Why Gen Z is rewriting the rules of Hustle Culture, and why Leaders are listening

talent retention, engagement and employer brand.

spoke to Praveen Purohit, CHRO, Vedanta Aluminium, Niren Srivastava, Group CHRO, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited (MOFSL), Samra Rahman, Head People & Culture, Hero Vired and Divya Mohan, CHRO, InsuranceDekho to unravel what was really driving this shift.

Why did this suddenly happen now?

The trigger wasn’t just a sudden drop in ambition, it was a change in what ambition looked like, and in how openly younger employees were willing to say so. Divya Mohan, CHRO, InsuranceDekho, said the clearest signal wasn’t reduced drive but a redefinition of it.

“The clearest sign is not reduced ambition, but a shift in what it looks like. Gen Z is performance-oriented, but they are less willing to equate long hours with real impact. When visibility is rewarded over outcomes, it creates disengagement rather than drive,” said Mohan.

Praveen Purohit, CHRO, Vedanta Aluminium, pointed to a workforce that interrogated the process itself, “Gen Z consistently asks how their work aligns with overall business goals and organizational priorities, and long hours without clear outcomes do not motivate them. When they encounter legacy workflows or unnecessary approvals, they challenge them openly.”

Samra Rahman, Head People and Culture, Hero Vired, resisted treating this as purely generational.

“I am not entirely sure that it is useful to talk about Gen Z as a single block of humanity. What is clearly different today is the comfort most younger people have while questioning the status quo,” she said.

Rahman drew a parallel to the home, “This mirrors what we see at our homes as well — our children question our decisions far more than the earlier generations dared to do.”

Why did companies suddenly respond?

The honest answer, across all four conversations with the leaders, was that the old “more hours equals more commitment” model was visibly costing companies their talent, and the solution was turning out to be cheap relative to the payoff.

Niren Srivastava of MOFSL shared a concrete, measurable trigger at his organisation. MOFSL’s “Switch-off” Policy was one which nudged employees to leave on time.

The policy had over 93 percent adherence after nearly two years, and it moved a business metric that leadership actually tracked, “Our Wealth Management business has shown the biggest impact, where we witnessed a reduction in attrition by 10 percent,” shared Srivastava.

Rahman of Hero Vired framed the response as continuity rather than reinvention.

“We didn’t have to dramatically dismantle ‘hustle culture‘ at our organisation because, culturally, we have never celebrated long hours for their own sake. We have always valued ownership, accountability and clarity of outcomes over sheer activity,” she said.

Mohan of InsuranceDekho described a ‘system-level’ rethink rather than a ‘perks’ exercise to be a better fix.

“This has meant moving beyond intensity-driven models to more structured performance design, including progressive life-stage policies such as fertility support, child education scholarships, flexible work options, and calibrated hybrid flexibility. These are not perks; they are retention and capability-building levers,” said Mohan.

Was productivity actually falling?

The leaders interviewed pushed back hard on the assumption that stepping off the “hustling” cost output, in fact the data shared suggested the opposite.

Srivastava directly talked about how the Switch-off Policy had shown zero negative impact on productivity at MOFSL.

Purohit reported gains, not losses, from Vedanta Aluminium’s shift to outcome-based KPIs and structured planning.

“These practices are already showing results- engagement levels are higher, initiative on the shop floor is stronger, problem closure is faster and the overall production rhythm is steadier,” he said.

Mohan reframed the burnout conversation entirely around significance of clarity rather than effort.

“I have realised that burnout is often less about hard work and more about unclear work. When performance is measured by activity instead of outcomes, teams feel busy but not necessarily effective,” Mohan said.

For preventing burnout, her solution was- not necessarily lowering the bar, but about ensuring high performance that could be sustained consistently, and not extracted periodically.

Is AI making this worse?

AI wasn’t cited as a source of additional pressure by any of these leaders. If anything, it was cited as the reason Gen Z’s impatience with inefficiency was justified, and harder for organisations to dismiss.

Purohit noted that Gen Z’s fluency with automation was precisely what exposed outdated ways of working. “They adopt digital and AI tools quickly and expect processes to be streamlined around them”, he said.

“That expectation, layered onto legacy approval chains and manual workflows, was what fuelled the friction described earlier — employees weren’t rejecting effort, they were rejecting effort that AI had made visibly unnecessary. At Vedanta Aluminium, this had translated into ‘digital redesign’, helping remove repetitive tasks so teams could focus more on problem solving, he added, treating AI as a lever against burnout rather than a driver of it.



Was this becoming a hiring and retention challenge?



The numbers said yes, and leaders are increasingly building retention metrics directly into how they justified culture change internally.

The UKG and Mercer data already pointed to the scale of this risk, a third of frontline Gen Z employees considering an exit, and stress levels running meaningfully higher than older cohorts.

Organisations that didn’t adapt, as the leaders indicated, were exposed on three fronts– attrition, disengagement and reputational damage in an increasingly transparent employer-review ecosystem.

Srivastava’s data at MOFSL which was the 10 percent drop in attrition in the Wealth Management vertical tied directly to the Switch-off Policy showed the clearest evidence that this had moved from a soft “culture” conversation to a hard retention metric that HR could put in front of their board or at the CXO table.

Are CHROs and leaders changing their own leadership style?

Every leader interviewed converged on the same point, that policy changes didn’t stick unless leadership behaviour visibly changed first.

Purohit put the burden squarely on leaders to model it, “Leaders must model the behaviour- prioritisation, focus, clarity and balance… When leaders reward smart execution over constant hustle, the organisation naturally shifts toward sustainable performance.”

Srivastava went further, arguing how HR couldn’t carry this alone.

“The change begins when leadership signals that focused work-hours, prioritisation and disciplined execution are more valuable than just motion… HR alone cannot drive this. Business ownership is critical.”

Rahman was the most pointed about the gap between policy and behaviour.

“If leaders continue praising late nights and constant availability, the organisation will mirror that behaviour regardless of policy. Our leaders actively discourage people from staying beyond reasonable working hours and almost never intrude on their personal time unless something is genuinely very urgent. Signals like this matter far more than formal policies.”

The consensus that emerged from these conversations was that the hustle-culture debate was never really about Gen Z’s work ethic. It was about whether leadership was willing to redefine what “commitment” meant; and whether that redefinition was backed by behaviour, not just a policy document.