Exploring Predictors of Gen Z Working Environment in Malaysia: A Case Study on a Group of Private Colleges

Abstract

In order for an organization to stay competitive in its core business, the workforce has to be formed from a group of people who happy, satisfied and focus on the task entrusted to them. Therefore it is paramount to makesure that the working environment the employers prepare for the workforce has to be of their preferences and expectation. Understanding the humanistic requirements of the future workforce who are technological incline is very important to help retain them in the organization. The development of improved technology has pushed the boundaries of human expectation to another level that place the employers to be well prepared for the newer generation which is starting to take their places in the working world. This genenration is non other than Ge n Z. Labelled as “ the always connected generation’’, this generation will definitely have their expectation of the future work environment in order to maintain them in the office. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the response of 347 students from a group of private colleges who are Gen-Z born in 1995 to 2000 in an effort to conceptualize the preferred future working environment that will suit and retain them. The Smart Partial Least Square (Smart PLS) study shows a close relationship between characteristics, preferred communication, preferred leadership, expectation towards the working environment, towards their expected working environment. This study introduces significant results with implications for both practical methods and analytical analysis. by the four predictors. Although there was no large effect size for the four predictors, the expectation has a nearly medium effect size ( f 2 = 0.148) compared to the other three predictors. The lowest effect size was for preferred leadership ( f 2 = 0.017), which means that this construct does not affect the endogenous construct using the current sample. Next, the out-of-sample predictive relevance was assessed using two procedures: blindfolding procedure and PLS predict procedure. Results show Q 2 values were 0.273 and 0.495, respectively, which indicates that the model has good predictive relevance. The Mann Whitney U tests results indicate that two hypotheses are significant, i.e., work expectation and work environment are different based on gender, whereby females have lower levels of agreement to the measures of both constructs as compared to males. The first finding of the Mann Whitney U tests is consistent with a study by Miller and (2018) where female participants from the medical sector perceived more gender-based discrimination at work, i.e., perceptions of workplace discrimination may contribute to the persistence of the gender gap. However, the second finding contrasts with the results of a study by Jaworek and Dyląg (2015) that shows statistically significantly higher levels of all three examined job engagement (i.e., absorption, dedication, vigor) in women compared to men.