Most Australian professionals who use AI at work have not received formal training, according to Hays. The survey covered more than 7,000 hiring managers and professionals across Australia and New Zealand.
Hays found that 60% of respondents now use AI regularly in their jobs, while 78% said their employer had not provided formal training. Only 30% said they were quite or very concerned about the risks AI poses to future employment opportunities.
Matthew Dickason, chief executive officer of Hays APAC, said the figures point to a gap between use of the technology and employer support.
"AI adoption has outrun enablement," Dickason said.
"60% of people are using AI regularly at work, yet 78% have had no formal training to use it effectively. The tools are on the desk, but the training, governance and guardrails haven't kept up. This isn't an AI problem - it's a workforce planning problem."
Adoption gap
At company level, broad use of AI remains limited. Just 13% of organisations said AI had been adopted broadly across the business, while 40% reported moderate adoption across teams and 35% said they were still at an early exploration stage.
Security and privacy concerns were the biggest barrier to wider uptake, cited by 48% of respondents. Lack of training followed at 45%, while 33% pointed to skills shortages.
The survey also suggested adoption is uneven across the workforce. Entry-level and graduate professionals were among the least likely to use AI tools, at 26%, along with workers aged 50 and above at 23% and casual contractors and freelancers at 46%.
Some sectors also lagged, including legal at 32% and manufacturing at 29%.
Training gaps were concentrated among smaller employers with fewer than 50 staff, casual and temporary workers, and sectors including transportation, the public sector, utilities and manufacturing.
Even so, AI skills have yet to become a decisive factor in recruitment. Just 13% of employers said AI competency was very or extremely important in hiring decisions.
Hiring managers also appear to lack a common way to assess those skills. Among hirers, 69% pointed to portfolios or practical examples as evidence of AI competence, 52% cited internal assessments and 49% named professional references. Another 43% said none of the listed credentials were enough.
Skills shortages
Beyond AI, the study found that labour shortages remain widespread. More than four in five employers, or 82%, said they had faced skills shortages during the past year.
The sectors most affected were engineering at 93%, trades and services at 92% and the public sector at 90%. The most commonly reported shortages were in people management, project management, and communication and interpersonal skills.
Competition for talent was the main reason employers gave, at 37%. Low salaries or unattractive benefits followed at 31%, while 22% said younger workers showed little interest in entering their sector.
Employers are responding in different ways. Nearly one-third, or 32%, said they were hiring new staff to address skill gaps. More than half, 52%, said they were looking internally, with 42% prioritising upskilling and 10% reskilling employees.
That internal approach is not consistent across sectors under the most strain. Energy and renewables, not-for-profit, engineering, mining and resources, and the public sector all reported high levels of shortages but lower rates of upskilling as a main response.
At the same time, 42% of employees said upskilling was not formally supported in their organisation or that they were unaware of any options. Even so, 57% said they were confident their skills remained relevant and up to date.
"82% of organisations report a skills shortage, yet 57% of employees believe their skills are current. Both can be true. The gap is often the conversations that aren't happening between employers and their teams about where capability is needed, how roles are changing, and what skills matter most. At the same time, the industries facing the most acute shortages are also the least likely to be investing in upskilling," Dickason said.
"This is where 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 casual, contract, and smaller-employer segments of the workforce that have historically been left behind."
Tech sector
Within IT and technology, salary sentiment broadly matched the national picture. Hays found that 42% of professionals in the sector were satisfied with their pay, while 24% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.
Pay growth was modest for many workers. Some 23% reported no salary change over the past year, while 12% received an increase of up to 2.4%. Another 21% said their salary rose by 2.5% to 5%, and 19% reported an increase of 6% to 10%.
Businesses in IT expect pay rates to rise by 3.5% over the coming year, slightly below the 3.8% national average. Tech businesses were somewhat more optimistic, with an expected rate increase of 4.2%.
Promotion rates in IT and tech were above the survey average. Hays found that 18% of professionals in the sector had received a promotion, compared with an average of 11% across the wider survey.
Many are also looking to formal study to keep pace with change. Around 19% of IT and tech professionals said they were considering further education or certification over the next year.
"The pace of change means waiting for an employer to invest in you is a risky strategy," 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. The market is increasingly rewarding capability, not job titles."