As the business mantra goes, early is on time and on time is late. For some Gen Z workers, though, late is the new on time.
In a new survey commissioned by Meeting Canary, an AI-powered work meeting behavior analyzer, 47% of Gen Z respondents said they believe that arriving 5 to 10 minutes late is still considered punctual. The survey also found that 70% of baby boomers believe that being right on time is actually late, opening up a generational workplace battle.
So, is Gen Z really that late to meetings? Fast Company spoke with industry experts to determine whether there truly is a tardy generation—and what this stereotype might say about the state of young people at work.
Gen Z and boomers have different timing values
The Meeting Canary study, which surveyed 1,000 people from different age groups across the U.K., found a significant generational divide in opinions on timeliness. When asked how long after a meeting time one could arrive before being considered late, 70% of baby boomers responded “no time,” and that being punctual required arriving early. That same option was selected by only 22% of Gen Zers.
Laura van Beers, CEO of Meeting Canary, was unsurprised by the study’s outcome. She has seen the timeliness gap firsthand, recounting a story about a colleague closer to the baby boomer generation who ritualistically arrived at meetings before the start time. Closer to the Gen Z side herself, van Beers would arrive afterward, causing the two to clash.
“We notice this ourselves already,” van Beers says. “I don’t really mind if other people are a bit later, but he is always very frustrated.”
Van Beers believes this tardiness is incidental, and that recognition of the problem may offer an easy fix. “People will become slowly aware that their behavior is impacting others in a negative way. Then, they can change it,” she says.
For some, the issue goes beyond a simple lack of awareness. HR consultant Kate Walker believes that Gen Z’s lack of punctuality may be a sign of “job boredom,” noting, “Obviously, there’s a lack of engagement, a lack of caring. Maybe this generation is feeling no sense of purpose when they’re going into the workplace.”
Is Gen Z really to blame?
Gen Zers have faced their fair share of criticism in the workplace. For instance, a 2023 ResumeBuilder.com survey reported that 74% of managers and business leaders found Gen Z more difficult to work with than other generations. But when it comes to the issue of timeliness, some experts believe that Gen Z is being unjustly stereotyped.
Mark Beal, assistant professor of practice at Rutgers University School of Communication, works with Gen Z students every day. He sees his students attend class sessions up to 40 minutes before the start of the lecture. Of course there are stragglers and latecomers, but not at a rate different from any other generation, he says.
“The majority of the meetings throughout the 30 years of my career rarely, if ever, started [on] time,” Beal says. “There’s this line where, if you’re a millennial, a [Gen] Xer, or a boomer, you’re always five minutes early. I just don’t think that’s the case.”
The punctuality debate may also be a sign of Gen Z workers’ push to be more effective with their time management. Gen Zers demand a greater work-life balance, and they use tools like generative AI to avoid being bogged down by small tasks. Maybe that meeting your Gen Z intern was running late to could have been an email exchange instead.
“Gen Z works smarter, not necessarily harder,” Beal says. “I really do believe that Gen Z is focused on the efficient and productive use of their time.”
Walker similarly looks to the older generation of managers to answer the question of lateness. For her, it may be more a question of meeting composition than employee behavior. “It could be the managers running bad meetings,” she says. “Why bother coming on time? This person is not even organized.”