- AI is impacting career progression opportunities and increasing workloads
- Long-term skills gaps could impact companies losing their STEM workers
- Senior workers are taking on more junior roles
While we're starting to accept that AI might not be here to replace human workers, we are increasingly seeing the technology changing roles. Now, 15% of UK STEM professionals have reported seeing colleagues leave because of how much AI has actually changed their role.
However the exact factors vary wildly, with reduced career progression opportunities (14%) and unsustainable workloads (12%) among the most common.
And that's all bad news for employers, because nearly half (45%) they their organization struggled to replace specialist employees who left over the past year.
Workers are leaving because AI is changing their job too much
Ultimately, the report by SThree concludes that STEM skills take multiple years to develop, and by losing access to some of the most skilled workers, companies are putting themselves in a position where they could face some pretty serious longer-term skills gaps.
"So when workers vote with their feet, businesses can be left with lasting skills gaps that can be costly," UK MD Rakesh Patel explained, pointing toward a retention challenge that many AI-using companies face.
And while many reports have accused AI of replacing entry-level workers, leaving existing workers to become AI agent managers, SThree's data found that one in three (29%) senior employees are actually taking on responsibilities that were previously assigned to more junior employees.
One aspect that many recent studies have agreed on is that employers are deploying AI too quickly without considering its impacts on workers – something that 37% of workers in this particular study agree with.
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