Ask The Analyst: Gen Z wants less digital noise; organizations are pushing more AI tools. How should HR leaders reconcile that tension?

Every week for The Briefing, UNLEASH’s weekly intelligence email for senior business decision-makers, we ask our community of analysts – the true HR experts – to the biggest challenges facing HR.

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This week’s question: Gen Z wants less digital noise; organizations are pushing more AI tools. How should HR leaders reconcile that tension?

Here’s what they had to say.

Kaelyn Lowmaster, Director Analyst, Gartner:

It’s true that organizations’ youngest workers are their biggest AI skeptics. Gen Z employees are more likely than their coworkers to be wary of data privacy and are more concerned about AI producing inaccurate results. They’re also more afraid that AI will make their own skills obsolete.

Ultimately, Gen Z are simply more likely than their colleagues to be frustrated with how AI is changing their role. And that makes sense: they’ve seen AI reshape their education and their career prospects in real time over the course of the past few years, and their employers are not slowing down AI investment.

So, Gen Z are AI-hesitant for good reason, but they also see reason to be optimistic. Our research shows that not only are these employees the most frequent users of AI tools, they’re also more likely than any other generation to say that AI is good for their organizations. For

HR leaders, this is an opportunity to treat Gen Z’s justified concerns about the impact of AI into the foundations of a better AI strategy. Most organizations aren’t doing enough to communicate their AI ambitions to the workforce: what goals are we actually looking to achieve, and why is AI the right tool to achieve them?

HR leaders also have an opportunity to focus their training on solving concrete problems in employees’ jobs, rather than just ensuring that they understand the features of AI tools. Starting with the use case, rather than the tool, can help frame AI as a worthwhile opportunity, rather than just more digital ‘noise.’

Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer, Brandon Hall Group:

It’s definitely not about Gen Z versus AI; it’s about integrating AI into the flow of work without overloading or burdening people with it just for the sake of using it. Just because Gen Zs are digital natives who grew up with technology doesn’t mean AI is everywhere. In fact, there is still a fair degree of skepticism among this generation about AI’s use and its potential impact on jobs. Gen Zs are trying to evaluate when AI is truly helpful and when it’s just another piece of technology to manage.

Here’s where HR leaders need to be thoughtful about AI: AI should clearly show how a job is easier to perform with it, and the time spent learning to use it should be well spent. HR leaders can’t get completely caught up in the AI implementation craze. They need to evaluate Gen Z’s use of AI as they would any other technology – does it help or hurt the cause?

AI is not synonymous with simplicity or improvement. It needs to stand on its own value proposition to the employee. Bottom line, it is not as simple as having more or less technology or more or less digital noise. If Gen Z sees the value, they will learn to use it and adopt it into their work.

HR leaders should focus on the following:

• Use AI to make work easier, not to add more noise.
• Connect the tools people already use.
• Eliminate technology that isn’t adding value, aside from AI, to make room.
• Focus on better technology, not more.

Allan Schweyer, Principal Researcher, The Conference Board:

I think this is generally true of other generations as well. Leaders who can balance quiet time and also emphasize face-to-face interaction — while continuing to encourage AI literacy and use — will appeal to most of the workforce.

Leaders should exercise transparency when introducing AI tools (what they hope to use them for and why using them might improve work experience as well as business outcomes). Trust goes a long way toward overcoming AI resistance, but even where there is trust, quiet time and human time should be emphasized alongside time dedicated to digital/AI skills-building and use.

Jason Averbook, Co-Founder, Now to Next:

Many conversations I have with HR leaders focus on the same worry, that Gen Z keeps asking for less digital noise and more human connection while the organization keeps pushing more AI, and everyone treats those forces as opposing sides of a "thing" that has to be settled. They are never actually opposed, because the noise and the intelligence were never the same thing.

Noise is what piles up when we keep adding tools without ever finding the courage to remove one, another tab, another login, another alert competing for attention that was already spent. Intelligence is what happens when AI gets infused so deeply into the work that it stops feeling like a tool at all and simply makes the next thing easier.

So, the work for HR leaders is not choosing between quieter work and smarter tools, but redesigning the work and the experience so the smarter tools are what make it quieter.

This means measuring whether the day genuinely got lighter and more time was gifted for connection rather than how many platforms you launched, and bringing Gen Z into the design of the work rather than surveying them about it afterward is a must.