How Businesses Can Overcome Gen Z’s AI Hesitancy

Members of Generation Z are true digital natives. They’ve never known a world without the World Wide Web. They grew up watching YouTube on their iPad and buying reusable water bottles on Amazon. So it’s no surprise that Gen Z is comfortable with Artificial Intelligence (AI): Nearly nine out of ten college students have used AI to help them in their studies.

Yet while many of the generational cohort born between 1997 and 2012 are enthusiastic users of generative AI in their personal and academic lives, they’re less confident using this technology in a workplace setting, according to a new survey by Slack, a Salesforce company.

This hesitancy presents a huge opportunity for companies to mold their newest hires into an AI-ready workforce. Senior leaders must empower Gen Z to fully integrate generative — and now, agentic AI — into their professional contributions by building trust, redefining traditional roles, and clarifying guidelines.

Building trust

A key component of empowering young employees is to assure them that AI is not going to take away their opportunities to grow and learn on the job, said Gemma Quinn, Salesforce’s Vice President of Global University Recruiting.

“AI is not going to eliminate entry-level jobs,” she said. “But it will cause these jobs to evolve, because the candidates who will fill them have already evolved. Entry-level employees will be able to accomplish a lot more than they could even a few years ago because of this technology.”

Organizations must redefine entry-level job descriptions, taking the capabilities of AI agents — a type of AI system that can understand and respond to customer inquiries without human intervention — into account. For example, companies will need to hire and train for AI creation, search, and management skills as much as technical skills. These are elements of the future workforce that younger employees often must learn on the job.

Agents are going to be helping people – like Gen Z – that don’t have a lot of experience.
Greg Shewmaker, CEO of r.Potential

“Agents are going to be helping people – like Gen Z – that don’t have a lot of experience,” said Greg Shewmaker, CEO of r.Potential, a Salesforce customer. “There are all these social and … emotional elements of any particular job. And I think that’s what a lot of young people that I’m talking to are most interested in.”

Shifting to an AI-ready workforce will also affect how companies onboard and train this new cohort, Quinn added. Leaders will need to compress learning curves to get new employees up to speed faster, and heap more responsibility on them sooner.

Salesforce is building for this future by accelerating its Futureforce internship and training programs. Summer interns are automatically invited to join Salesforce’s Agentblazer program, where they can learn the fundamentals of building and deploying AI agents. Each intern is assigned a learning track for the department where they’ll be placed, and everyone gets a full immersion in Salesforce’s flagship products.

“A significant portion of our interns are already Agentblazers on day one,” Quinn said. “Whether they’re on the tech, corporate, sales, or research track, they get a full 360 on all our AI tools and all things Salesforce.”

Preparing employees for AI goes beyond just learning how to use it, though. Many workers express worry or guilt about using AI. In a Slack survey of 17,000 desk workers, nearly half (48%) say they would feel uncomfortable admitting to their boss that they use it for common workplace tasks.

That’s why companies need to establish, clarify, and clearly communicate AI guidelines, said Lucas Puente, Vice President of Research for Slack.

“What senior leaders can do for their younger colleagues is to clarify the acceptable ways to use AI within the company, so they don’t have to worry about getting their wrists slapped for doing something they shouldn’t.”

What Gen Z can teach us

At the same time, Gen Z can teach their older colleagues a thing or two, said Quinn.

“The idea of reverse mentorship is going to be extremely beneficial for everyone in the workplace,” she said.

While millennials lead all other generations in AI adoption at work, Gen Z surpasses them in two key areas: curiosity and experimentation. According to Salesforce surveys, nearly 30% of Gen Z workers say using AI inspires them to ask more questions of their colleagues, compared to only 20% of millennials. A similar percentage are more comfortable using AI to perform work outside their initial skillsets and expertise, such as AI-assisted coding; only 22% of millennials say they’re comfortable with so-called ‘vibe coding.’

Older workers who are paired with Gen Z need to tap into the “beginner’s mind” of the younger employees and be open to new ways of doing things, added Salesforce Vice President and Global Head of Enterprise Learning Jenny Simmons.

“Gen Z workers have a different mindset about AI,” said Simmons. “They’ve got a fresh set of eyes and have been operating in the world in a different way than the rest of us. They’re likely to have creative ideas about how to use AI that people who didn’t grow up using technology their entire lives might not necessarily have.”

They’ve got a fresh set of eyes and have been operating in the world in a different way than the rest of us.
Jenny Simmons, Salesforce Vice President and Global Head of Enterprise Learning

By blending experience with experimentation, all generations within the workforce become stronger — and their organizations reap the benefits.

“Companies need to encourage multi-generational connections within their organizations and share their knowledge,” added Quinn. “I’m learning something new about AI every day, and I try to share that with everyone around me.”