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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This research paper will explore the interpersonal communication skills of the world's newest generation of employees, those who were born in the mid to late 1990s, commonly referred to as "Generation Z". Employers are greatly aware of the impact that digital communication is having on the general population's presence during face to face interactions. Generation Z's reliance on social media will have an impact on their ability to use interpersonal communication skills to establish relationships with future supervisors and employers. The relationship between employees and their supervisors is essential to ensuring that an organization delivers its mission and reaches its strategic goals. This research paper discusses the numerous problems that are resulting from lack of interpersonal communication skills such as participation in open workplace discussions, the transference of various types of knowledge from one generation to the next, miscommunication, and finally, conflict between supervisors and employees. Finally, the paper provides theoretical guidelines that human resources professionals can use to help buffer communication problems within employment relationships and preserve necessary skills that are threatened by heavy reliance on social media and smartphone devices.
Keywords: Generation Z, Digital communication, Social networking platforms, Human Resources, Workplace relationships
INTRODUCTION
Interpersonal communication has been an essential part of building relationships that can be traced back to the beginning of human interaction. Individuals build relationships with one another through sending and receiving messages that have some effect on the receiver. If the message is received correctly, a bond is likely to evolve. In 1948, Harold Laswell, an American communication theorist, developed a model to describe how communication works (Hill, 2007). He stated that in order to understand how the communication process works, we need to ask several questions: "Who?", "Says what?", "In which channel?", "To whom?" and "With what effect?" (Hill, 2007). Later models of communication build on this one and are slightly more complex, describing communication being a transactional process, in which two individuals assign meaning to the interaction, sending and receiving messages, through multiple channels (Harris & Nelson, 2008). Furthermore, other researchers have concluded that what an individual achieves is directly connected to the messages he or she receives from an organization (Harris & Nelson, 2008). Heath and Bryant (2000) reiterated that a sender transmits messages...