“Lazy” millennials demanding work-life balance | 60 Minutes Australia

If, like me, you are between 20 and 40 years old, then you are considered a millennial. We are now the biggest generation in Australia, but we are also the most criticised, mainly by those who are older than us, complain about us.

lazy

, male, entitled, then apparently it matters when it comes to

work

, we are causing our bosses headaches because we are very

demanding

, we want more flexibility in our jobs, as well as more freedom to enjoy acting our age, and if we don't. getting what we want, well, take care, thanks, strolling through the Colorado countryside is Gabby Judge's leisurely way to start her

work

day.

I had to come to the Jesus moment with my software, you know, I said, what do you want? and I said, I want to work whenever I want, you know I want to be able to do what I want Millennial Gabby wants that Millennial Gabby usually gets and that includes making her job work for her. I have a whole program called The Lazy Girl Job Program and so on, after throwing it away. corporate career Gabby has started an online business that contradicts the very concept of regular work and calls herself the anti-work boss. She literally makes money by telling office workers how to find easier jobs from the comfort of her own home.

What was that title? What does it mean how I really imagine anti-work to be robust? It's finding a way for all of us to find our own success that doesn't necessarily center around our nine-to-five and can look like building professional portfolios. Entrepreneurship whatever it's called Lazy. Jobs for girls, not because we're

lazy

, it's an anti-hustle dig 13,000 kilometers away in Sydney, tridi Alex Fuentes, who is definitely not a millennial, is halfway through what could become a 12-day hours, the money is good and I work hard to justify the pay package at the end of the week side by side Alex's job is as far from a lazy job as possible after clocking in at 6:30 his week is huge, a minimum of about 40 hours can be extended to 60 and I have been known to work up to 70 hours, people who do hard and honest yakka, like Alex, can only dream of taking on an easier, more flexible job.

Do you think younger generations are trying to find shortcuts? I guess too much on the work front. and they really need to learn more about what A Hard Day's job entails. I think hard work is required in any industry. I don't believe in people trying to take shortcuts if they're taking shortcuts in the industry they're in. Obviously, in the wrong industry, younger and younger generations are busy trying to redefine what work means, no longer do a bare minimum on Monday working from home, join me tomorrow in not testing myself on Tuesday, with the Millennials now surpassing Boomers as the largest working generation.

They're 100 replaceable, they're sending shockwaves through the workplace landscape with their demands for a better work-

life

balance

, so are they really right or, like most Boomers, do they think a millennial is he lazy? No, Millennials are not lazy. Millennials are incredibly tough. working in January this year, police activists and campaigners Sally Rugg unknowingly became the face of young Australia taking on her boss. I work reasonable hours. It was the court case that had Canberra buzzing with Sally taking on both independent MP Monique Ryan and her employer. Commonwealth claiming that she had been forced to work an excessive amount of overtime.

Sally regularly working 70 hour weeks in Parliament was simply unsustainable and in the end the case itself was also grueling as all parties settled out of court. This is now the first time. Sally has spoken publicly on the subject, it seems to me that if the Australian Parliament can govern a nation of 25 million people, can make huge decisions on spending and income and send us to war, then it can probably be a really safe productive workplace to the staff that worked in the building during the undercover time I guess you found a new passion, yeah I mean I've always been interested in gardening, now in a normal weekday job Sally woke up and smelled the roses on what a work week should be like.

Look, how many hours a week would you work at my current job at your current job? I am working a standard schedule each week. You know that Australia was one of the first countries in the world to achieve a standard 40-hour work week. and I think it is a good measure of a week's work. Do you think it's become too normalized for people to work themselves to the bone these days? Absolutely the hours that Australians put in are completely off the charts. Australia is among the burnout capitals. Worldwide there are around four million Australians working more than 45 hours a week, two million working more than 50 hours a week and one million people working more than 60 hours a week;

There is a large segment of the population that works long hours and is completely normalized to the point that it doesn't really bat an eyebrow, reality really hit when Sally compared what she was gaining financially to what she was losing in her

life

. personal life, buying a house is for someone my age is almost unimaginable now and the only way it could theoretically be possible is with more and more hours of work, um, and that's not sustainable, you know what the people would tell you Boomers, we all had to work hard to get here, so you have to too.

I really respect how Hard Boomits have functioned their entire lives too. I think for people of my generation the promise that if you work hard, that work will pay off, that idea is becoming more and more like a myth. Do I want to work harder and harder over time and lose these? years with my children, at what cost, if there is no benefit, as if this hard work is not going to bear the fruits that we were promised, why would we also sacrifice time with our loved ones by being there with our children when they are young what is it? the perfect work-life

balance

I'm not sure there is one I think balance is a myth NYU economics professor Scott Galloway is clearly not a millennial thinks it's time for idealists to grow up he believes that young people should only be home seven hours a day and that's just to sleep the rest of the time.

He says they should be out there pursuing success professionally. I think there are very few successful people who haven't sacrificed a decent amount of time. your 20s and 30s and your relationships sacrificed time with friends fitness whatever you want to call it to make a big investment at work have you seen a real change in the attitudes of people heading into the workforce? You're Beyoncé or Bill Gates, so one thing that very successful people have in common is that they work exceptionally hard and there comes a time to compromise. What I would tell young people is that they can have everything they can.

I don't have it all at once so it's up to you and before you start collecting dogs and children, if you're ambitious I'd say you need to log the hours the pandemic was a global reset for flexible working arrangements and many Millennials want it. To stay that way, combined with an increasingly aging population, companies around the world are bowing to the demands of young employees who want more freedom in the way they work and here in Australia there is a company doing that on a level extreme. 15 billion dollars Who has a unique way to get to work?

Do you work a lot from home? I work from home all the time. I could come to the office approximately once a quarter every three months every three months yes, despite the constant growth. Wave of young people pushing for greater flexibility at work. There are some businesses in Australia bucking the trend. Adam Schwab is the CEO and co-founder of travel company Luxury Escapes and believes that work from home and vacations must come to an end. the bees are buzzing in my heart it's good today it's really cool to feel that atmosphere it's a great thing for you to get people back to the office or why do you feel so strongly that we are a highly collaborative company we are very A technology-driven company , we are a very sales-driven company.

Without that collaboration between team members, it is very difficult to perform well, we hate isolation, we love people who work together, but in the current climate, convincing your workers to come to the office five days a week it is easier. All said and done, Adam and companies like his are doing everything they can to make the office a place where employees want to be. So is this working hard or barely working? This is what we do most of the time. Having fun is the best. important part, we think I also trust the company to have a much happier staff and people who want to work for us, free lunch and playing table tennis, not a bad way to get people using tools again.

I think I like the office, fun and it's not like you don't go to a theme park, people are obviously there mainly to work it doesn't have to be a terrible environment, it can be an environment that people really want to come to based on internal research about luxury escapes out there Some serious disadvantages of allowing your employees to work remotely The rate of people leaving the business is double if you don't work from the office, so if you come to the office, you are 50 less likely to leave 20 years ago, the boss probably didn't. I don't care too much about making your employees happy, you know, here's your gratitude, it's your paycheck, now shut up, yeah, these days, how important is it for someone like you to really think?

Well, I have to make sure morale is up and I. I have to make sure my workers are being fulfilled. I think the bar has been raised. I think you're right. When I was a lawyer 20 years ago, you expected to say until seven o'clock every night, even if you couldn't work. I'm not leaving before the partner or whatever, that certainly charged, so there have been a lot of differences in terms of how managers and executives think about the relationship with the talent companies that are pushing for workers to return to the office . It is fighting an uphill battle, the latest Bureau of Statistics figures show that almost half of all Australian employees already work remotely to some extent and have no intention of returning to the office five days a week.

That's exactly how it should be according to Scott Farqua, co-founder and CEO of the company. What do you think defines the work culture at Atlassian? We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we really take the work seriously and expect people to do it all. work not only an initial part of themselves at home, but also bring all their sales to work, bring them to work, they can do it from home, yes, work is a vocation, not a place, so we hope that people can work from home from a cafe from an office, but we don't really care where they do their work, what we care about is the result they produce.

Scott literally practices what he preaches and being worth $15 billion apparently gives him a high level of freedom in flexibility. of granting it, not only to your workers but to yourself, to work a lot from home. I work from home all the time. I could go to the office about once a quarter and every three months, every three months, yeah, wow, not many CEOs do that. being able to work those kinds of flexible hours. I don't think I work very hard yet and I work with teams that are all over the world and in Australia and a lot of our staff that you now know live remotely and those people don't.

They don't have a commute to and from work so they save hours a day and then they can give their best to work because they can organize their work in and around all the other things going on in their lives, so we don't have Given a change in productivity, it all sounds pretty good, but Professor Scott Galloway says be careful what you wish for, because he believes working from home could lead to unemployment in the future. I think remote work is terrible for young people and there is also a basic reality and that is that if your job can be moved from Sydney to Melbourne, it can be moved to Manila and then to Mumbai, so be clear that if you want to work remotely Remotely will have more power to you and if you can find that great job, you will also make less money.

Potential job losses Scott believes a lack of structure creates laziness and sets young people up for failure. There are a lot of places to hide at home and I think people really get used to the flexibility and the ability to either walk their dog or take a break on their own terms, but at the end of the day I think they're missing something, I think they arelosing a certain level of responsibility, I don't know about you, I needed those guardrails that I needed to put up. with a tie and suit and be at work at 9 a.m. m., so that I wouldn't go out or get drunk during the week.

Great, so thank you very much for joining us today, Scott, almost half of Atlassian employees in the last year live more than two hours from the company's office, which Scott says has benefited the business by opening it up to a larger talent pool, while its work-from-anywhere policy has helped its employees deal with the cost of living crisis, so it's about Choice really in place to deliver for people. the freedom to live wherever they want. We have an employee who used to live on the Well and North Shore of Sydney lives in an apartment with his children and was simply not happy with the amount of space and the cost of housing in Sydney.

He looked around and once we announced the team anywhere, eh, chances he could work from anywhere, then he moved to Wollongong and lives in a four-bedroom house 10

minutes

from the beach, his children for the afternoon, they play with the neighborhood kids and they just go for a run and it has totally transformed their lives, so if your employees can coach their kids' sports team, they come to work happier the next day, totally, they come to work happier the next day. next and want to work for us for a long time because they enjoy their work and enjoy the impact it has on their life Australians are now trying to determine what they want from their workplace like never before for many Millennials like Sally Rugg, who took his fight over working hours to court.

Now it's her job to convince older generations that they're generally doing it wrong. General rule across the board Do you think Australians should spend less time at work? It's about balance and you think our balance is out of balance right now. I think our balance is off. kyota 50 years ago people used to hit their children and They say well they slapped me so they slapped us and then over time people start to open their eyes and say maybe that's not the way to go and that's the kind of reflection people need to have now that they just Just because you've been doing it forever doesn't mean it's the right way to do the right things and that's why I think young people are the most vocal in this conversation because it is always young people who look at how things have always been done and I think we can do it differently.

I think we've all been there. The younger generation, you know, they have a different mentality. Alex Fuentes loves his job and doesn't want to change the way he works for Alex. Hard gardening is something he says simply comes with age and responsibility. I have become a stronger and more dedicated worker as I get older. I'm 53 years old and I have two kids, so that motivates me a lot more to do the work and commit to the work and become reliable and dependable and you know, I'm just trying to create a financial foothold for my kids. Hi, I'm Tom Steinfeld, thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia.

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