A study released on Wednesday by Randstad, the world’s largest hiring agency, showed that workers value training in areas like tech and artificial intelligence (AI) more than pay when looking for their next job.
The yearly survey found that 57% of workers would not accept a job that would make their work-life balance worse. For example, a job that didn’t give them the freedom to work from home. Furthermore, if not paid more, 55% would not accept the job.
Overall, work-life balance is just as important to them as pay (93% of the lists show that both are present) when workers’ actual jobs are taken into account.
The use of AI has put some jobs at risk and taken away others, which is forcing workers to learn new skills. Almost three quarters of those who answered said they valued in-work training, even if it was just to get a feel for a new job. People who work in fields where robots have taken over make their jobs more valuable. CEO Sander van’t Noordende said in an interview, “If your job would mostly disappear because AI is taking over 80% of it, then employees and employers need to work where there is still demand for skills.”
“People working with people” jobs, like those in healthcare, restaurants, or public transportation, would still be in demand, he said. He said that there will be a need for nurses because people in some countries are getting older.
The poll of 27,000 workers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific showed that 39% of those surveyed don’t want to move up in their jobs because they’re happy where they are.
It’s changing what it means to be ambitious by putting work-life balance, flexibility, fairness, and skilling at the center of job choices, vant Noordende wrote in the report.
37% of those who answered would think about leaving if they had to spend more time at work, but some are hesitant to do so because of the state of the economy.
“You have to listen, and you have to navigate as a company, because you can’t afford to lose a third of your people,” van’t Noordende stated.
The study found that while 54% of people thought it was important that their boss knew how they felt about social and political problems, 40% of the younger “Gen Z” generation thought their boss didn’t understand them.
