving force in life, but it is evident that it is an essential component of it. Living costs need to become more affordable, and there needs to be a restoration of hope that if they keep their heads down and keep pursuing, there is a stable future. To achieve this, systematic reform is needed, but it is being sidelined by other “priorities” of those in power, preventing meaningful change. 

Furthermore, the passion that is “lost” needs to be found. Because the focus is on getting a job, students have a hard time finding meaning in their studies and something deeper than securing a good grade. In college, it is common for students to be late to class because of an internship or job interview. There is a prioritization of landing a job over education. The timeline needs to be adjusted so that students are not out there searching for internships and jobs that do not start until, for example, the following year. Granted, education is an investment, and it is totally understandable and reasonable to treat it as a pathway to landing a job. Nevertheless, while in college, education must remain the main purpose, and it defeats that purpose if job searching takes time away from learning and exploration. 

Each generation faces its own unique challenge, and now it is to find what is inherently human and pursue it with the tools at hand. There is a need for systemic changes to motivate the Zoomers, and they, in turn, must invest in finding their passion and pursuing it, despite readily available artificial dopamine boosters. Effort has to come from both sides: society and the Gen Z population itself. With trust, hope, and a positive outlook, there is so much potential within the Zoomers, and it is desirable for society to help unlock it. 

Here are my five cents on what to do moving forward: 

1. Help college students focus on school and finding their passion by making it mandatory to offer internships and jobs only for the upcoming year. 

2. Provide a more flexible work schedule that prioritizes work over mandatory routine. 

3. Make affordability the top priority for systemic reform. 

4. Be open-minded and understanding toward the Zoomers, rather than scolding them for their lifestyle and new form of communication, which is not the result of laziness but rather a response to a fast-changing world. 

5. Prioritize human mentorship within the workforce that fosters emotional intelligence and ethical decision-making.