Work, Reimagined: Gen Z’s Blueprint for the Future

0:00At ThinkLab, we believe that research should do more than just spark ideas. It should create meaningful change. So for every survey completed, we plant a tree. That means that your insights don't just shape the future of the built environment, they help reforest it. It's quick, it's meaningful, and it starts with your voice. Simply click the link in the show notes to get involved in our latest research and grow something bigger than data. Let's design a better future together.

0:37Will the next generation pull us back into a physical office? Or push us into a completely virtual world? And what skills will we need to stay ahead in a world that's moving this fast? Today, we explore these questions. Welcome to Design Nerds Anonymous, the podcast that sparks curiosity at the intersection of business and design. I'm your host, Amanda Schneider, founder and president at ThinkLab, and speaker now featured on TED.com. Today, we're talking with Alexandra Leavitt, futurist, New York Times columnist, bestselling author of books like Humanity Works and Deep Talent. Alexandra joins us to unpack the forces shaping the next decade of work.

1:25From Gen Z's surprising take on remote work, to a potential comeback of the metaverse, to how AI might just change what it means to be human at work. Alexandra challenges us to rethink what's coming next. We start by asking Alexandra to distill the future she sees coming into one word. Here's what she said. If there is one word that I could use to describe the next five to ten years, I would say disruptive. But that doesn't necessarily have to mean bad. It can mean a challenge, for sure, but also an opportunity to transform ourselves in ways that we didn't think were possible and end up being more meaningful for us as humans.

2:11My name is Alexandra Leavitt, Alex for short. I am a business and workplace author, speaker, consultant, and futurist. And when I say futurist, I'm referring to someone who works with organizations to try to ascertain what has the greatest potential for destruction in the world of work in the next five to 10 years. Tell me a little bit about why you say disruptive. I say disruptive just because I think things are changing at a clip that was previously unheard of. So I'm a fan of comparing our current environment in which the workforce is transforming to the industrial revolution, which is also a time when the workforce and the workplace were transforming.

2:55But everything just happened a lot more slowly and people had more time to get used to it and to figure out what does this mean for me? And organizations were slower to roll out policy and procedure because they had time to figure out how these new technologies were going to be integrated. And everything is just moving a lot faster now. We're very much in reactive versus proactive mode. And so I feel that that is unfortunately a time when things can come up on us rather quickly. And then we have sometimes an issue with reacting in the most appropriate, efficient, and also ethically sound way. I'm glad that you added ethically sound in there.

3:37Yeah, that's a big one. It is. All right, this is Design Nerds Anonymous. So I want to bring the nerdy part of this.

3:49We're just getting started. A quick pause for this short break, and we'll be right back.

3:56Alexandra Levit:I'm probably not alone or isolated in feeling that right now there's so much that we could choose to worry about and things feel really uncertain. What I find is that when we think about and spend time imagining the future, it can actually calm some of those fears. It can actually do something. What we're trying to do is catalyze action. So when you see and feel and can touch the future in your mind, it inspires you to want to do something today to shape it. That's the entire point. Spending time thinking and discussing gives us the opportunity to shape that better future that we're all hoping for.

4:33Alexandra Levit:I'm Kaylin Reed, Applied Insight Strategist, Certified Futurist, and host of the Alternative Design podcast. We started Alternative Design as a beacon of hope for our industry at a time when the world was no longer business as usual. At Kimball International, the future isn't something that we wait for. We search for it.

5:00All right, let's get back into it. I know you do a ton of research. I would love to dive into the most surprising stats from your research that relate to the future of work. The first surprising statistic, since we're going to be talking about them so much, has to do with Generation Z. Actually, 98 % of Gen Zers do not care for the video conference format of work. They would prefer something that is either in-person or more immersive. Typically, in my research, we don't see quite that unanimous a response for anything. And what that has shown us is that the current method of working remotely or working virtually is not really satisfying to people.

5:49And by the way, we did replicate these results with members of other generations as well. And we saw that people by and large do not care for the type of video conferencing that we're using. So I view this as a massive opportunity for the metaverse, for the extended reality environment to come in and provide an experience that is substantially more immersive and makes people feel more like they are actually there. because the fact of the matter is there's going to be a time probably relatively soon where we're just not able to be in an in-person environment on the type of schedule that I think today's leaders are looking for.

6:28People think that the pandemic was a once in a lifetime type of thing. And as a futurist, I have to look at patterns and say that is almost certainly not the case, that there will be another disruption, very similar and probably in a much shorter window than we're thinking. And so this is something we need to work on a little bit. But the current dissatisfaction with the offerings that are available was very interesting just because it was such a high percentage. Gen Z was that high on the first study, but then we replicated it with generations, mainly because we wanted to see if we could replicate the study in general.

7:04Alexandra Levit:It's like, wow, that's weird to have that many people saying they're dissatisfied with the current level of immersiveness and the types of video conferencing technology that we currently have. People just don't like it at all. But I didn't know it'd be that high. Let's dive in there really briefly. And then I want to go to the flip side of that, which is if they prefer in person, what gets them there? But let's start with the metaverse piece, because I feel like we don't hear as much about the metaverse. That was 2019 to, I don't know, it seems to have died off in the last couple of years. But tell me about that metaverse piece and why that chatter is cooling or what you think it will take to revive it.

7:40Because I think we all had experiences in the metaverse or with new technologies between 2020 and 2025, let's say, and most of them were clumsy. So tell me about what would need to be true for that metaverse to really take off. Clumsy is a really good way of putting it, Amanda. And this is one of my favorite topics because I am bullish on metaverse and have been for probably a couple of decades now, which is interesting because you're right, around 2019, 2020, there was a big fad that people jumped onto. It's the result, I believe, of the popularization of metaverse stories. So for example, Ready Player One was a book that was written a little bit earlier, but did come out in a very well-known Spielberg movie around that time.

8:31And it was rather easy for people to see how that could be the future, not only of work, but of society, of the way that we live. For me, this is one of the most compelling portrayals of how life could actually be. And it's similar to a book that was written even earlier in the 80s called Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson, which was one of the first fiction pieces to portray a life lived in the metaverse. And the reason that I think that this is coming and coming in a big way, whether we like it or not, is because of the very first thing we talked about, and that's disruption. It's going to be virtually impossible at a certain point for us to live and work the way we've been living, which means we are 100 % reliant on an in-person environment.

9:21Now, I know our people listening and consider this our built environment type of people. I know by and large, the built environment is a physical, real-life environment. And I think that will continue to be important. I don't want to say that we're sending everything to the metaverse and we're not going to have physical reality anymore. But that said, we are going to be using, I believe, a lot in the metaverse in the coming, it might be as soon as five years from now. It could be 10, it could be 15. It really honestly depends on exactly what you said. And that's the sophistication of the technology.

9:55As a futurist, I have to look at the trajectory of things and are these problems going to be solved? I absolutely believe they will. And when they are, it's going to be hard to argue. And if you think about the benefits, the benefits are being able to live, work and learn, especially in an environment that just would not be possible for people. Otherwise, it helps with things like disaster planning. So being able to butts around with things in, let's say, a digital twin that's in the metaverse, that's a really interesting and attractive possibility, I think, not just for organizations, but even for individuals who might be concerned about doing certain things in their job.

10:36It provides that real-world simulated training opportunity. There are some challenges that need to be overcome before we can see this used in a widespread manner. But I do feel it's coming. And just like COVID, we're going to have a video conference. Nobody wanted to do that either. Well, and I want to go back to that because I feel like even your example of Ready Player One, the crux of that one is that it wasn't necessarily better, especially as you look at their real lives outside of virtual reality. A lot of them, it was a sense of escapism. The world's going to shit. And so I have to escape it.

11:10So how can we avoid that exact future? because I think we all agree that we like to be together face to face, that maybe technologies will develop and it will enable it to happen faster virtually. But today, there is still a human to human breathing the same air, touching, holding hands, meeting camaraderie that happens faster when we're face to face. So how do we get people in person? Like what of that is optimistic to our audience that wants to build a better future real world for the world? Amanda, this is a great question. Perfect for the audience, because I do think that you're right about the way that Ready Player One in particular is portrayed.

11:55It is a dystopia. I think everyone could agree we're in a time of transition in our society at large, and people are pretty disconcerted by it. But hopefully it's not going to be as severe as the scenario portrayed in Ready Player One. So there's a couple different things here, like what can we do to effectively have experiences that are worthwhile in both the metaverse and the physical world, and how can they complement each other? Another interesting statistic is that everybody thinks Gen Z wants to do everything virtually or wants to do everything using technology. And in fact, a majority of Gen Zers would prefer to do things like resolve a conflict or ask their boss about a sensitive issue while sitting in front of them.

12:41And that was interesting because we go into a public space sometimes and we see a bunch of Gen Zers on our phone and nobody's talking to anybody. So we think that's how they want to operate. And in fact, that's not the case, at least with the population of knowledge workers in the Gen Z generation that we observed. Back to what can you do in your physical built environment? I think using data to assess how your workspace is actually being used is really important because some things will resonate with some groups that others don't. And so being able to measure workforce and workplace utilization and space utilization by an individual location is really important.

13:23And a lot of organizations are making decisions at the executive level. This is what we think our employees would want, or this is what we would want. And they're not actually measuring it. And I could spend a whole other podcast talking about the need to acquire adjacent skills in your area that will allow you to compete effectively with artificial intelligence. And for built environment professionals, I consider this to be an adjacent skill. You're now not only providing the space, you're teaching people how to measure and optimize the space. People who are going to be successful in this profession going forward are going to know how to do that and know how to advise others to do that.

14:03I think that's very relevant here because everything you just spoke about is the tension that we're in. The metaverse isn't a better experience just yet. So this is why some CEOs are calling people back to the office. Forward doesn't look better, so let's go back. And until we have something better than Zooms, our only choice for some of these folks probably feels like, let's just go back to the way things work. They're thinking, I see more results. I trust my people more when I see them face to face. So I want to go back to this idea that I actually don't think they're so mutually exclusive. And I think unfortunately, Sometimes it sounds like it.

14:42Either we're going to this virtual future or we're going backwards. And I think the truth is probably somewhere in between. We'll be right back after this short break.

14:56We are at our best when we have an authentic, deep relationship with all of the people that we work with. When we are brought in early, when we are seen as a partner, that's when we can deliver our best and provide the best outcomes for everyone involved. Mannington Commercial is relationship focused. We want to connect and it's not just about flooring solutions. It's about how we all work together synergistically on all of the projects that we work on. It's not transactional. It's how can we really support the needs and the requirements with our full attention and our full suite of solutions, but really with the intent of making everything the best that it can possibly be.

15:44Hi, I'm Cindy Kaufman. I'm Vice President of Marketing with Mannington Commercial, and we are a very proud sponsor of the DNA Podcast. We would love to invite everyone to come and connect with us, whether that means visiting our website at one of our showrooms, connecting with one of our local reps in whatever market they're in. We will be more than happy to meet you where you are and support you through whatever your project needs are and longer term than that.

16:15Thanks for sticking with us. Now, let's return to the ideas shaping the future. From your work, any other insights about how we can get Gen Z to show up? Because that came up in our research at ThinkLab. The primary way Gen Z builds social connections is showing up in person. We do a lot around the rep designer relationship. So the sales reps that are calling on these professional designers and they say, yes, we want face-to-face time. But these reps are like, I keep inviting them. They're not showing up. And I think some CEOs are feeling that way too. Is there anything from your research that you can share that helps us understand how we might get there faster?

16:57Yeah, first of all, for Gen Z, I think it's really important to have them in a physical office as much as possible, assuming they're not sitting in an empty cube farm. My very first book was a book called They Don't Teach Corporate in College that I wrote when I was 26. And the entire reason that I wrote it was because it was all about what I learned. Coming into the business world as a high-achieving college student and having to adjust to the norms of working in a professional environment. And I thought it was super hard for me back then when I was in an office five days a week, surrounded by the people I needed to influence and be influenced by.

17:31And so much so that I wrote a book that then became pretty popular with other people who were like, I don't know what to do working in this business world environment. We thought that was tough. Can you imagine trying to assimilate into a business world environment you've never experienced when you're not even there? When everything is being done remotely, you don't know who you're dealing with necessarily, You're not sure how the politics of things work, how to get things done. And so with Gen Z, I actually am a little bit stronger on I do think they should return to office and be there as much as possible, at least for the first couple of years of their career.

18:08Again, this assumes that we are providing meaningful learning and growth and mentorship experience to them, not just their coming in just to come in. We knew the old way worked, so let's just go back to the old way, hook, line, and sinker, when in fact mandating something just to mandate it is probably not the most ideal scenario. So we have to think very carefully about who this is going to work for and who it isn't, and that is where I want to make that distinction. I think that being in the physical environment as much as you possibly can is unique to people who are young and new in their careers and really do need that more immersive environment to figure out how things are going to be done and to leap forward in their careers.

18:55For everybody else, I think we're being too rigid with the return to office and that we need to embrace the flexibility and the trust of our employees to do what they need to do to get their work done effectively. And so I've seen the pendulum swing quite a bit to the other side from we're going to do everything remotely to everybody's back. It doesn't matter what the circumstances. Amanda, I'd be curious to what your audience thinks of this, but I thought that it had to do with real estate licenses. I thought it had to do with, we have this commercial real estate space, so we're paying for it.

19:30We want to make sure we use it. And that's what was driving this. And now I'm not so sure because we see not only some of those deals being reinstated for future time periods, but we also see that really desirable office space is hotter than ever. Really cool locations are, you know, selling and renting like gangbusters. So I'm not exactly sure. And as a futurist, that's the best position to be in, to not be sure and to be curious about this phenomena. It doesn't appear to just be financial. So there has to be something else driving this. And I think it is because exactly of what you said, which is that we know the old way worked and it has to do with the leadership that is still by and large entrenched, which grew up and had quite a bit of success in the structure of the business world where everyone showed up.

20:23So in this time of uncertainty, if I can see people, if I can walk through the halls and I can talk to people, I know that people are productive, then I can feel better about the direction of my organization when that may or may not be true. We see employee disengagement higher than it's ever been. I think that's just the environment and society that we're living in right now is people feel trapped in their work lives and they don't know the best way to contribute. I think we need to be looking at engagement stats and also tenure. One of the things that I think is a huge problem is that people are jumping around so much.

21:02Some of this is due to the employer themselves in that there's been a lot of layoffs over the last couple of years. We just seem to be relatively indiscriminate about letting people go at any time. Oh, OK, we're just going to have layoffs, save costs. And layoffs have really bad implications from a variety of perspectives. It makes people feel like they're not psychologically safe. Then we get rid of really valuable, reliable talent that has institutional knowledge of our organization. And then we try to get those people back and sometimes we can't. So really what we should be looking for is instead of laying people off, we should be figuring out a way to redeploy them.

21:41If we can't use them in their current role, upskill them, which refers to they're doing the job that they were doing. But now they've added, for example, automation and AI-based technology components to their job or even reskilling. So their job is going to become obsolete. But instead of laying them off, we're going to train them in something else that we now need for our organization. So we need to be focusing on keeping people. And we need to be focused on engaging the people that we keep. And everything, including how we design our built environments, has to be driving toward those outcomes.

22:12And why? Well, I mean, I hate getting catastrophic with people, but we are going to have a global labor shortage. This is caused by a variety of things, namely falling birth rates. There just simply aren't the people to have the jobs. And whenever there is a human process that we insert an autonomous or machine-based intervention into, we still need a person to design it, to manage it, to fix it when it breaks, to redeploy it, to explain how it works to decision makers, and then to develop the next thing that is an add-on improvement. That's a lot of human jobs that I just added. I actually do not think, similar to other periods in history, that we are going to be eliminating jobs per se.

22:59But the question is, what jobs are we going to have and not have? And are the people that we have adequately trained for those jobs? And when they aren't, are we going to be able to find the external talent that we need? And if we're looking at demographics, the answer to that is no. But these are things we really need to be thinking about, how we are designing our built environment and our workspaces in a way that engages people and also keeps them. Because even if we don't want to keep them in their current job, we want to keep them in general. I want to go back to something you said earlier about these transferable skills, because a lot of these shifts relate to two things, lack of time and risk aversion.

23:40We're all making decisions that are safe and fast. And we know that safe and fast doesn't always lead to innovative and smart. I loved your advice to think about those transferable skills and looking at data, which I think is new for design to really connect these visual, functional decisions with actual data and proof points. Is there any other advice that you have for our audience around how to take these incredible skills that they've learned as designers and leverage them to transform where we think this future could go collectively? I like to use my own job as an example of this, show that nobody's really immune to this.

24:26I've written for The Wall Street Journal many times over my career, and it's been a really fun job that I've had. I've enjoyed it tremendously. But if I look at the writing on the wall, I see that in the next five years, my column that I've written is going to be able to be written by generative AI. That's just a fact. It doesn't feel good. But that's the part of this that is going to become automated. And so I have to think about if I want to be gainfully employed by the Wall Street Journal for the foreseeable future, I need to develop some adjacent skills that I didn't necessarily have to have before because I was focused so much on the writing.

25:02The writing is automated. what are the other things that a human could potentially add value to that are related to this role? So for me, that's things like editing. The Wall Street Journal would never allow a column of mine to go out written by ChatGPT without human eyes on it. Like that is probably not going to happen in its current incarnation and probably for the near future. So the editing skill and also the interviewing skill. Because yes, I imagine that a machine could send email questions. People could reply with responses. That said, there are certain issues that are very sensitive that a human being is not likely to open up to chat GPT about.