Tight job market doesn't daunt a new force in the workforce

• Published date: 23 June 2022
• Publication title: Shanghai Daily

Cindy Cao was taken aback when a new intern at the logistics company where she worked barged into her office one day to complain that she was being asked to work some overnight, in violation of her recruitment agreement.

Cao, born in 1992, is human resources director at the Shanghai-based company, which employs about 150. The intern, born in 2000, had just graduated and was taken on an intern for two months -- six weeks of it working from home.

The brashness of the intern underscores a stark difference between generations.

"Media and society used to refer to us born after 1990 as a generation that values work-life balance, stands up to authority and does a lot of job-hopping," Cao told Shanghai Daily.

"When I was a work rookie, I thought myself brave and different from previous generations, but it was nothing like the current generation," she said. "The new millennials are transforming the workplace."

The trend she cites is flaunted in discussions all over the Internet. Recent college graduates entering the workforce are bringing a new force with them.

The hashtag "post-00s transforming workplace" has gained more than 220 million clicks and more than 62,000 discussions. Other hashtags include: "Are post-00s really transforming the workplace?" "Stop labeling post-00s like this," and "Why are post-00s and the workplace being transformed by one another?"

Top-clicked comments include those who support the new trend and those who are a bit more circumspect.

One top-clicked comment with hundreds of "likes" goes like this: "Post-80s don't dare to say no to overtime; post-90s pretend to work hard; only we post-00s are transforming the workplace. I have worked for a year and sued four companies -- two of them went bankrupt. Bully for me!"

Perhaps the bold new trend is rooted in what is a long overdue overhaul of the employer-employee relationship. Companies are being accused of making empty promises to staff, related to issues such as overtime and compensation packages.

t the frontline of such allegations are human resources staffs, who are supposed to be the liaison between employer and employees.

In that role, Cao has mixed feelings about it all.

"It's true that interviewees born after 2000, or indeed after 1995, ask more about rules on annual vacation, overtime and leaves of absence, which is understandable," she said. "But I believe most of them will cope with it over the time, just as the post-80s and post-90s generations have done, unless they just want to be boss."

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