Multiple recent studies revealed that younger workers highly value flexibility in their careers. This flexibility includes the ability to work remotely and from abroad. After their university or first career years spent under pandemic lockdowns, many have an increased thirst to job-hop around the globe or become digital nomads.
Who are Millennials and Gen Zs?
Strictly speaking, Millennials were born between 1980 and 1996. However, as this is a wide age range, they are usually split into two groups: older Millennials (1980-1988) and younger Millennials (1989-1996). A 26-year-old, after all, often has a very different life from a 40-year-old, even if they are both Millennials.
Generation Z, also called “zoomers,” were born between 1997 and 2012. Many are now university students or in the very first years of their careers. A portmanteau term exists for people born in the boundary years between Millennial and Gen Z: Zillennials. Born in the mid-1990s, Zillennials experienced key moments of both generations, for instance, the 2008 financial crash (when they were in the last years of high school) and the pandemic during their university years.
In most studies, “young people” are defined as Gen Z and younger Millennials. Older Millennials are in mid-career, are buying property and already have children, so they no longer have the youthful flexibility of their younger peers.
Younger workers value flexibility, work-life balance and career development
In late 2022, the analytics firm Gallup conducted a study of what younger workers seek in their professional lives. They found that workers between 18-34 place significantly less importance on the reputation of their companies and on climbing the corporate ladder in a linear way. Instead, they often feel disengaged from their companies, are always on the lookout for better opportunities, do not mind job-hopping for career development, and want flexibility and work-life balance in their way of working.
Job-hopping, or changing jobs after only 1-2 years, is a growing trend among Gen Zs. LinkedIn News reports that, according to the website's data, Gen Zs are job-hopping 134% more than in 2019, prior to the pandemic. Millennials job-hopped 24% more post-pandemic, which shows that it's being embraced more by those in their early 20s.
The pandemic, the normalization of remote work and the Great Resignation all affected Gen Z's attitude toward work. They might have started working remotely in 2020-2021 and didn't build a strong sense of attachment to their faraway colleagues. They are aware of their negotiating power in the workforce after the Great Resignation, and they know that they can get 20-30% salary increases and higher positions with job-hopping. In Deloitte's “Global 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey,” around half the surveyed said that their top priority is flexibility. A study by GOBankingRates revealed that over half of Gen Zs prefer working remotely. LinkedIn reports that younger workers are much more likely to click on job ads that mention “flexible” as a keyword.
International assignments are compatible with young people's work values
The aforementioned work values of Gen Zs and younger Millennials are highly compatible with working abroad, either on expat packages/international assignments or as digital nomads, including as nomad freelancers.
For example, the ADP Research Institute has revealed in its “People at Work 2022: A Global Workforce View” that 40-50% of young Singaporeans plan to work abroad, as compared to only 30% of the general Singaporean population. 51% of the Singaporean workers surveyed who are between 18-24 and 43% of those between 24-34 say that the isolation, lack of travel opportunities and uncertainty they experienced during the pandemic in 2020-2021 has made them want more strongly than ever to work abroad, now that global sanitary restrictions have been eased.
Yvonne Teo, the vice president of the Asia Pacific branch of the HR company ADP, says that companies can prevent the brain drain of these young workers by providing them with fulfilling international assignments. She recommends exchange programs with overseas offices, department rotations as well as stretch assignments with an international aspect to fulfill these young workers' need for growth and international flexibility.
The asset management firm Mercer conducted a study of what motivates Millennial employees to accept expat assignments. The top reasons were career development (98% of the respondents) and discovering a new culture (61% of the respondents). Mercer found that they are often great at international assignments because of their tech savviness, which makes them adapt to digital working and multi-tasking more easily. Their familiarity with a virtual world without borders also often gives them an international mindset from the start. However, Mercer highlights that they often demand good work-life balance provisions in their expat contract to accept an international assignment.
On LinkedIn, Sophie Theen, the HR lead for the fintech consultancy 11:FS, who herself has moved a lot during her career, says that young workers no longer think purely locally about their careers and investments. She says that they learn about investment from early on and are willing to invest in bitcoin and property outside of their home countries. According to her, one of the reasons they choose to work in startups is because these new companies often let them travel. She says that even expat packages have changed: companies can now post employees abroad for 3-6 months and rent an Airbnb for them instead of providing a hefty, traditional relocation package.
Younger workers are tapping into the growing trend of digital nomadism
Digital nomadism is also highly compatible with Gen Zs and younger Millennials' need for flexibility. This trend has boomed with the pandemic, as multiple countries (from Iceland to Barbados, from Portugal to Mauritius) have created special Digital Nomad visas. These visas allow foreign nationals to work remotely for 6-24 months, provided that their source of income is abroad and that they meet a minimum income requirement. Short-term leases, villages, co-working spaces, bars and cafés for digital nomads have sprouted up in the countries offering this visa.
Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson, a professor of sociology at Siena College in New York, has studied digital nomad communities. In a Times article, she says that many nomads are Gen Zs and younger Millennials who are single and involved in transitory relationships (of any kind, not just romantic ones). She says that through digital nomadism, they “seek out community in this very fractured way, not based on location but based on online communities and coming together temporarily.”
The jobs platform MBO Partners published a research brief entitled “The Digital Nomad Search Continues” in late 2021. In it, they report that 44% of all digital nomads are Millennials and 21% are Gen Zs: young people make up 55% of digital nomads. The average age of digital nomads is 32, which falls into the category of younger Millennials. On average, these nomads work less than the traditional 40 hours per week, which shows how much they value work-life balance. They work from a wide variety of spaces: co-working spaces, hotels and hostels, RVs and vans, and libraries. It shows their desire for flexibility and their need to not be constrained by cubicles. 85% report being very satisfied with their current work situation, and over half say they want to keep working the same way for at least 2 more years.
Unsurprisingly, these young digital nomads also tend to work in fields that are emerging and tech-dependent. A majority work in IT, creative services, education and training, consulting, research, marketing and PR, and finance and accounting. Various cloud-based platforms and applications to do these jobs have been developed or became mainstream during the pandemic. For those in education, for instance, video-conferencing apps and Google Classrooms might be enough for them to work from anywhere.
