Stop guessing what Gen Z wants from AI. Ask them.

The future of work is often discussed in rooms full of people who have already spent decades in it. Senior leaders, consultants and analysts debate what the next generation wants from work, how they will respond to AI and what they expect from employers—without asking the next generation itself. Then those assumptions harden into workforce strategy.

There is a simpler and more honest way to understand the future of work: ask the people who will inhabit it longest.

Each week, UNLEASH’s Ask the Analyst column poses a question about the modern workplace. Recently, the Editorial team sent over a widely accepted presupposition: Gen Z is suffering from acute digital fatigue, drowning in pings, and harboring a growing resistance to AI.

It is an easy narrative to buy—and an even easier one to paint across an entire generation. My own view is more nuanced. I am raising three teenage daughters and recently hired two brilliant college graduates.

Aidan Griffith, a Bentley University graduate, and Macrae Shaver, a College of Charleston graduate, are beginning their careers at Now to Next, an AI studio Jason Averbook and I founded to help organizations navigate the human side of AI transformation.

So I refused to answer the question from my own desk. I took it to Aidan and Macrae. Their answers complicate the popular narrative about their generation – and should change how HR leaders approach AI.

Gen Z does not want less noise. It wants coherence.

The usual story says Gen Z is overwhelmed by technology and wants to disconnect. The suggested fixes—wellness seminars, fewer emails, prescribed offline hours—feel superficial. Aidan offers a sharper diagnosis:

"Gen Z doesn’t necessarily want less noise. We want coherence. A sound with consistent rhythm. We grew up in digital noise. In many ways, we know how to thrive in it."

The problem begins when young talent enters the corporate world and finds a completely scattered digital landscape. New tools, messages, expectations and mandates arrive as disconnected beats: another communication app, another tracking platform, another expectation. Employees are told what to use, but rarely why it matters, how it connects to their work or what it means for the people expected to use it.

That reaction is not uniquely generational. It is what happens when any employee is asked to absorb constant change without a credible story, useful context or sense of direction. The issue is not volume. It is corporate incoherence.

This is why I often suggest “change fatigue” is more likely failure fatigue. HR’s strategic opportunity is to act as conductor: explaining what is changing and why, connecting each tool to the work it should improve and naming where human value remains.

Digital fatigue is not AI resistance

Macrae makes a related, vital distinction: wanting less digital noise is not the same as wanting less AI. When organizations conflate personal wellness habits with professional technology resistance, they misdiagnose their workforce.

“Digital noise is too broad a term to describe what Gen Z is reacting to. We’re the first generation that has grown up fully immersed in digital technology, so it makes sense that a lot of us are now craving less constant connection, less social media, less comparison and more time away from our phones.

“But that is a completely different conversation from whether we want to learn and use AI at work. Wanting less technology in your personal life does not mean wanting less access to tools that can help you learn, work differently and expand what you’re capable of.”

Many younger workers expect AI literacy to matter to their futures, and they are eager to learn. But readiness should not be mistaken for unconditional trust. What executives label “resistance to change” is often a logical response to an organizational trust deficit.

Macrae’s questions are the ones every employer should be prepared to answer plainly: How will personal data be used? Are employees being surveilled or evaluated by AI? Will human judgment remain involved? Is the technology helping people grow, or is it being used to diminish their roles?

Trust is not an attitude problem to be managed after a technology decision is made. It is an input to the decision itself. HR should insist on transparent answers before asking employees for adoption.Trust is not an attitude problem to be managed after a technology decision is made. It is an input to the decision itself. HR should insist on transparent answers before asking employees for adoption.

Bad AI use can weaken work and learning

Because early-career professionals are highly comfortable with digital tools, they are also sensitive to poor, lazy implementation. They are entering the workforce at the exact moment organizations are deciding which tasks to hand to AI, creating a developmental stake senior leaders can easily overlook.

“Workslop” looks like AI-generated output that appears complete but takes longer to correct than the original work would have taken from scratch. More critically, when automation isolates junior employees from “mundane” tasks such as drafting reports or conducting basic research, the historical apprenticeship model begins to break. Those tasks are the sandboxes where early-career professionals develop critical thinking and learn to exercise senior-level judgment.

This is not an argument against technological progress. It is a reminder that efficiency is not synonymous with quality.

HR leaders must ask more than whether a tool saves minutes. Is the work getting better? Are employees becoming more capable? Are we preserving the pipeline of expertise we will need tomorrow?

A use case that removes drudgery creates room for contribution. One that removes the learning experience itself quietly hollows out the talent pipeline.

HR must shape the strategy, not just sell adoption

Too often, HR is invited into AI transformation after the purchase, when the assignment is tactical: communicate the rollout, calm anxiety and increase usage. Aidan and Macrae’s responses point to a far more consequential role.

HR should be in the room when the organization decides what problem it is solving, whether AI is the right answer, where human judgment must remain and how changed work will affect capability, mobility and opportunity.

If AI automates 60% of someone’s responsibilities, the first question should not be whether the job can be eliminated. A strategic HR function reframes the equation: What capacity have we unlocked in this person, and how will we help them use it?

Redeploying that capacity toward deeper thinking, relationship management and creative problem-solving can generate exponential value rather than minor, incremental savings.

HR is not the adoption department for software someone else selected. It is the steward of work design, trust and human potential – with a responsibility to connect all three to business performance.HR is not the adoption department for software someone else selected. It is the steward of work design, trust and human potential – with a responsibility to connect all three to business performance.

Build the future of work with its future

The lesson is not that two members of Gen Z can speak for an entire generation. It is that organizations are making consequential, multimillion-dollar assumptions about younger workers without giving them any real agency to challenge the premise.

Listening cannot be reduced to an annual survey, a brief focus group or a request for reaction after the strategy is already finished. Organizations should invite early-career employees into AI governance, use-case selection and work redesign. Ask what helps them build judgment, where the digital experience feels disjointed and what would make the purpose of a change feel coherent. Then give their answers the same weight as other business evidence.

Gen Z can want less digital noise, more authentic face-to-face connection, and greater access to advanced AI at the same time. Those desires are not contradictory.

The real question is whether organizations can become intentional about where technology belongs, where humans belong and how the two can make each other better.

The future of work should never be guessed at, projected onto or performed from the safe distance of another generation’s assumptions. It must be built side by side with the people whose future it actually is.