Title: One of the key management lessons of the health and economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic is that agility is a critical success factor for organizations in a pandemic and post pandemic business environment. Organizations recognize that in this rapidly changing technology environment, the desire to be more competitive and increase profit margins has accelerated the need to attract, recruit, and retain a nimbler, more flexible, more adaptive, and digitalcentric generational workforce. The heightened search for the 21st Century workforce has led to business leaders, Human resource managers, and talent management professionals to focus on Generation Z. Gen Z is the youngest and newest entrants into the workforce. However, the confusion about their characteristics, work values, and reward preferences hinders efforts to attract, recruit, and retain this generational cohort into public sector organizations. Accordingly, this study investigates effective reward strategies for attracting, recruiting, and retaining the youngest generational workforce into public sector organizations. I used evidencebased research approach and aggregative systematic review as the study methodology. The evidence curated from 32 studies reveals gender to be a moderating factor for how important specific work values are to Generation Z. The preponderance of evidence shows the intrinsic and extrinsic rewardspreferences of Gen Z are reliable predictors of their attraction to, and retention by public sector organizations. Additionally,effective management of personorganization fit and adaptive organizational culture emerge as substantial mediating factors for attracting, recruiting, and retaining members of the Generation Z cohort.

Abstract

One of the key management lessons of the health and economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic is that agility is a critical success factor for organizations in a pandemic and post pandemic business environment. Organizations recognize that in this rapidly changing technology environment, the desire to be more competitive and increase profit margins has accelerated the need to attract, recruit, and retain a nimbler, more flexible, more adaptive, and digital-centric generational workforce. The heightened search for the 21st Century workforce has led to business leaders, Human resource managers, and talent management professionals to focus on Generation Z. Gen Z is the youngest and newest entrants into the workforce. However, the confusion about their characteristics, work values, and reward preferences hinders efforts to attract, recruit, and retain this generational cohort into public sector organizations. Accordingly, this study investigates effective reward strategies for attracting, recruiting, and retaining the youngest generational workforce into public sector organizations. I used evidence-based research approach and aggregative systematic review as the study methodology. The evidence curated from 32 studies reveals gender to be a moderating factor for how important specific work values are to Generation Z. The preponderance of evidence shows the intrinsic and extrinsic rewardspreferences of Gen Z are reliable predictors of their attraction to, and retention by public sector organizations. Additionally,effective management of person-organization fit and adaptive organizational culture emerge as substantial mediating factors for attracting, recruiting, and retaining members of the Generation Z cohort.