Gen Z and Mental Health at Work: What Matters Most?

Quick Answer: Research shows members of Gen Z want the same things Millennials want: real opportunities to advance, a 4-day work week, flexible scheduling, and for bosses to be okay with them taking vacation time or paid time off. Mental health-wise, Gen Zs say what they want most is a healthy work-life balance.

Key Points:

• Gen Z is the first generation to grow up fully digital
• In general, Gen Zs are stressed about mental health.
• Members of Gen Z grew up with school shootings: for this generation, active shooter drills are normal
• The COVID pandemic impacted crucial years of development, with disruptions around starting/finishing high school and/or college to disturbances around typical coming-of-age events and rituals
• Most members of Gen Z are new to the work force, and stressed about finding good, consistent employment.
• Like Millennials, members of Gen Z want employers to know that meetings about mental health in the workplace don’t help much: what helps are significant structural changes around workplace culture

Generation Z: Basic Facts

While the exact dates vary, the consensus is that Gen Z – a.k.a. Generation Z or Zillennials – includes people born between 1997 and 2012.

That means they’re the first generation to grow up with the internet, smartphones, and social media. Gen Z includes around 60 million people. All of them grew up in a world almost one hundred percent connected by modern communication technology. In this world, any fact they need to know is instantly available to learn or verify. This is a world where – if they choose – they can spend hours on end scrolling through news feeds to stay current on important events, spend hours on end scrolling for nothing in particular, spend hours on end actively engaged in learning and creating online, or spend hours on end doing some combination of the above.

That’s true for everyone, now, but Gen Z is the first generation for whom this is how it is and always has been.

This means Gen Z has a unique set of challenges to face. One of them is what we call the Youth Mental Health Crisis. However, we’ve been calling it that for several years now, which means at-risk and crisis may be the new, ongoing default set of circumstances for late teen and young adult Gen Zs. Please read our articles about the youth mental health crisis on our blog:

Improving Adolescent Mental Health: A National Challenge

How Does the Loneliness Epidemic Affect Teens?

Those articles discuss the increasing rates of suicide, increasing rates of anxiety, and increasing rates of stress members of Gen Z experience. Those negative factors exist alongside positives, such as a decrease in stigma around mental health, a willingness to talk openly about mental health and mental health issues, and a dramatically increased openness to the idea of seeking and receiving professional, evidence-based support for mental health issues, from diagnoses of clinical mental health disorders to support managing daily, low-grade stress and anxiety.

Gen Z and Mental Health in the Workplace: What Issues Do They Focus On?

In 2023, the esteemed consulting firm Deloitte published a report called “Mental Health Today: A Deep Dive Based on The 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey.” The survey collected data from over twenty-two thousand people from forty-four countries, all members of the generations we refer to as Gen Z and Millennials.

What we learned from the Deloitte Deep Dive is that the primary issue with Gen Z is stress.

The issues in their life that cause stress are various, and include big picture issues unique to their generation, such as stress about climate change, current events, and school shootings – most Gen Zs were in grade school when the Sandy Hook tragedy occurred. They also get stressed about things previous generations stress over, such as work life balance and losing their job.

In the sections that follow, we’ll share the data from the Deloitte Deep Dive, with a focus on stress, mental health, and work: three things prominent in the minds of Gen Z today.

How Stressed are Gen Zs?

First, let’s review the general prevalence, or presence, of stress among Gen Zs.

Percentage of Gen Zs Who Feel Stressed All The Time, 2020-2023

• 2020:
  • Females: 53%
  • Males: 42%
• 2021 and 2022:
  • Females: 54%
  • Males: 39%
• 2023:
  • Females: 54%
  • Males: 37%

To answer the question posed in the introduction to this section, Gen Zs are very stressed – and females are more stressed than males. We see a significant gender gap in the data, which increases year over year. In 2020, the gap was 11 percentage points, which increased to 17 by 2023. That’s important information to keep in mind as we move forward.

Now let’s look at the three demographic groups that report the highest levels of stress among Gen Zs:

• People with disabilities: 62%
• LBGTQIA+: 56%
• Ethnic minority groups: 52%

That data aligns with levels of stress reported by these same demographic groups in other generations. Those numbers, specifically, reveal that we have a long way to go before marginalized groups – a.k.a. the three above – live and work on a level playing field with the rest of us. We should note that Gen Z females should be in that set, as they report stress, on average, at higher levels than ethnic minority groups: 53-54 percent, as opposed to 52 percent. Again, this is important data for us to keep in mind as we move forward.

Next, let’s look at the sources of stress for Gen Zs.

What Causes Gen Z Stress?

The Deloitte survey identifies six top contributors to stress for people in Generation Z:

1. Mental health: 79%
2. Job/work: 76%
3. Work/life balance: 74%
4. Work culture: 67%
5. Can’t be authentic self at work: 64%
6. Fear of getting fired/losing job/laid off: 62%

When we see that list and those statistics, we think we understand what’s happening. Many Gen Zs are at the end of their high school or college academic careers. That means they’re either part of the workforce or poised to join it for the first time. The fact that mental health issues cause them the most stress, followed by work issues, is not surprising. The idea of finding and keeping a job and working toward life milestones, including family and retirement, is daunting for anyone, and can easily increase default levels of stress.

Since issues related to mental health and work make up the six top contributors for stress among Gen Zs, the next several sets of statistics we’ll review revolve around work and mental health.

First, the big picture issues. Here’s how Gen Zs who report feeling stressed all the time say they feel at work:

• Exhausted/low energy all the time: 36%
• Distanced, cynical, negative feelings toward work: 42%
• Difficulty performing up to personal expectations at work: 42%

Again, we can relate to these feelings, and understand why they figure prominently in the lives of late teens and young adults in Gen Z. We often need to take jobs that aren’t our first choice, or jobs that don’t necessarily play to our strengths or give us the opportunity to use or showcase our most highly developed skills. This mismatch – paired with deferred job/life satisfaction – can create stress and increase feelings and patterns of thought associated with mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Gen Z, Mental Health Resources, and Work

Gen Z is concerned with stress, mental health, and the relationship of stress, mental health, and work. What this means is that work-life balance is a crucial thing to get right in their lives. They want work that improves life and promotes positive mental health, rather than the opposite. There’s a growing trend in the workplace to meet those needs with employer sponsored policies and a gradual transformation of workplace culture from being only results oriented to being more concerned with creating a supportive environment where employees can thrive.

The following list includes information on seven workplace policies that promote work-life balance and positive mental health, and the degree to which Gen Zs took advantage of these policies. Below, offered means those policies were available at work, and unused means those policies were offered but not used by employees.

To understand what the percentages mean, apply the explanation in parentheses in item #1 to the remaining 6 items.

1. Paid time off/vacation time:

• • Offered: 70% (7 out of 10 Gen Zs work where this is offered)
  • Unused: 30% (Among Gen Zs working where this is offered, 3 out of 10 utilized this policy)

2. Wellbeing check-ins with manager:
   • Offered: 61%
   • Unused: 30%
3. Supportive leadership:
   • Offered: 60%
   • Unused: 31%
4. Stress reduction resources:
   • Offered: 59%
   • Unused: 29%
5. Access to support apps or digital support:
   • Offered: 54%
   • Unused: 29%
6. Meeting-free days:
   • Offered: 54%
   • Unused: 26%
7. Subsidized therapy/counseling:
   • Offered: 51%
   • Unused: 28%

That information is instructive and reveals a possible misalignment of intentions and expectations. Employers may think the policies above are what Gen Z employees want, meaning their intentions may be good, but the data show these policies may not match the expectations Gen Z employees have, resulting in the figures we see above.

If those policies don’t meet expectations, then what policies do Gen Z employee want to see at work?

Let’s take a look.

Gen Z: How Can Employers Improve Mental Health at Work?

• Offer advancement opportunities for part-time workers: 36%
• Adopt 4-day work week: 33%
• Create more part-time positions: 26%
• Create more job-share options: 26%
• Offer flexible hours: 24%
• Promote actually taking vacations/time off: 23%
• Allow remote work: 23%
• Offer mental health-related training: 18%
• Offer sabbaticals: 14%
• Stop emails during off-hours: 10%
• Reduce low-value meetings: 10%

That information is also instructive and can help employers improve mental health and work-life balance among Gen Z employees. It’s important to note that al those ideas are realistic, can increase production, and are nothing new: they’ve been implemented successfully in many businesses around the world, and are slowly becoming more common among employers in the U.S.

The Workplace: Old Problems, New Solutions

In 2017, when Ronan Farrow published his first story on sexual harassment and abuse in the Hollywood workplace, the #metoo movement was born. This movement empowered women to stand up to decades of behavior in the workplace that was largely ignored, and in many instances encouraged.

2017 seems like a long time ago. But when we see the statistics below, reality returns, and offers a check.  2017 was only 7 years ago. Workplace harassment still exists, despite the #metoo movement. Non-inclusive behavior still happens, despite our progress.

The facts below tell the story.

Gen Z: Experience of Non-Inclusive, Stress-Inducing Behavior at Work

• Harassment: 61%
  • Offensive emails/work communications: 19%
  • Unwanted physical approaches/advances by coworkers: 17%
  • Unwanted physical contact at office or work events: 16%
• Microaggressions: 41%
  • Social exclusion: 13%
  • Gender-based undermining/patronizing: 9%
  • Social ridicule: 10%
• Reported harassment: 77%
  • Handled well by employer: 45%
  • Handled poorly: 32%
• Didn’t report harassment: 33%

We’ve come a long way, there’s still work to do, and Gen Z leads the way. One statistic shows the change in our culture: 77 percent of Gen Zs experiencing harassment reported it. That’s big: they felt the agency to speak – and did. At the same time, the very next statistics shows we’re still coming up short. Of the instances of harassment reported, employers handled less than half of them in a satisfactory manner. Pairing those statistics is a useful way to summarize where we are now: working towards an equitable workplace that promotes positive mental health, but recognizing that this effort is, indeed, a work in progress.

And speaking of progress, we’ll end with a list of five things members of Gen Z suggest employers can do to improve mental health in the workplace.

Gen Z Speaks: Top Five Ways to Support Mental Health at Work

1. Build a work environment where employees can discuss mental health openly, honestly, without fear of stigma, shame, or judgment.
2. Build a work environment where employers encourage employees to seek and engage professional, evidence-based treatment and support for mental health
3. Establish policies that promote a healthy work/life balance
4. Establish policies that reduce or prevent employee burnout
5. Directly and firmly address non-inclusive, stress-inducing behavior such as harassment and microagression