In a recent survey commissioned by Meeting Canary, a company whose product analyzes online meetings, 47 percent of Gen Z respondents said that they considered arriving 5 to 10 minutes late to be on time, Fast Company reported. In contrast, 70 percent of baby boomers said that on time means arriving early.
The Meeting Canary study surveyed 1,000 people from different age groups across the United Kingdom. It found a significant generational divide in opinions on timeliness. Only 22 percent of Gen Zers said that on time means arriving early.
Fast Company interviewed Laura van Beers, CEO of Meeting Canary, who said she was not surprised by the study’s findings. She told a story about a colleague closer to the baby boomer generation who would invariably arrive at meetings before the start time. Closer to the Gen Z side herself, van Beers would arrive after the start time, resulting in a clash.
“We notice this ourselves already,” van Beers said. “I don’t really mind if other people are a bit later, but he is always very frustrated.”
Van Beers believes that this lateness 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 said.
Mark Beal, an assistant professor of practice at Rutgers University School of Communication, told Fast Company that he works with Gen Z students every day, and while he does see some stragglers and latecomers, their lateness is not at a higher rate than that previous generations, he said.
“The majority of the meetings throughout the 30 years of my career rarely, if ever, started [on] time,” Beal said. “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.”
“Gen Z works smarter, not necessarily harder,” he added. “I really do believe that Gen Z is focused on the efficient and productive use of their time.”
In addition, the Meeting Canary survey asked the respondents to list the behaviors they found most likely to create an unproductive meeting environment. The Gen Zers listed their top three most annoying behaviors as ignoring others (75 percent), interrupting (73 percent), and "discounting the opinions of others based on their gender, sex or race, etc’." (70 percent). Baby boomers listed their top three most annoying behaviors as people who drag meetings on longer than they need to be (84 percent), interrupting (79 percent) and arriving late (79 percent).
Baby boomers were also more likely than Gen Zers to find the following practices annoying: people who have their camera off annoying (54 percent vs. 31 percent), people talking when they’re on mute (63 percent vs. 50 percent) and people using jargon (70 percent vs. 44 percent).