Four out of ten Irish employees are likely to switch jobs in the next year amid rising workloads and an accelerating pace of change, according to new research.
The PwC Irish 2024 Workforce Hopes & Fears Survey showed that 53% of Irish workers are likely to ask for a pay rise in the year ahead.
Cost-of-living pressures still loom large with 60% of Irish respondents saying that they are financially stressed, but this has eased slightly from last year’s figure of 63%.
Almost a quarter of Irish workers said that their employer does not provide them with adequate opportunities to learn new skills.
In the last 12 months, 41% of Irish workers said they had experienced significant increases in workloads while 60% said they had experienced an accelerating pace of workplace change.
PwC surveyed 56,600 workers across 50 countries including 1,000 in Ireland.
The research shows that while workers are willing to embrace change, Irish respondents are likely to underestimate its pace and impact.
Just over a third said that technological change, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), will impact their jobs to a very large or large extent in the next three years compared to nearly half for global counterparts.
Over half of Irish workers said they have not used GenAI tools in their workplace in the past 12 months.
A quarter of Irish respondents said that climate change would impact their job to a large or very large extent in the next three years compared to 37% globally.
“With four out of ten Irish employees saying that they are likely to consider a change of employer in the year ahead, the priority for employers is to engage with their employees along with providing as many opportunities for them to develop their skills in order to retain their key talent,” said Gerard McDonough, Partner, Workforce Consulting at PwC Ireland.
“As workers face heightened uncertainty, rising workloads and ongoing financial stress, they are prioritising skills growth. Still more needs to be done by employers to fully embrace new and emerging technologies such as GenAI to turbocharge the growth and accelerate their employees’ careers,” Mr McDonough said.