The press has been abuzz of late with the results of a survey about Gen Z and their attitude to punctuality. The survey revealed that half of respondents (aged 16–26) believe that being five to ten minutes late is effectively the same as being on time. What none of the journalists have mentioned, however, is that the survey was published in 2024 and they have only just got around to writing about it. Two years? 10 minutes? Who is counting – not the journalists either it would seem.
At Debrett’s, we talk a great deal about the importance of first impressions, and if your first impression is one of lateness, you have to accept that you are on the back foot before you even begin. We hold to the view that arriving late can be forgiven, but not even trying to arrive on time is unconscionable.
It is hard to imagine why Gen Z — or indeed any other group — would take such a casual approach to timekeeping. Arriving on time (or even early) sits at the top of a list of things that are hugely important and yet require no particular skill or talent to achieve. Other items on this list include being well presented and maintaining a positive attitude.
What many people forget is that being consistently and unapologetically late for meetings, social gatherings or indeed anything else sends out a very clear message: that you consider your time to be more important and more valuable than that of the people who arrived punctually. If you are one of those left waiting, it is difficult not to take that personally or to form judgements about the late arrival. More often than not senior partners in professional services firms will be quietly totting up the cost of wasted time and trying to work out who should foot the bill whilst they wait for their more junior colleagues to appear..
Why, then, have Gen Z fallen into this way of thinking? One theory is that, as the cohort with no meaningful pre-Covid frame of reference, their experience of work has been disproportionately virtual. As a result, they have not had to endure the burning stares of colleagues as they attempt to slip silently into a meeting room long after the preliminaries have concluded. Nowadays, of course, those preliminaries often include waiting for Gen Z to turn up as a matter of course. Perhaps logging into a virtual meeting late — camera firmly off — simply lacks the visceral embarrassment of its real-life equivalent, encouraging a more relaxed attitude towards punctuality.
Gen Z receive a great deal of criticism (mostly from millennials who have all the jobs, and from Gen X and the boomers who own all the houses). Yet, in the spirit of defending them, it is fair to acknowledge that the working-from-home era reshaped workplace habits for everyone, and perhaps altered the way younger generations think about time itself.
The WFH experience meant that nobody had to travel anywhere for meetings, which in turn made meetings easier to schedule — and therefore far more frequent. They are invariably booked in rigid one-hour blocks, beginning and ending on the hour, stacked back-to-back throughout the day. This creates a number of unwelcome side effects. Firstly, the meetings are largely ill thought out and many attendees are surplus to requirement. The relentless scheduling of them leaves no time for doing any proper work and for what our American colleagues would call a “bio break” and this creates an unspoken assumption that nobody can realistically be expected to arrive punctually for every meeting. As we drift back towards office life, a new set of habits, expectations and beliefs around punctuality has not only emerged, but become ingrained.
So, to all those planning and running meetings while fulminating about tardy Gen Z colleagues: you can be the change. You can — quite literally — set the agenda. Plan fewer meetings, be more selective about who needs to be there. Finish meetings early. Build space between appointments. Create a culture in which punctuality is realistic rather than aspirational. Small adjustments in behaviour have a habit of becoming powerful social norms.
Because punctuality is about more than clocks and calendars. It is a visible sign of respect, discipline and consideration for others. In professional life — and indeed in life generally — people may forget what you said in a meeting, but they will rarely forget who kept them waiting.
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