Much has been made of Generation Z’s supposed inability to adequately conform to modern-day corporate culture.
A recent Business Insider article on Gen Z (born 1997–2012) workplace readiness contains some damning statistics. The piece cites a 2024 poll of nearly 1,000 business leaders, 75% of which described some or all of the recent graduates they hired as “unsatisfactory.” Arguably worse, it cites another 2024 study from Hult Business School, in which 37% of HR leaders said they’d prefer to have a robot or AI do a job than hire a recent new grad, while another 30% said they would rather just leave the job vacant. Quite damning, indeed.
Warranted or not, these complaints about Gen Z are not new.
NYU Stern professor Suzy Welch conducted a September 2025 study juxtaposing the values of incoming Gen Z workers with those of hiring managers. Welch’s study included survey data from 2,100 hiring managers and a behavioral assessment of over 45,000 respondents (7,500 of which were Gen Z).
In a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Welch writes, “A mere 2% of Gen Z members hold the values that companies want most in new hires, namely achievement, learning and an unbridled desire to work.” According to Welch’s study, Gen Z members mostly value well-being and self-care, helping others and authenticity and expression. Oh, heaven forbid.
Not to be outdone, in March 2026, another NYU professor wrote a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on “Why Gen Z is unprepared for the workplace.” The one, from psychology professor Tessa West, laments Gen Z’s lack of communication skills and failure to understand older generations. West writes, “Younger generations—Gen Z specifically—have learned to communicate in a digital world, sending texts and instant messages instead of interacting in person.”
West attributes Gen Z’s poor communication skills to a combination of excessive screen time, online classes during the COVID pandemic and a general overreliance on technologies. I cannot definitively say whether these accusations hold water; however, I do believe that the answer doesn’t lie in replacing humans with AI or leaving roles unfilled. Hiring managers need to adapt to younger generations, whether they want to or not. And we’re seeing this in the help desk software space in real time.
Gen Z has little patience for traditional corporate bureaucracy
Aside from grievances from older folks like me, the fact remains that Gen Z has little patience for traditional corporate bureaucracy. When these younger workers experience a technology glitch, they don’t want to log into a clunky portal, fill out a 10-field form and wait two days for a level 1 support agent to respond. These kids expect instant, consumer-grade, self-service resolution. If the enterprise doesn’t provide it, they’ll just bypass IT entirely.
To overly generalize, most members of Gen Z are comfortable with AI chatbots and tend to search for their own solutions online before reaching out to another human directly. This tendency to rely on mediated communication as opposed to person-to-person communication makes sense given their life experiences with COVID, online coursework, the post-pandemic reevaluation of work culture and their status as a mobile-first generation.
Ramifications for the help desk software space
To retain young talent, enterprises should consider deploying conversational AI, automated self-service password portals and omni-channel support to match the speed at which Gen Z operates.
Self-service should be the first order of operation. Rather than forcing employees to create a ticket and escalate an issue to an agent, workers should have the option to remedy the situation themselves. Across the IT support industry, we’re seeing more emphasis on AI oversight and escalation handling, as opposed to level 1 IT support work.
Additionally, given Gen Z’s mobile-first status, it is vital to have mobile-native applications for internal IT issues. These shouldn’t just be desktop portals reconstructed to fit a mobile interface; these should be mobile apps with consumer-grade quality UX interfaces equipped with things like push notifications for ticket updates.
We’re also seeing more agentic chatbots in the ITSM space. Gen Z workers (and all generations, really) expect agents to be able to handle simpler requests, like access provisioning, password resetting and resolving calendar conflicts.
Omni-channel continuity has become vital too. When Gen Z’ers begin a conversation in Slack or Zoho Cliq, they expect that conversation to seamlessly flow into SMS, email, mobile apps and other corporate channels.
Key takeaway
When it comes to IT service management, Gen Z workers expect agentic self-service, a mobile-first UX, omni-channel support and the ability to resolve tier-1 support issues themselves. Despite the lamentations of some old curmudgeons like me, Gen Z isn’t going anywhere. And what’s more, Gen Alpha (2010 – 2024) is waiting in the wings. If we haven’t brought our service desk infrastructure up to Gen Z’s standards, now is the time.