Host: I just went through the biggest change in my life, which was leaving my corporate job with really no backup plan. I decided that life is too short to do something that isn't filling my cup, and to really take a risk and bet on myself.

Host: It just became a lot. I was burnt out. I was really burnt out and I was feeling very sad sometimes.

Host: So after a lot of deliberation and a lot of back and forth with the HR and the company, I finally decided that it was time for me to move on and look for other opportunities, even though that meant that I will have to go through a period of uncertainty about what I wanted to do next.

Host: Tricia Williams is the Director of Research, Evaluation and Knowledge Mobilisation at TMU Future Skills Centre, and she joins me in the studio. How are you doing?

Tricia Williams: Thank you so much. I'm great. How are you?

Host: I'm doing well. I want to get your thoughts on that video that we just watched. We heard burnout. We heard the phrase bet on yourself. Uncertainty. Tell me, what are your thoughts when you see those videos?

Tricia Williams: Oh, when I see this, I see young people who are saying I want something different for myself and I'm going to pursue some opportunities. So I think they're they're saying that they want a better future for themselves. However they define that. And we know that young people, by and large, like I'm making broad generalizations here, generally tend to value quality of work very highly now, more so than previous generations. And that involves having flexibility, having pathways forward, and really saying, I want to create those kinds of opportunities for myself.

Host: The Deloitte survey, which looked at 23,000 Gen Z's and millennials and found that young professionals are looking for more authenticity at work, help us understand what are we talking about when we talk about the concept of authenticity?

Tricia Williams: The Deloitte study really parallels a lot of work that we've done at the Future Skills Centre, which was looking at quality of work, and we did a few papers that specifically looked at young people. And one of the things we find is that young people don't want to have value mismatch between their personal lives and their work lives. It's really so the word authenticity you said, I think, sums it up very well. It's looking for those opportunities to both make a living, but also make a life. And that involves things that like mental health supports or work life balance or being able to take time off. That's not just, you know, so many days off, but really feeling supported to do those things. And I think we saw those kinds of things come through really loud and clear when we did this research with young people that, you know, they were looking for ways to have that life that wouldn't just be, you know, putting in the time clock, punching their card in and getting a paycheque.

Host: Okay. With that being said, with how established workplaces are right now, how can they support those goals, those lofty what seem like for maybe for some companies or organizations that might be, I don't want to say stuck in the past, but how do they support their goals?

Tricia Williams: Yeah. No, it's really easy to say, oh my gosh, young people these days, they don't want to work hard, they don't want to do what we did. And you know, I'm guilty sometimes as a manager you're thinking, I want you to work, right? I want you to do these things. And yes, we can do all that. And so it's not either or. It's. And so I'd say, you know, one of the things I think we're in the midst of right now is a whole transition from a world in which, you know, we had a scarcity of jobs to one in which we have a scarcity of skills. And so I think, you know, more and more employers who want to access the skills that they really need to drive their business improvement, to drive their program delivery, to drive excellence. They're going to need to compete for those skills among the labour market. And young people have a lot of those skills. They have incredible creativity. They have ideas. They are AI natives. They are the highest group that is adopting artificial intelligence among any of the different groups we've surveyed. And I think businesses and companies that want to harness that will need to look at making some changes to entice young people. It doesn't always have to be difficult or expensive. So I mentioned flexibility whenever possible. So I know we're in an era of return to office mandates, but is there any flexibility around that? Maybe 1 or 2 days a week or even just say occasionally, we know you're going to need to work from home? If is there any kinds of flexibility on start times or end times, those sort of things like finding that flexibility and dynamism where you can.

Host: Okay. I want to have a better understanding of I'm going to quote a Toronto rapper, Drake YOLO, you only live once. He popularised that phrase in the early 2010s. How much does quitting because of that sort of concept play into some of the decisions for people to quit?

Tricia Williams: Yeah, it's something you know, I've thought a lot about because, you know, like many people, I have young people in my life. I wish I was one of them. Sometimes I can't say that I am anymore, but I, I do see, you know, people talk about this with young people. Oh, they're just doing this YOLO life. What are the things I think young people are doing is saying we want a better social contract. Right. So yes, I will work. I will put time in to make my career. But I want to know, can I buy a house right when I do all that work? Or am I not even going to be able to afford a condo? Can I afford to go out to eat on the weekends? Like affordability is a key part of this. So I think, you know, if sometimes people are saying, look, I can't save, I can't buy a house, I am just going to live in the moment. I mean, can we blame them? You know, if you're going to do all of that saving and work so hard and you still can't get the life that you have dreamt of and that your parents have dreamt of for you.

Host: I want to talk about the job market is also different in that when we look at the options, the alternatives. Do we think that the younger generation perceive that they have more options available? I'm thinking, in comparison to you put that analogy of kind of putting in your punch card.

Tricia Williams: Yeah. Well, the alternative now might be for a lot of people, content creating or being an influencer. There are these options like, well, if this doesn't work out we can I can possibly do this. Or if I was doing this as a side hustle, you know what? I am seeing some of my fruits of my labour.

Host: Yeah. You know, it's it's funny because, you know, I would never want to be a content creator. I can barely post to my family and friends, but a lot of people do aspire to this. And I think, you know, the same way. Like it was hard to imagine 30 years ago that you could have a fully online business. Right? So new jobs get created with any kind of technology or, you know, era of development the same way some disappear, right? We might administrative assistants now can use AI tools and their role is changing. So when we say like is it a problem if young people want to be content creators? No. I think, you know, this is the new economy we live in. Do we think there's value there now? The extent to which it's a viable lifestyle, viable career, I should say not lifestyle. Is it a viable livelihood for young people in Canada? Well, I'd say that's a little bit less than other places. So you might be looking at young people in the US that have a much different monetization structure. Right here. You can't earn money the same way from views and clicks and so forth. So it is less of an option.

Host: All right. I want to bring back the survey. The survey found that Gen Z's are more focused on work life balance than climbing that corporate ladder. How can companies turn that attitude around?

Tricia Williams: Well, you know what? We did research on the quality of work. We really found that people were unanimously clear and that they want opportunities to learn and grow. Right. And this is great. We need that as Canada. We need people to be continually learning, not just early in their career, but throughout their careers, because, you know, technology is changing so fast and the skills we need. So when we say, do young people want to go into leadership? I'd say they might, but under the right conditions. So what are the conditions? Maybe you want to make sure your middle managers aren't burned out and aren't so overworked. Maybe they need to be supported more. This is famously something that middle management struggles with, right? And having been a middle manager myself, I know it's true. You get your squeezed in the middle. So I think, you know, young people are saying we don't necessarily want the deal that previous generations have accepted. And I think more than anything, that's a challenge to all of us to adjust.

Host: In a recent Maclean's article, you wrote, coming of age during an economic downturn can hinder a person's growth from a long time, even after the economy has stabilized. What does that mean for people starting out? And it's not necessarily just an economic downturn. If we look at where we are right now, I mean, we are a few years removed from Covid, but Covid had a lot to do with it. Climate is a big thing. A lot of people are very scared of that. When you package all of the things that are facing young people, how do how do you even start out?

Tricia Williams: Well, we did some research that looked at the long term labour market scarring effect that we called. And it really it's built on data from the early '90s, when I was a young person in the early '90s and people who graduated into a recession, you can actually empirically link a higher level of unemployment for youth with a lower wage level, even up to ten years later. So we're saying that there was a long impact of that when you graduated and the economic conditions in your longer term earnings, it took them ten years to recover from that. So what I think that does is, well, for one, I don't say that to discourage any young person now or their parents or family members who are concerned about them. But I do think it points to the need for some social policy interventions.

Host: Okay. Well let's talk well, let's talk about you've talked about this, what workplaces can do, but also governments. What can they do as well.

Tricia Williams: Yeah. And I mean this is where you know, we're in a in we're making generational investments, to use the government's words and the infrastructure of our country the same way. I think we need to be thinking about generational investments in the social infrastructure. So young people are absolutely critical. They are our future doctors and lawyers and nurses and and the people who are going to be taking care of me when I'm old and.

Host: Grey, you and I.

Tricia Williams: Both of us.

Tricia Williams: So we need to make sure that we are facilitating their education, right? Their transitions to the labour market, and to make sure all of those things happen a little more smoothly than they do right now. So that involves, you know, making sure they have really good guidance and information to help make choices at that critical stage in post-secondary and secondary school about whether and how to go forward in post-secondary to make sure there's a variety of pathways available, whether it's the skilled trades, whether it's university, whether it's some other sort of program, and to make sure that they have, you know, appropriate tuition support, financial aid, all of those things. That's good for young people. But it's really important for us to to make those investments, to make sure that we have the workforce we need in the future.

Host: You make the sort of comparison to the old age security program to sort of what we can do is that when we're trying to think innovatively here. Yeah. How does that program, sort of what do you see from the benefits of that program to how it can help young people?

Tricia Williams: Well, if I think about when, you know, the Canada pension plan and the old age security programs were developed, they they came of age in the middle of the prior century when there was a real issue with senior poverty. And we still have issues with poverty. Right. But like, there's still a lot of retirees who face a, you know, a core plank of their retirement plan is making sure they don't get an OAS clawback. Right. And if people in my family who are in that situation and, you know, I think we we invest a significant portion of our assets as a country into supporting this group. Right. And I think we absolutely need to make sure it goes to where it's needed. But at the same time, I think there's a there's a group that we're not thinking of in terms of an economic imperative to support and invest in them. We think, oh, young people, they're not working hard enough. They just want to play video games. And by the way, video games is very good training. Very true. Very true. You know, the manual dexterity. So I do think we need to think creatively about the ways and how and which groups we invest in and see it as, as a moral imperative. And the same way in the post-war period, we, you know, senior poverty was a huge issue of concern for us. I think young people and their support needs to be a critical issue for us.

Host: We talked about Covid. We talked about, you know, generational investments in this country. From your research, what does the future of work look like?

Tricia Williams: I think the future of work is more human. To be honest. I think a lot of times we focus on the technology aspect, and I think we're going to learn how to get computers and machines to be really good at the automated things that machines and computers are going to be really good at. But the future of our work is this it's talking to people. It's engaging with them. It's a pharmacist explaining the medication to a patient. It's a doctor talking to somebody about their mental health or therapy supports. And so I think the future of work is going to be much more human and augmented by tools and supports and automation.

Host: Sounds like the future is bright for all generations.

Tricia Williams: I hope so, I mean, I have a nine year old daughter and I think, you know, what's her future going to look like? She, you know, and I think most young people, maybe their jobs haven't even been created yet. And but I do think the future can be bright. But I also think we have to make sure we create those pathways.

Host: And we're going to have to leave it there. Tricia, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for your insights.

Tricia Williams: Thank you so much.