Having a career: yes, but at what cost? Earning more doesn’t have the same appeal as it once did. The change has taken hold. Covid was just the starting point. It acted as a detonator. But those needs had already been brewing for some time, at least on an individual level. Today they come out into the open. Workers, especially among the younger generations, are no longer willing to sacrifice their private lives on the altar of economic benefits. The Spanish newspaper El Pais tells two emblematic stories.
“I quit my job, I want to go home and see my son awake”
We are in Madrid. Two young women are sitting in a café in the Chamberí neighborhood. “We quit” they say in unison. Until recently they worked for one of the Big Four (this is what the four main audit firms in the world are called). But office life is a thing of the past. “I want to study psychology and start my own business” says one of the two. Career advancement, he adds, is not his priority (or perhaps it is no longer). “It’s not worth it,” he says. “I want to go home and see my son awake.” The game is not worth the candle. And never mind if the salary doesn’t grow. “Money means more responsibility and more hours, stress and too much pressure,” he observes. “There are things money can’t buy.”
Daniel (sales manager of a construction company): “I no longer have a life”
Daniel, sales manager of a construction company, also thinks so. “Salary is no longer the primary driver of career advancement,” he explains. “Promotion involves not only more ambitious goals, but also the acquisition of new skills that do not translate into salary increases.” Daniel says he has sacrificed a lot to make his customers happy, making himself “available even at lunch and even after eight in the evening”. But all things considered, perhaps it was a mistake. “A promotion – he objects – means multiplying this level of attention and managing teams. In the end, I don’t have a life. I prefer to stay as I am.”
El Pais cites a survey by InfoJobs according to which giving up career advancement is a growing trend among workers over 35. Six out of ten employees have stopped aspiring to professional growth because it involves too many sacrifices on a personal level. But the trend is certainly not just Spanish, but Western.
Italian workers ask for tranquility and health, money is less important
The decline of economic primacy in the world of work finds numerical confirmation in the data of the 8th Eudaimon-Censis Report on corporate welfare published last year. The photograph taken by the report is shocking: economic wealth has fallen to eighth place in the hierarchy of fundamental values for well-being, indicated as a priority by only 9% of the sample.
At the top of Italians’ concerns are instead psychophysical health, considered essential by 63% of those interviewed, followed by tranquility (42.4%) and balance (34.4%), while economic well-being is indicated as a priority by only 7.5% of employees. The trend appears even more rooted in the new generations. According to a report published by the Guardian, 74% of young people from Generation Z put the balance between private life and professional employment before pure remuneration, which stops at 68% of preferences. The world of work is changing. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.