Determinants of Gen Z Employees' Job Commitment in IT Organisations in Sri Lanka
A quantitative study of the economic and organizational forces shaping retention among Sri Lanka's youngest IT workforce
Role: Principal Researcher
Sri Lanka's IT industry is fighting a retention war it doesn't fully understand. Gen Z now forms a growing share of the sector's workforce, yet employers apply retention playbooks built for previous generations — while this cohort makes career decisions under conditions no prior generation faced: post-crisis inflation, currency volatility, and a global remote-work market that prices their skills in foreign currency.
This study tested four hypothesized determinants of Gen Z job commitment — inflation and purchasing power, financial literacy, technological advancements, and employers' social responsibility — through a quantitative survey of 386 Gen Z employees drawn from major Sri Lankan IT organizations in the Colombo District, including WSO2, IFS R&D, Knovik, and Prime One Global.
Analysis was conducted in SPSS using reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and chi-square hypothesis testing across all four independent variables, producing a ranked view of which determinants most strongly predict commitment — and therefore where retention investment actually pays off. Employer social responsibility emerged as the strongest predictor of job commitment (r = 0.52), while financial literacy showed no significant relationship.
Beyond the academic contribution, the findings translate directly into HR strategy: the study produced prioritized, determinant-specific recommendations for IT employers competing for Gen Z talent in a market where replacement costs for skilled engineers run 90–200% of annual salary.
Publication
This dataset and its findings were extended into a broader machine-learning study on attribution stability, accepted with minor revisions for oral presentation at AIRC 2026 — see From Surveys to Signals.
The original MBA dissertation findings are available on request.