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Abstract
The emergence of Generation Z inside the workforce represents an important shift in how the organizations function, communicate, and solve problems. The main aim of this paper is to identify the readiness of today's organizations to face the changes and challenges that Generation Z brings to the workplace, and analyze how the human resource specialists deal with Gen Z in the workplace. Research is based on a qualitative approach, namely individual interviews, applied to four human resources professionals from Romania. The respondents work in companies with a total number of employees ranging from 50 to 700, whereas generation Z represents between 11% and 58%. This study indicates that according to the interviewed human resource professionals, their organizations are ready to face the changes and challenges that Generation Z brings to the workplace. Efficient management of the changes brought by Generation Z to the workplace is closely linked to the level of knowledge and openness that both managers and HR specialists detain about the new generation. In order to attract, motivate and retain the young employees, the abilities, values and perspectives of Generation Z must be harnessed and transformed into opportunities.
Keywords: generation Z; workplace diversity; organisational behaviour; human resource management; Romania.
1.Introduction
The contemporary organizations are exposed daily to a great deal of change given mainly by workforce diversity, the continuous innovations and technological evolutions. Retaining Generation Z employees is becoming an increasingly difficult task, as the new generation is far more demanding than previous generations. Prossack (2019) believes that one of the main reasons behind Generation Z behavior is the unique desire to drive change and not settle for the status quo. The main focus of the paper on Generation Z in the workplace through the lenses of Human Resource (HR) specialists is chosen because this cohort represents today's major influencer inside all types of organizations, and we find it essential to observe the perspective of the people who, starting with the recruitment phase, work directly with the new generation, having the duty to understand, motivate and retain this new critical generation.
There is no consensus between academics regarding the starting point for the development of Generation Z, however, Wood (2013) suggests that Generation Z is formed of those individuals born in...