Most people in the professional world have probably felt a sense of dread when they click open their inbox to a slew of new emails on Monday mornings. For Gen Z, this feeling is so strong that they often have more than 1,000 unread emails piled up.
According to a Babbel survey of 2,000 office workers cited by CNBC, Gen Z workers ages 18 to 24 are the most likely to let those messages pile up. More than a third (36%) said they had more than 1,000 unread emails in their inbox. Among office workers from all generations, 18% said they had that many piled up.
Compared to other age groups, younger Gen Z workers were more likely to say they’ve sent an email they regret. In fact, one in five Gen Z professionals “very often” regret emails they have sent.
“From our findings, Gen Z appears to struggle the most with email stress and stacking up a huge quantity of unread emails due to a combination of factors,” said Esteban Touma, a linguistics and culture expert at Babbel.
Last April, a survey of 1,344 managers and business leaders from ResumeBuilder found that 74% believe GenZ is more difficult to work with than other generation. Nearly half said Gen Z is difficult to work with most of the time and most said they prefer to work with millennials. They said Gen Z is difficult because they lack technological skills, effort, and motivation.
Audacy reports have also covered how Gen Z has been pursuing trades over four-year university degrees. Many have failed to “launch” and are spending more years living with their family than other generations. Others have been known to “ghost” employers, or just start ignoring them.
However, that hasn’t stopped some members of Gen Z in the workforce from seeking raises, according to a recent Audacy report. It said 66% of employees aged 18 to 27 intend to request a raise this year, per a American Staffing Association and Harris poll.
“Gen Zers are already proving themselves to be different from other generations in the workplace,” said a December report from Entrepreneur. “They’re making office language less formal, and prioritizing self-care and happiness over chasing success.”
Keely Antonio, 25, said she turned down a $100,000 corporate job in part because she was disappointed that there were not options other than email to deliver real-time feedback and support, according to CNBC.
“I didn’t feel like there was a streamlined method of communicating in that organization,” she explained.
Slack, a company that provides a popular instant messaging app used by businesses, released results of a poll about emails sent to 8,000 small business workers in the U.S. and U.K. conducted with OnePoll last October. These results showed “the average employee still spends more than an entire working day per week drafting emails that few recipients read.”
Every week, the average worker drafted 112 emails and spent around five-and-a-half minutes on each.
“Nearly half of our respondents say it’s easy to misconstrue tone over email, and that there’s an underlying expectation that they need to keep things ‘formal,’” said Slack. “This expectation is a challenge, especially for younger generations, according to 57% of Gen Zers and 46% of millennials.”
Touma from Babbel said that Gen Z employees have communication preferences that are heavily influenced by instant messaging and social media.
“The structured and formal nature of email communication may feel unfamiliar and more complicated to many [Gen Zers],” he said. He recommends that they set time response boundaries around work emails and apply filters to keep things organized.