Gen Z’s Digital Literacy in the Development of Proactive Personality: An HR Management Perspective

The digital literacy is required for the efficient functioning of an individual in the digital world. Digital transformation changes people's attitudes and behaviors, strengthening or weakening some of them. The continuous research in this field is justified by the fundamental changes that digitalization is bringing about in the global labor market, professional activities, and work structures. An interesting question is whether digital skills can be helpful in shaping specific attitudes and behaviors of employees as e.g. proactivity. The concept of proactivity is an important phenomenon considered within the framework of corporate entrepreneurship. A proactive organization focuses on seizing opportunities in a competitive market, implementing innovations in practice and managing market expectations. For an organization to be proactive, it is necessary to implement proactivity at all levels of the organizational structure, which may be more effective if we employ employees with a high level of proactive personality. It remains unknown whether digitization is connected with an individual's proactivity. The current study aims to examine the dependency between elements of the digital literacy and the development of proactive personality of young individuals of Gen Z, an attitude that may to emphasize the importance of proactiveness as a desirable feature in the professional life. The research was conducted in the form of a survey using the CAWI method among 370 individuals of Gen Z in Poland in 2024. Regression analysis confirmed a statistically significant dependency between the digital literacy and the proactive personality in the studied group of respondents, however, not all predictors within the model have a positive dependency with the proactive personality. The main limitations of the study are visible in not fully representativeness of the research group, and hence the inability to generalize the conclusions and make certain assumptions regarding the probable use of a proactive personality in the workplace.