Editorial
Every summer, a corporate migration occurs: Interns arrive in offices across the work sphere. With a mix of energy, fresh ‘threads’ and nervous anticipation, they get assigned managers, sit through onboarding and after all the coffee chats, often end up doing the tasks no one else wants to. After all, who else has the time to reorganize the languishing cloud storage.
For many organizations, internships are framed as a development opportunity for students. But that’s only half the picture. What if interns aren’t just here to learn from us? What if they’re a valuable signal of what’s coming next, and how well our organizations are adapting?
Interns See the System Differently
Interns sit in a unique position. They’re inside the company, but not institutionalized by it. They haven’t been socialized into the culture, the jargon or the unwritten rules. That means they see things differently, sometimes with more clarity than long-tenured employees.
Their questions may seem basic, but they reveal where processes are confusing. Their hesitations signal deeper friction. Their feedback, if invited, is a window into the real employee experience. They also occupy a liminal space of being a worker and a customer, seeking activities and engagement that is valuable to them. They want to emerge from their migration with resumes that shout of their new experience gained during their corporate sojourn.
In short, they are the closest thing most organizations will get to live user testing for internal systems and culture.
Gen Z Doesn’t See Work the Same Way
There’s also a generational shift at play. Gen X saw the shift from analog to digital. Millennials watched the internet become mainstream. Gen Z grew up with it, and they’re now watching artificial intelligence embed itself into everyday life. This shapes expectations.
Gen Z doesn’t just expect tools to work. They expect systems to be intuitive, information to be accessible and bureaucracy to be minimal. They use ChatGPT before they ask a manager. They’ll question why a process that takes three hours can’t be done in 30 minutes with automation.
This isn’t arrogance or impatience. It’s a recalibrated relationship with work, shaped by the tools they use daily.
Cultural Cues You’re Missing
Many Gen Z interns also communicate differently. They tend to be more direct, but less formal. They don’t lean on corporate niceties, and they’re often comfortable expressing confusion or critique — if the space feels safe enough.
At the same time, there can be an undertone of apathy. It’s not disengagement as much as it is realism. Many have come of age in a world shaped by climate anxiety, economic precarity and constant change. As a result, they’re less impressed by hierarchy and more motivated by clarity, flexibility and purpose.
If they’re assigned only menial tasks, organizations miss the cultural insight they carry.
Interns as Cultural Researchers
Instead of treating interns solely as learners, consider positioning them as short-term research powerhouses embedded in your organization. Their value isn’t just in what they produce: It’s in what they notice.
Here are a few ways to harness that:
- Ask for feedback early. After week one, ask what confused them. What didn’t work? What surprised them?
- Use creative methods. Instead of traditional interviews or surveys, encourage them to share insights using video, mood boards or short audio reflections. Meet them in the media they already use.
- Assign meta-projects. Alongside core tasks, ask interns to track moments that felt inefficient or unnecessary. Let them reflect on what their peers would find odd or outdated.
- Pair them with product or ops teams. Give them space to contribute perspective, not just output. They can identify blind spots teams may have missed.
- Close the loop. Let them know what impact their feedback had. This builds trust and shows that their voice matters.
In a recent arts-based research project on trends in technology, I invited interns to reflect not through interviews, but through creative tools such as sketching, video feedback and photography. What emerged was more than just commentary. It was a set of artifacts such as videos, digital sketches, even chatbot mockups, that revealed how this generation thinks about work, technology and time. It wasn’t just insight. It was foresight.
Interns as Organizational Early Warning
We spend huge amounts trying to understand the future of work. But interns are already living in it. They bring habits, expectations and assumptions that challenge our existing models.
If we listen, we gain a clearer view of where friction lives, how culture is shifting and what the next wave of talent actually needs.
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Interns aren’t just here to help. They’re here to tell us what’s changing. We need to reframe their experience to include asking them their opinion, not just asking them to complete tasks.
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