“Quiet vacations” are the latest way millennials are rebelling against in-person work

According to The Harris Poll’s May Out-of-Office Culture Report of 1,170 employed U.S. adults, 37% of millennial workers reported taking time off without informing their supervisors or managers.

“They will figure out how to strike an appropriate work-life balance, but that happens behind the scenes,” Libby Rodney, director of strategy at The Harris Poll, told CNBC. “It’s not really a quiet stop, but more of a quiet vacation.”

Millennials, who make up nearly 40% of the workforce, have gone to absurd lengths to make their bosses think they’re still working, according to the Harris Poll report. Nearly 40% said they waved their computer mouse to make it appear like they were active online, and just as many said they sent emails outside of work hours to create the illusion that they were working overtime.

“Instead of going head-to-head and worrying about whether you’re going to ruffle your boss’s feathers during a tense economic quarter, millennials are simply doing what they need to do to take their vacation “Rodney said. Fortune.

But the price of not getting angry is a baggage of guilt and stress for many of these workers. The Harris Poll report indicates that most employees are satisfied with the amount of paid time off they are allotted, suggesting that the desire for a quiet vacation is not a political issue, but rather a cultural one. Nearly half of those surveyed, including 61% of millennials and 58% of Gen Z, said they felt nervous about asking for time off. The feeling of pressure to always respond to professional inquiries and the guilt of leaving the rest of the work to colleagues are the main reasons.

The desire for a quiet vacation ultimately highlights a new form of worker anxiety that has emerged from the pandemic, Rodney noted. There is a gulf between the corporate culture young workers want and the one their older leaders continue to uphold.

“It’s certainly not a healthy system, but it’s a system that exists among American workers right now,” she said.

A divided workplace

Even though they find themselves four years into the pandemic, CEOs remain steadfast in their disagreement over remote work, feeling a loss of control over employee oversight and, therefore, a loss of their boss status . Last October, 62% of CEOs were adamant about returning all workers to the office by 2026, an ambitious goal that has since never been met. Meanwhile, 90% of office workers surveyed the same month said they were not interested in returning to a pre-COVID work culture, according to a Gallup poll.

The fact that employees find their boss’s behavior toxic is another factor in discord among workers: 46% of employees proclaim their worst boss “incompetent” or “unsupportive,” according to a June 2023 survey from the company Perceptyx employee analytics. The divide in the workplace has resulted in a maladaptive culture in which workers internalize the value of work-life balance instilled by the pandemic, while companies attempt to maintain the status quo.

“The culture within the office has not changed, even though our values ​​and those of American workers have changed,” Rodney said. “The experience and expectations are almost as if the pandemic never happened. »

Rodney sympathizes with businesses stuck in their old ways. In times of economic stress, there is a tendency to revert to previous norms. For employers, this means CEOs are following old corporate practices, like asking employees to work in person and discouraging time off, because it’s a model that has worked in the past.

But changes are afoot to accommodate the next generation of workers demanding flexibility: Most companies, even with traditional work values, have accepted hybrid work, and employee attitudes are changing as well. For the first time since the pandemic, Americans prefer hybrid work to remote work, a shift that is not the result of free corporate pizza but rather an adjustment to new norms.

There are good incentives for businesses to continue to adapt. Generation Z is poised to outnumber their baby boomer counterparts in the workforce this year, leaving companies with no choice but to give in to their changing demands.

“There will likely be another war for talent, where companies that put Gen Z and millennials at the forefront, as well as work-life balance, will be the signals that attract the next talent to the market,” Rodney said. said.