Gen Z is bringing pen and paper back to the workplace

As companies walk billions connected AI successful the title to automate work, a astonishing office trend is taking clasp among the youngest procreation of employees.

Gen Z workers are embracing the decidedly low-tech: premium notebooks, colorful table pads, handwritten notes, and the humble Post-it.

Gen Z agency workers told Business Insider astir the value of carving retired a individual abstraction successful progressively standardized workplaces, and it whitethorn connection employers a hint for making return-to-office mandates easier to swallow.

"A abstraction that I tin telephone my own, I think, is very important," Jessie Lei, a quality resources professional, told Business Insider. "It feels for illustration there's a spot for maine to exist, truthful my decorations weren't conscionable wholly for aesthetic."

Lei said 1 of his favourite agency "perks" is free Post-it notes, which he began to trust connected heavy for gathering notes and pinning reminders to his show alternatively of keeping everything wrong Google Docs. The smaller sticky notes besides go miniature sketchbooks wherever Lei doodles cats, birds, and artwork inspired by his favourite songs during breaks.

"Handwriting helps maine attraction and retrieve accusation amended than typing, and it conscionable feels much earthy than trying to support up pinch conversations connected a keyboard," Lei said. "I cognize it's specified a mini thing, but having it is simply a tangible upgrade to my well-being."

Retailers are emotion the trend

The analog revival is spreading from CDs to stationery.

A July study from agency supplier Quill, a Staples subsidiary, recovered that 94% of Gen Z and millennial agency workers opportunity physically crossing an point disconnected a insubstantial to-do database feels much satisfying than checking a integer box. About one-third said the changeless watercourse of Slack messages, emails, and Teams notifications makes them agelong for much analog ways of working.

"They are doubly arsenic apt arsenic boomers to handwrite notes successful a diary aliases during meetings," Gil Grandbois, the caput of Quill, told Business Insider.

The institution recovered that 56% of Gen Z workers would alternatively time off a workfellow a Post-it statement than nonstop a nonstop message, reflecting what Grandbois described arsenic increasing digital exhaustion.

Rather than opting for basal supplies, Grandbois said that Quill has seen stronger request from Gen Z for premium notebooks, colorful leather table pads, higher-end penning tools, and different products that bespeak individual personality. Nearly one-quarter of Gen Z and millennial workers surveyed said premium supplies boost their information arsenic overmuch arsenic high-end exertion upgrades.

"It's the truth that moreover your basal agency supplies are becoming much applicable pinch this generation," Grandbois said.

Business Insider antecedently reported that stationery marque Papier doubled down connected analog products, specified arsenic scrapbooks and notecards, and has seen income double betwixt 2022 and 2025, chiefly driven by Gen Z consumers.

Based connected a study by The Business Research Company, the world luxury penning instruments and stationery marketplace is expected to turn from $4.33 cardinal successful 2025 to $4.53 cardinal successful 2026.

The hottest agency upgrade? A desk.

The move to analog is besides portion of a broader push to make workspaces consciousness much individual and permanent.

Lei, who is successful betwixt aggregate short-term statement jobs, told Business Insider that his erstwhile workspace featured 5 Japanese kokeshi dolls arranged from shortest to tallest beside a thrifted teacup that became his individual beverage station. When sunlight reflected done adjacent agency windows, Lei said he sometimes paused to photograph the dolls arsenic the ray changed.

"I besides ended up keeping a batch of my ain artwork astir my desk," Lei said. "Just small decorations — my ain handmade people connected the agency — makes a immense quality for the magnitude of stableness I consciousness successful that space."

Calvin Lee, who useful astatine the anime streaming institution Crunchyroll successful San Francisco, told Business Insider that having a imperishable table is essential, making him overmuch much receptive to return-to-office policies than to perpetually moving betwixt basking desks.

"As an anime fan, it gives maine joyousness to personalize my ain space," Lee said. "I for illustration giving thought to really to equilibrium betwixt a functional and comfortable workspace, on pinch being capable to show my ain type of fandom."

Lee said his "maximalist" workstation includes Pokémon sticky-note pads, Genshin Impact-themed pens, Marvel fidget toys, stickers covering his laptop, and applicable essentials for illustration articulator balm and oculus drops.

"Everyone has assigned desks successful the office, and it's nosy to spot really group personalize their ain space," Lee added.

Leah M. Omilion-Hodges, a professor specializing successful activity connection astatine Western Michigan University, told Business Insider that Gen Z workers thin to bring "a batch of volition and honesty to their work."

"What we are seeing pinch ornamental notebooks, stickers, and personalized table spaces goes beyond aesthetics," Omilion-Hodges said. "They are mostly rejecting the rigid conception that location is 'one correct way' to do things," Omilion-Hodges added, "Choosing alternatively to thin into the truth that location are galore paths to successfully achieving a task."

The early of activity whitethorn beryllium AI-powered — but the personification down the surface still wants location to put a Post-it.