A preliminary exploration of the workplace expectations of Generation Z amidst Covid-19
Bibliographic record
Abstract
For the first time in modern history, up to five generations are working side-by-side in the same organizations. The high number of generations working together can cause intergenerational conflict. Generation Z (Gen Z), born after 1995, is significantly different from previous generations due to the cultural realities that have shaped their development. Gen Z has their own attitudes, beliefs, and expectations about the workplace and the centrality of work. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the attitudes, beliefs, values, and expectations about work and toward leadership in the workplace and how those expectations may have been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic for Gen Z. This study placed a particular focus on Gen Zers from the United States, Canada, and Eastern Europe. This research was rooted in Mannheim’s (1952) problem of generations, Mead’s (1970) generation gap, transformational leadership, and generational theory. Previous generational research has indicated that Gen Z is profoundly different from previous generations due to being digital natives. This study drew 15 participants from six countries who were seniors at Consortium of Christian College and Universities (CCCU) institutions. Each participant was interviewed over Zoom and asked to describe their expectations for their ideal workplace and ideal supervisor while also asking questions about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research findings indicated that participants seek to be treated as worthy of dignity in their work and desire to be respected as having a life outside of work. Findings showed that Gen Z is particularly drawn to leaders who exhibit humble and vulnerable leadership. Gen Z is concerned about mental health and wellbeing and places a high priority on being respected. Those who supervise Gen Z would benefit from learning more about the workplace expectations of Gen Z so they can lead them most effectively. Recommendations for further research include expanding this research once Gen Z has had more years of experience in the workforce and extending the number of countries from which study participants are drawn.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".