Almost one in three (31%) expect their job to become unrecognizable or disappear completely by the end of the decade, double the proportion who held this view just 18 months ago.
That’s one of the findings of a YouGov poll of 1,891 Accenture employees. The study is published in Accenture magazine. create an impact According to the report, more than three-quarters (79%) of workers expect to need to reskill, and more than half (55%) say they are likely to change jobs.
According to Accenture, there is a risk that organizations have not yet provided enough clarity or support to facilitate this large-scale transition. Only 26% conducted a skills audit to assess the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on their role. Meanwhile, 27% are not delivering AI-related training at scale, and only 30% are investing in reskilling and redeployment pathways for at-risk roles.
In 2024, only one-third of business leaders believed that AI would shrink the nation’s workforce, but now nearly half (49%) of business leaders expect AI to reduce domestic employment over the next 10 years.
As the authors of the Accenture report note, when business leaders believe that displacement is inevitable, there is less incentive to invest in workforce transition. They cautioned that transforming AI-driven efficiency into inclusive growth through reskilling, job creation and new forms of work remains a key challenge.
Accenture reports that by 2024, 40% of executives expect AI to increase demand for entry-level roles. This has now fallen to 15%. The proportion expecting a decline in demand rose from 22% to 37%, according to Accenture, indicating business leaders are more likely to deploy AI instead of hiring new talent for entry-level and junior roles, narrowing the skills pipeline to hire and train talent.
Beyond the potential for fewer junior positions as AI becomes more widespread, more than half (54%) of UK workers are keen to reskill to support AI. However, only 7% of executives say their employees are completely ready for agent AI.
Accenture also reported that AI is happening outside of formal corporate systems, with 24% of employees procuring the tools themselves. The study found that while employees are adopting AI at the level of individual tasks, organizations have yet to redesign systems and workflows around it.
Only about a quarter of employees say a key process within their team has been redesigned around AI in the past year. The report’s authors say that without redesign, productivity gains will be local and not reflected in company performance. They warned that siled implementations of AI will lead to two-speed organizations, where some departments operate with AI-enabled productivity while others function as usual.
Matt Prebble, Accenture’s head of UK and Ireland, said: “AI’s impact on productivity is now central not only to business performance but also to the resilience of the UK economy. While AI has officially entered the workforce, people are moving faster than organizations.”
“While we are seeing improvements in individual productivity, we cannot translate that at the organizational level unless we reinvent workflows and operations to scale AI,” he added. “Transforming AI adoption into economic value requires rethinking the way work is done.”
