How Gen Z is questioning age-old practices in the workplace

F or decades, Indian workplaces ran on an unspoken bargain: show up, stay loyal, wait your turn and success will follow. Generation Z, Gen Z or Zoomers, never signed that contract.

By 2025, India’s Gen Z population (those born between 1997 and 2012) stood at an estimated 377 million, according to the BCG–Snapchat report The $2 Trillion Opportunity: How Gen Z Is Shaping the New India. Once on the margins, Gen Z has now moved firmly into the workforce mainstream, already accounting for one in four workers. The report estimates this share will reach 36% by 2030 and nearly half the workforce (47%) by 2035.

And employers are being forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: the old rules are no longer working.

Beyond Paycheques

Gen Z entered the workforce amid overlapping disruptions: a pandemic, economic volatility, rapid digitisation, and now artificial intelligence (AI)-led transformation. According to Anshuman Das, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of recruitment services firm Careernet, these conditions have fundamentally reshaped how this generation evaluates work.

Rather than prioritising long hours or rigid hierarchies, Gen Z places greater value on learning, clear career progression, purpose, and flexibility. Roles are assessed not only on pay but on growth potential, quality of mentorship, team culture, and alignment with organisational values alongside expectations of modern ways of working.

This is reflected in the BT–PRICE Gen Z Consumption Behaviour Survey, which shows that salary growth and financial security (28%) and role or career progression (28%) remain top job drivers. Job security (17%) matters among lower-income cohorts, while work–life balance (14%) and flexibility (9%) grow in importance as financial stability improves.  

Location remains the least influential factor overall, reinforcing Gen Z’s digital-first expectations.

For employers, this marks a fundamental shift in the talent equation. Das notes that Gen Z is vocal, research-driven, and quick to move on when expectations around growth, recognition, or culture are not met. Merit-based advancement is preferred over seniority, leaders are expected to be digitally fluent, and managers are valued more as coaches than controllers.

Randstad’s The Gen Z Workplace Blueprint echoes this, describing Indian Zoomers as financially ambitious yet purpose-seeking, technologically confident yet anxious about career stability. Careers increasingly blend full-time roles with side hustles, short tenures, and AI-enabled learning creating both opportunity and volatility for employers.

What unsettles many organisations is not what Gen Z wants but how it behaves while pursuing it.

Nervous Employers

Moonlighting. Job-hopping. Micro-retirements. Bare-minimum Mondays. Coffee-badging. To many leaders, these appear as warning signs of disengagement. But data suggests they may instead be symptoms of a workforce adapting faster than organisational systems.

According to Indeed’s 2025 Workplace Trends Report, 42% of employers interpret behaviours like job-hopping or brief office appearances (often dubbed coffee-badging), or quiet quitting as signs of disengagement. In contrast, 62% of employees see them as pragmatic strategies to manage careers, navigate uncertainty, and protect well-being. These often coexist with high performance. Younger employees are increasingly optimising for learning velocity, seeking environments where skills compound quickly, exposure is broad, and feedback is immediate.

The shift is particularly pronounced among younger workers. Nearly 68% of entry- to junior-level employees say they are actively experimenting with new approaches to learning and career planning. Around 40% report blending work with side hustles, flexible schedules, or short career breaks. In total, 75% have adopted at least one “modern work behaviour.”  

Randstad’s India findings reinforce this shift: 38% plan to stay in their current jobs for less than a year, underscoring mobility levels far higher than previous generations.

“These are not signs that people don’t want to work,” says Sashi Kumar, MD of Indeed. “They are signals that people want to work differently.” Leaders, he argues, must replace judgement with curiosity. “When we ask what’s driving this behaviour, we unlock better conversations—and healthier cultures.”

Kumar says careers no longer follow a linear script of study, work, and retirement. Younger workers are questioning whether postponing growth, rest, or exploration until their 60s still makes sense. “Yes, some behaviours stem from burnout,” he says. “But there’s also a genuine redefinition of ambition. Work still matters, often just after family, but proving commitment by staying late every day feels outdated.”

Different Not Disloyal

For employers quick to equate mobility with disloyalty, Kumar urges caution. Data from Indeed shows that many employees exhibiting these so-called “disengaged” behaviours are actively upskilling, adopting AI tools, and pursuing multiple learning pathways to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving job market.

This aligns closely with Randstad’s finding that 94% of Zoomers in India consider long-term goals when evaluating job opportunities. In this context, loyalty is increasingly defined by contribution. Employees may stay for shorter stints, but they expect those periods to be intense, developmental, and mutually beneficial.

Organisations that recognise this are better positioned to extract value even within shorter tenure cycles. Kumar notes that companies responding with curiosity rather than judgement are far more likely to build cultures where people choose to stay, grow, and contribute meaningfully.

The findings also show that attempting to restrict these behaviours does not eliminate them, it merely pushes them underground, making them harder for organisations to address constructively. At the same time, attrition has increased by 11%.

Crucially, the data reveals that employees who feel empowered to evolve their skills and work approaches demonstrate a higher intent to stay. Interpreting flexibility, experimentation, and autonomy as threats risks alienating the talent organisations are trying to retain.  

Yet despite mounting evidence, many Indian organisations continue to struggle with execution.

While many Indian employers believe they understand Gen Z, execution often tells a different story. According to Careernet’s Das, the gap lies in persistence with legacy hiring and management models. Zoomers place far less value on fixed structures and formal hierarchies and far more on speed, transparency, and responsiveness.

Slow hiring cycles, limited digital interaction, and delayed clarity around role progression or compensation can quickly erode trust. Randstad’s research shows that pay, flexible hours, and work–life balance are significantly stronger retention drivers for Gen Z than traditional perks.

To stay relevant, Das argues, annual appraisals must give way to continuous, coaching-led feedback, and performance systems need to be redesigned around skills and learning. Managers must be trained in emotional intelligence and developmental leadership, while flexibility must be embedded into systems.

Reality Check

“Let’s be honest... being Gen Z in today’s corporate world isn’t easy. Most workplaces were designed decades ago for a completely different reality,” says Pune-based IT professional Dipin Bakshi.

One of the most damaging, he says, is gossip-driven leadership, where informal conversations and personal bias outweigh skills and performance. In one large organisation, Bakshi recalls, rumours became a quiet tool of power triggering self-doubt, anxiety, and a steady loss of confidence that eventually pushed him to seek therapy.

For Gen Z, he argues, silence only protects unhealthy systems. “Older generations believe staying quiet keeps the peace. But silence solves nothing. Speaking up isn’t disrespect, it’s responsibility,” he says, recalling how calling out unrealistic deadlines initially felt uncomfortable but ultimately helped his team.

Bakshi also challenges rigid hierarchies that treat authority as unquestionable. “The boss is not always right. Leadership should be collaborative. Questioning isn’t rebellion it’s progress,” he says.

When it comes to well-being, Bakshi is clear that mental health cannot be separated from work itself. “Burnout comes from pressure, poor leadership, and unrealistic expectations.” His bottom line: “Gen Z isn’t rejecting work…we’re rejecting unhealthy work cultures.”

The New Workplace

At Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI), the shift from “human resources” to “human relations” reflects a deeper rethinking of what work should feel like for the next generation. According to Mahesh Medhekar, Vice President, human relations, the intent is to move away from transactional employment models and build a relationship-led culture grounded in trust, psychological safety, and shared purpose.

MBRDI operates a trust-based working model that gives employees autonomy over where and how they work, without rigid mandates. For Zoomers, particularly in R&D and engineering roles, this autonomy is complemented by self-regulated leave practices, team-designed schedules, and opportunities for horizontal career movement to build skills across functions. The emphasis, Medhekar notes, is on outcomes, collaboration, and connection.

Besides, culture is critical. “MBRDI prioritises psychological safety and inclusive leadership, assessing managers on empowerment, agility, and purpose,” Medhekar explains.

Perhaps the most defining shift is Gen Z’s embrace of AI. Indeed’s report shows that 71% of Indian workers use AI to validate ideas, plan careers, or solve work problems.

Kumar believes AI is on track to become both invisible and indispensable. “AI will make growth more accessible,” he says. “Think about it—there was a time when email felt futuristic. Now it’s just… there. AI will follow that same path.”

Over the next few years, organisations that succeed with Gen Z will move beyond pay-led attraction to offer growth, purpose, and human-centred work. Learning, Das emphasises, must be positioned as a core organisational value embedded through mentorship, micro- and gamified learning, internal mobility, AI skill-building, and clear career paths within the organisation.

Equally important, says Das, is what leaders must actively unlearn. “Authority rooted in title must give way to credibility built on skills. Presenteeism must be replaced with outcomes. Annual reviews must evolve into real-time coaching.”

At its core, Gen Z is asking a simple question: does work fit into a full life or does life exist around work? The reset that Gen Z is pushing for may feel uncomfortable, but it is also the clearest blueprint for the future of work.