Welcome to the office, Gen Z. You’re the only one here.

After 18 months of unsatisfying, fully remote work, Isabella finally landed an office job at the end of last year as a production coordinator at a New York advertising agency. 

“I was so excited,” she recalls. She wore her smartest business-casual outfit and took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan for the very first work commute of her young career. On the seventh floor, she opened the door and was greeted with ... quiet.

No phones ringing, no office buzz. Fewer than a dozen people sat in an open workspace that could easily accommodate 80.

“I wore heels, which was stupid because there was nobody around,” she says. Those who were there all looked up when she walked by. “The floors are concrete, so all you could hear was me clacking around.”

When she went back the next day, she opted for jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of banged-up Nikes.

Like Isabella, who asked that her last name not be used because she was not authorized to speak by her company, many of America’s youngest workers have started their careers not with a bang but with a barely audible whimper. Employers have pushed them into near-empty offices or kept them at home to collaborate with older colleagues they’ve never met in person. Instead of workmates across the desk, they have Zoom. Instead of chance encounters in a hallway, they have pre-scheduled remote meetings with supervisors who may – or may not – have mastered the art of managing or mentoring online.

Of course, not all employees – including those 25 or under, known as Generation Z – have office jobs. According to a PwC global survey, 45% of respondents hold positions that require full-time attendance in workplaces, like hotels and restaurants. 

The rest have entered the labor equivalent of “The Twilight Zone.” This is particularly significant for Gen Z, whose well-being matters immensely for the American economy. 

Nearly as big as the record-setting millennials, they are the nation’s most diverse generation and will hold a projected one-third of jobs by 2030. Their weird introduction to the workplace could hurt their careers – or, in a surprising twist, could give them the insights to create better working lives that have balance as the bedrock.

“What’s very fascinating about this younger generation coming in in a way that no other generation has come into the workforce is that it could have these lingering, changing attitudes,” says Charlie Warzel, co-author with Anne Helen Petersen of “Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home.” “They’ve watched millennials graduate with these really unhealthy attitudes towards work,” he says. This generation also doesn’t want to work the same way its parents have, he adds. 

“What could happen,” he asks, “if Gen Z sees all of this as proof that maybe work-life balance as millennials and Gen Xers or boomers know it is unattainable, simply because our attitudes towards work are unsustainable, and ... they want to build their own?”

“No fast track” for remote workers 

America’s youngest workers are ready for change. 

“This Mondays-through-Fridays, 9-to-5 thing, it’s old,” says Edgar Rosales, district coordinator for Supervisor John Gioia of Contra Costa County, California. “It works, but it’s not optimal. ... I need my space where I can close out all the excess noise [and] have some self-care,” he says, like jogging in the middle of the day or a picnic lunch in the sun. His version of balance means making room for things “that bring me joy.”

Mr. Rosales considers himself one of the more fortunate young staffers at his workplace. Politics, he says, comes down to relationship-building. Having interned in local government during community college, before the pandemic, he had already established some of the relationships he now relies on in virtual meetings as liaison between the district supervisor and the county’s many city and community advisory councils. That’s not so easy for his Gen Z peers who came in cold, he adds. Meetings fall flat without the personal touch.

“They give their update and that’s it. There’s no connection, there’s no relationship with folks,” he says. “And you can tell: It’s not because they don’t want those relationships – it’s just hard to establish that when you’re always virtual. ... There’s no shared experiences you can draw from.”

That lack of connection may well stunt the careers of Gen Zers – in two ways.

With little to no in-person face time with their managers, it’s hard to stand out. Second, it’s harder to learn from colleagues how things are done in the company and the shortcuts to accomplishing work. The result: “a very stagnant career time and not gaining a lot of experience with others who have done the job,” says Rebecca Croucher, head of North America marketing for ManpowerGroup, a recruitment and workforce management company. “So, no fast track,” she adds.

This may help explain the paradox that Gen Z, the generation most comfortable with technology, is the least enamored with the remote office. Only 23% said remote working was very or extremely important to them, according to a 2022 survey by the National Society of High School Scholars. Similarly, only about a third of Gen Zers found remote work “extremely desirable,” compared with half of millennials and 62% of boomers, in a survey by Apartment List, an online rental housing locator.

Then again, the office isn’t always as great as Gen Z might envision.

Adventure or community?

After Tova Lenchner graduated from college in December 2020, she got a remote job at a tech startup in Boston. Not only was office culture hard to decipher, but Ms. Lenchner also found it tough to make personal connections. “The onboarding process was difficult,” she says.

Three months after she started, the firm began requiring all employees to spend at least four days a week in the office. At first, this was a good thing. “Being in person allowed us to trust each other,” she says. 

But she quickly became frustrated as burnout wore her down. “I found it hard to create a balance,” she says. And the closer she got to her co-workers, the more Ms. Lenchner could see from her older colleagues’ experiences, in particular, that she would have plenty of time later on to focus on her career. 

“It’s a goal of mine to see as much of the world as possible,” she says. So as COVID-19 restrictions eased, she quit her job earlier this year and took to the skies. And she’s still traveling.

“Gen Z are more discerning, in a way that boomers never were,” says Andrea Vanecko, design principal at architecture, planning, and design firm NBBJ. “If they are unsatisfied, they are going to leave. ... They are not about staying dedicated to the company. They have a completely different approach.”

That is why, in creating future offices, NBBJ aims to make the office so attractive that workers will leave their home offices. For Gen Z, that means focusing on key qualities such as authenticity, continuous learning, mentoring, and community, she says. 

“If it’s not as good as home, they’re not going to come in unless, of course, it’s a mandate,” says Ms. Vanecko. “Companies are trying to not have to mandate it, because it shows they’re flexible.” 

Office innovations and flexibility

Three grape Jolly Ranchers sit in a small basket on Samira Lobby’s desk at online furniture retailer Wayfair in Eugene, Oregon. It was full to the brim not long before, she explains, holding the bowl up to the Zoom camera, but colleagues kept coming by to help themselves and chat. Each co-worker offers a different type of candy at their desk. It’s a simple way to get people talking – corny, maybe, but it works, says Ms. Lobby. 

In 2020, after working during college and graduating with a journalism major, she took a job as a marketing specialist at a property management company. But it didn’t last. 

“After COVID hit, I realized that our values were totally different and the culture didn’t really fit with me,” she says. So, for the first time in her life, she quit, letting her supervisors know via email. A few months later, she started remotely in a customer service position at Wayfair. It could have been a lonely period, but she found that the company made connecting with co-workers easy. 

Two years and a promotion later, she says she’s thriving, in part thanks to a lively online workplace culture. She participates actively on the office’s messaging platform, Slack, in channels ranging from a networking group for people of color to a space for fans of the reality TV show “The Bachelor.” In addition, a companywide program called Mentor Match connects young people like her with more experienced employees. 

For Gen Zers, work-life balance means that autonomy, flexibility, and support go hand in hand. A minority of them highly value remote work, but an even smaller minority – 17% – want to be in the office full time, according to unpublished data from a recent Future Forum survey. 

Balance and fun

Burnout was the biggest challenge of remote work for Ellyana Maynard, who, at the peak of the pandemic, started her job as a recruiter at Formstack, a workplace productivity software company. “It can be very isolating,” she says in a Zoom interview from Middlebury, Vermont. “Sometimes you just want people” around. 

But now she’s gotten used to the setup and can’t see herself ever going back to an office. Through electronic communication platforms, her workplace has been able to foster community, collaboration, and camaraderie. “We have [a] very strong office culture,” Ms. Maynard says.

Her employer also gives employees a $100 wellness stipend and the option to work for only half the day on Fridays. Such incentives have improved the quality of her life, giving her more time to walk with her dog and work out. “My husband is now considering going remote,” she says.

By contrast, Allison Strang is sold on working in person.

She started her career at a small company in London three months into the pandemic. The business centered on wellness, but management didn’t seem to care about her own well-being. She had to come into the office whenever her boss requested it; even at the height of COVID-19, there was no flexibility in the schedule. Worse, she had no support from co-workers.

“I had no one to look up to,” she says. “Everything was a guessing game.” 

So she quit early this year, moved back to the United States, and began working for a Boston-based firm that helps property managers and employers create positive workplace experiences. She has regular one-on-ones with her managers and says having them ask, “‘Can I do something for you?’ is bizarre to me and the best thing ever.” 

“I could work from home every day if I really wanted to, but I choose to come in four days a week,” she says, sipping an Americano at a cafe around the corner from her office in downtown Boston. “They’re very good at showing us how much they appreciate us.” Office lunch gatherings and weekly happy hours are the norm, including a recent pride-themed party. And on Mother’s Day, the company brought in someone who makes flower bouquets. “It’s just fun,” she says. “So I’m like, why would I want to sit at home alone?” 

“At one point I thought we were going to work from home forever,” she adds. Now her vision of the future includes a collective workspace that takes active care of employees’ well-being. 

“I think people care about people, because of what happened, and people want to appreciate each other more. Nothing beats being connected with someone face to face. I think we’ll continue getting back to that over time.”

Editor’s note: Samira Lobby’s job history has been clarified.