Focus, Flexibility and Connection: Rethinking Workplace Design for Early-Career Employees

RESEARCH SERIES: EVIDENCE BEFORE DESIGN

Looking Beyond Generational Assumptions

There has been a lot written about what younger employees supposedly want from work. Depending on what you read, they are either digital natives who are perfectly happy working from anywhere and have little attachment to the office, or they are the group that needs the workplace most because they want social interaction, mentoring, learning and a stronger sense of belonging.

I have always been a little uncomfortable with either conclusion because both feel too neat.

Over the past six years, we have accumulated a significant amount of employee workplace data through our work at CRUX, so rather than starting with an assumption about Gen Z, we decided to go back to the data and ask a much simpler question: what do people in the early stages of their careers actually want from the workplace?

We reviewed almost 5,000 completed employee responses from U.S.-based organizations across several sectors, with the research stretching from the early days of the pandemic through to 2026. Where the data allowed, we focused on employees aged 24 and under.

What emerged was not a single, clean trend, and I actually think that is one of the more interesting aspects of the research.

What the Research Reveals About Office Attendance

In one large global technology study from 2021, employees aged 24 and under preferred to spend around 35% of their working time in their primary office, compared with approximately 24% for older employees. In a technology and entertainment study undertaken in 2024, we saw a similar, although smaller, difference, with the younger cohort preferring around 29% office time compared with 22% among other employees.

But that pattern did not repeat everywhere. In a corporate headquarters study from 2022 there was virtually no difference between the youngest employees and everybody else, and the more recent semiconductor technology and nonprofit studies also showed much smaller gaps.

So while there are clearly workplaces where younger employees show more appetite for office attendance, age on its own does not seem to tell us very much about how often someone wants to come in. The environment they are working in, the role they perform, the expectations around attendance and the value they get from the workplace all seem to matter.

The part of the research that I found more interesting was what younger employees were actually doing during the working day.

How Early-Career Employees Spend Their Working Day

Across several of the studies, early-career employees were spending proportionately more time on individual focus and process work and less time in formal meetings and some forms of collaborative activity than their more established colleagues. In one study, the younger group spent around 41.5% of its core activity time collaborating, compared with just over 50% for everybody else. In another, the figures were approximately 33% and 40%.

When you think about it, that probably should not surprise us. People entering the workforce are more likely to be individual contributors, with roles involving defined tasks, analysis, production or process work. As careers develop, jobs tend to become more managerial, client-facing and coordination-heavy, which naturally brings more meetings, decisions and collaborative activity.

Why Social Connection Matters Beyond Collaboration

For me, that is where the research starts to get more interesting, because although younger employees are often doing more individual work, many of them still appear to place considerable value on being around other people while they do it.

In the technology and entertainment sector study, approximately 86% of younger respondents identified social interaction with colleagues as a reason for coming into the office, compared with around 74% of the wider workforce. We saw the same directional pattern in the nonprofit study, albeit with a smaller sample.

That starts to suggest that collaboration and connection are not quite the same thing.

You can spend several hours working independently and still value being in a workplace where other people are around you. You might have a conversation while making coffee, ask somebody a quick question, hear what another team is working on, or simply feel more connected to the organization because you are physically part of it for some of the week.

For people early in their careers, that may be particularly important. More experienced employees often already have established networks, relationships and organizational knowledge. Younger employees are still building those things, and some of that happens informally rather than through structured meetings or scheduled mentoring.

That has a direct implication for workplace design.

Designing Workplaces for Focus and Connection

If younger employees are spending a significant amount of time on focused individual work, then simply adding more collaboration space is unlikely to be the answer. They still need good places to work individually, with quiet settings, acoustic privacy, comfortable workstations, monitors and reliable technology.

At the same time, the workplace needs to create opportunities for social interaction to happen naturally during the day. Informal breakout areas, lounge settings, café-style environments, touchdown spaces and other alternative work settings can all help create that kind of environment.

Social interaction does not only happen because it is lunchtime, somebody has organized a team event or a meeting has appeared in the calendar.

A good workplace gives people reasons and opportunities to connect as part of the normal rhythm of the day.

Workplace Experience: More Than Just Amenities

The wider workplace experience matters too. Across the more recent studies, younger employees showed interest in greenery, outdoor space, wellness, fresh air, food and informal settings. But I would be careful not to read that as evidence that younger employees simply want more amenities.

Their responses consistently brought us back to the basics as well: somewhere comfortable to work, the right technology, quiet when they need it and access to other people when they want it.

How Workplace Preferences Have Evolved Since 2020

There is also an interesting historical angle to all of this.

Our data stretches back to 2020 and 2021, when large-scale remote work was still new. Even then, the youngest employees were not overwhelmingly asking to work remotely five days a week. In the 2020 research, three remote days was the most common preference, and by 2021 the youngest employees in the global technology study were actually asking for more office time than their older colleagues.

What seems to have changed since then is less about a dramatic swing from remote work back to the office and more about our understanding of what makes each location valuable.

After several years of hybrid working, asking “How many days should people come in?” increasingly feels like the wrong place to start. A better question is what people are coming in to do, who they need to be around, and what the workplace needs to provide when they get there.

Evidence Before Assumptions

That brings me back to the original question.

What do early-career employees want from the workplace?

There is no single answer, and perhaps that is the most useful finding of all. They appear to value flexibility. Some want more office time than their older colleagues and some do not. Many spend a significant amount of time working independently while still valuing social connection. They want workplaces that allow them to concentrate, but they also value environments where relationships and informal interaction can develop naturally.

Age and career stage clearly matter, but so do role, activity, team structure, organizational culture and the quality of the workplace itself.

Which is why the best place to start is still with evidence rather than assumptions.

The key to success therefore is collecting and analyzing the right evidence - data, ask us how.

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We have pulled the fuller findings, methodology and workplace implications together into a new CRUX Workplace research paper, What Do Early-Career Employees Want From the Workplace? Available on our website.