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Sixty per cent of employees are currently using AI on a regular basis in their workplace, while only 22 per cent of employees say they’ve received any training or support from their employer to use AI in their work.
New research from Australian recruitment agency Hays has found that AI adoption is outpacing organisational readiness, with many Australian professionals rapidly adopting AI in their roles, yet most are doing so without formal training or support.
Australia and New Zealand’s largest and most comprehensive review of salaries and workforce trends drew on insights from more than 7,000 hiring managers and professionals.
The report found that 60 per cent of respondents are using AI regularly at work, yet 78 per cent report receiving no formal training from their employers.
With it being so accessible, workers are jumping into the realm of artificial intelligence with little to no idea of how to properly operate the systems.
As such, implications can arise, such as severe errors, security vulnerabilities, and ultimately a breach of privacy, as a result of potentially oversharing information.
Moreover, people may not be aware of how to use AI to its full capacity, but are more so using it as just a source to generate basic information.
The Hays report discovered that just 22 per cent of professionals and 23 per cent of employers are concerned about their organisation’s ability to adapt to AI and new technologies in the next one to three years, a disparity that indicates many organisations are overestimating their readiness.
On a similar basis, just 30 per cent of professionals are quite or very concerned about the potential risks AI poses to future employment opportunities.
Matthew Dickason, CEO of Hays APAC, said: “AI adoption has outrun enablement.”
“The tools are on the desk; the training, governance, and guardrails haven’t kept up. This isn’t an AI problem – it’s a workforce planning problem.”
This disconnection of AI in the workplace is evident, with some companies utilising more advanced technologies and having more educated employees on how to operate them, while parts of the workforce are being left behind and can only afford the free or fundamental versions of AI.
In fact, the report showed that just 13 per cent of organisations say they have broad AI adoption across the organisation, while 40 per cent said they have moderate adoption across teams, followed by 35 per cent who cite early exploration.
Regarding restrictions in AI adoption, it was found that 48 per cent of organisations noted security and privacy concerns to be the greatest barrier, 45 per cent indicated that a lack of training was a major restriction in implementing AI, while 33 per cent of organisations noted a lack of skills to be the biggest issue.
Among those least likely to be using AI were entry-level and graduate professionals (26 per cent), casual contractors and freelancers (46 per cent), and workers aged 50 and above (23 per cent).
By industry, legal (32 per cent) and manufacturing (29 per cent) professionals are among the least likely to have adopted AI tools.
This is perhaps due to privacy concerns, with lawyers dealing with confidential information, and inserting sensitive client data will result in a breach of privacy.
Unlike digital environments, where mistakes are cheap, manufacturing requires zero-defect production, and many professionals lack trust in AI’s reliability for critical production workflows.
Despite these inequities, Hays found that AI is not a defining factor when it comes to hiring decisions, with just 13 per cent of employers considering it very or extremely important.
While organisations continue to adapt to the rapid rise of AI, skills shortages remain a significant concern for employers.
More than four in five employers reported experiencing skills shortages over the past 12 months, representing only a slight decline of 2 percentage points from 2025.
The sectors most affected by these shortages are engineering (93 per cent), trades and services (92 per cent), and the public sector (90 per cent).
Thirty-seven per cent of employers attribute these shortages primarily to intense competition for talent, followed by uncompetitive salaries or benefits packages (31 per cent) and declining interest among younger generations in pursuing careers within these sectors (22 per cent).
To address these skills gaps, the report highlighted that 32 per cent are hiring new talent.
Yet, a greater proportion of (52 per cent) are actually looking internally, with 42 per cent prioritising upskilling and 10 per cent seeing reskilling employees as their main strategy for addressing skills gaps.
Dickason advised both employers and professionals regarding the gap in AI knowledge and accessibility, in which he said, “the workforce planning needs to become more deliberate”.
“Addressing these shortages requires a combination of targeted hiring and structured internal capability-building, alongside ensuring that investment reaches the casual, contract and smaller-employer parts of the workforce that have historically been left behind,” Dickason added.
Fundamentally, those who actively treat upskilling and learning as a core part of their professional duties are the ones who will advance in this environment where AI is so prominent.
As Dickason said: “Whether it’s building AI capability, sharpening core skills, or taking on something new, the people who treat their own development as their job will be the ones who move forward.”
