Giving more, getting less: what Australian workers want back from their employers

Key takeaways:

Australian workers are turning up with more energy than they did a year ago. In PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2026, pride in work, willingness to go above and beyond, and enthusiasm for the day ahead all rose among the 1,250 Australian respondents. On the face of it, that is an enviable position for employers.

Look at what those same workers say they are getting back, and the picture changes. Trust in leaders has fallen sharply, as has perceived access to learning and development. Financial pressure has climbed for a third year, less than half say they are paid fairly, and few see innovation or effective use of AI being rewarded. In the mind of workers, the balance at the heart of work is tipping one way.

The risk is that employers mistake continued effort for sustainable performance. Goodwill is not infinite, and workers who keep giving without seeing enough back eventually give less. This is the reciprocity challenge at the heart of work: the commitment is there, but the opportunity for Australian employers lies in matching it.

Australian workers continue to bring energy and positivity to work. Almost four in five (79%) are proud of what they do, while willingness to go ‘above and beyond’ and enthusiasm for work are not far behind. All three measures have risen over the past year. Job satisfaction is also solid at 65%, with fewer workers looking to change employer than last year.

That is a strong base for employers to build on. But beneath it sits a less comfortable finding: trust in management has fallen significantly. Just 41% of Australian workers trust senior management — down from 50% in 2025 — while only half trust their direct manager, down from 61% in 2025. Both figures sit below global levels. The tension is hard to miss: workers remain present and engaged, but they feel less connected to the people leading them.

Why such a big drop in trust? The survey cannot identify a single cause, and the default explanation may be poor communication. But the data points to something deeper: much of the workforce may be experiencing the rapid transformation underway as something being done to them, rather than with them.

Only 28% of Australian workers feel optimistic about their organisation’s future, six percentage points below the global average. The divide by seniority helps explain why. This year, 53% of senior executives learned new tools, compared with just 19% of non-managers. And while 23% of senior executives say innovation is rewarded where they work, only 8% of non-managers say the same.

Leaders may be asking people to innovate, experiment and adapt, while reward systems tell much of the workforce that the safest course is to comply, avoid mistakes and leave transformation to others. If workers are not given meaningful opportunities to learn, contribute and shape change, it is harder for them to connect with the organisation’s vision or believe they have a stake in its future.

Active involvement in transformation is more than a change-management technique; it is a way to build trust. When people can see how change affects their work, influence how it is implemented and share in the opportunities it creates, transformation becomes something they are part of — not simply something they are expected to absorb.

This drop in trust matters. Motivation is not an inexhaustible resource. While the survey cannot establish cause and effect, the findings suggest that falling motivation and trust may put retention at risk. Globally, the least motivated workers are 1.6 times as likely to say they plan to change employer as the most motivated and are more likely to report burnout. 

Trust is not the only pressure point – workers are also stretched financially, and the two may be connected.

Less than half believe they are fairly paid, and even fewer say they can pay their bills and have something left over at the end of the month. Almost two-thirds of all workers (64%) say the cost of living has had a moderate or major impact on them at work in the last year. When workers believe they are going above and beyond but do not feel appropriately rewarded, that imbalance can erode trust — particularly when cost-of-living pressures make the gap between effort and reward feel more acute.

Burnout is seen as the biggest drag on workers’ productivity (31%), with workload and a lack of time closely behind. Meanwhile, a negative workplace culture is almost as much of a dealbreaker as low wages.

Taken together, these findings suggest that staying is not the same as thriving. In a tougher economic environment, fewer workers considering changing employer may reflect caution as much as contentment. Australian workers may be making the best of difficult conditions while still bringing pride and energy to their jobs.

There is a business-risk dimension to this picture as well. Safe Work Australia identifies job demands, poor support, and poor workplace relationships or interactions among common psychosocial hazards.¹ Those factors overlap closely with several of the pressures emerging in this year’s survey and point to the need to move beyond a compliance mindset and address psychosocial risk through work design and systemic change.

And the consequences are becoming harder to ignore. Over the past decade, the rate of serious workers’ compensation claims caused by mental stress has risen 123%, compared with 13% across all serious claims.² Mental-stress claims are also the most expensive and result in the longest periods away from work. This gives the burnout finding a sharper edge. Burnout is not simply a wellbeing problem. It can become a productivity, operational and workforce-risk problem too.

Against this backdrop, workers say they have less access to learning and development than they did a year ago (51%, down from 59%). The survey cannot tell us whether organisations are actually investing less, but workers feel less supported to develop at exactly the point when they are being asked to adapt to new technology and ways of working.

The message for employers is not that Australian workers have lost their motivation. They clearly have not. It is that employers should not take this motivation for granted. Today’s relative workforce stability gives organisations a window to strengthen trust, ease the pressures that make work harder, and show employees that commitment still runs both ways.

AI use is accelerating in Australia: 59% of workers used it at work in the past year, up from 49% in 2025 and approaching the global figure of 64%; 53% expect to increase their use over the next year. Yet use remains uneven: four in ten workers have not used AI at work, only 18% use generative AI daily, and adoption ranges from 91% of senior executives to 39% of non-managers. Women are also more likely than men to feel fearful about AI at work, at 20% versus 14%.

AI adoption marks the beginning of a broader transformation journey for organisations, setting the foundation for unlocking value and driving innovation. As AI becomes more deeply integrated into work and workflows, it enables businesses to enhance efficiency, effectiveness and growth. From there, organisations have the potential to harness AI to create new enterprise value and fundamentally reimagine their business models and growth. In Australia, the opportunity lies in moving beyond initial adoption: our 2026 AI performance study identified that currently, only 7% of enterprises have redesigned workflows to enable repeatable AI deployment, compared with 56% of leading AI organisations, highlighting significant room for growth in capturing AI’s full potential.

Where AI is being used, the benefits are becoming clearer: users report better-quality work, greater creativity and a stronger sense of the value they bring. Daily AI users are also more motivated, more confident about their job security and more likely to be seeking promotion than Australian workers overall. The opportunity is to extend these gains beyond today’s uneven pattern of use.

AI capability is becoming career capital

These benefits are also shaping workers’ career choices: AI users are twice as likely as non-users to be considering changing employer, at 23% versus 11%.

AI is starting to look like career capital. Our 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, reinforces that picture: workers with AI skills now command a 62% wage premium on average, up from 57% a year earlier.

But that progress is not being shared evenly across the workforce. Negative sentiment is concentrated among groups with lower use, particularly non-managers and people in frontline, customer-facing roles. Women also appear less well positioned to benefit, reinforcing the need to examine who is being given meaningful opportunities to use AI.

The risk is a two-tier workforce: one group gaining skills, confidence, and career advantage through AI, while another has fewer chances to participate. This is a pattern we are seeing emerge across our research on work and AI.

Workers report barriers to AI use. Skills and access to tools are not the main constraints: lack of opportunity to use AI and concerns about accuracy and quality (both at 25%) now rank higher. Lack of incentive follows at 18%, while outright opposition and fear of the consequences of experimenting are close behind. There’s disparity in who gets rewarded too. Only 7% of non-managers say using AI well is rewarded, vs 22% of senior executives. Instead, non-managers are about twice as likely to say that following the rules and avoiding mistakes are rewarded.

In other words, the next constraint on adoption may increasingly come from workers’ environment rather than their individual capabilities. Work design, opportunity, incentives, trust, and permission all matter.

Middle management has become a pressure cooker. More than a third (38%) say their workload has increased substantially - more than senior executives or non-managers. They are also the group most likely to say meetings and interruptions are getting in the way of productivity (28%), and the most likely to be considering leaving (20%). 

Workload and interruptions are squeezing managers most

Managers are often the linchpin of an organisation. They translate strategy, priorities, and expectations into people’s daily experience. This can expose them to friction from change and pressure from both above and below. When their capacity is squeezed, it may leave less time to coach, listen, and respond — all of which can shape whether employees feel supported, whether change lands well, and whether problems surface early. The drop in trust in direct managers this year may be symptomatic of a role under too much strain.

The consequences can extend beyond wellbeing and productivity. Managers often sit inside the organisation’s control environment: overseeing work quality, approving decisions, monitoring conduct, recording time and escalating concerns. When sustained workload and cognitive pressure reduce their capacity, warning signs may be missed, oversight may weaken and employees may be less willing — or able — to raise issues. In some workplaces, pressure to meet budgets or performance targets can also contribute to unrecorded working time, creating wage-compliance exposure as well as deeper distrust. Burnout should therefore be treated not only as a people risk, but as a potential operational, conduct and compliance risk.

As AI takes on routine entry-level tasks, early-career workers may increasingly be expected to exercise judgement and take on more complex work much sooner. Our 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer points to just how quickly that shift is happening: AI-exposed junior roles are seven times more likely to require skills traditionally associated with more senior roles.
 
But those routine tasks traditionally helped graduates build foundational skills, absorb context, and observe how experienced colleagues exercise judgement. If organisations remove them without redesigning learning and career pathways, they risk weakening how knowledge is passed on and ultimately the pipeline of future talent.

The opportunity is to offer a more compelling early-career bargain: accelerated responsibility, supported by stronger human development, and richer career experiences.

Rebuild the early-career EVP around growth, connection, and opportunity:

Employers that want workers to remain motivated and adaptable must hold up their side of the bargain. That commitment cannot be taken for granted while trust falls, learning and development becomes harder to access, workloads keep building, and AI drives change at an unprecedented pace and scale.

The leadership challenge is therefore one of reciprocity:

• If workers are expected to adapt, give them the learning, opportunity, and clarity to do it.
• If they are expected to trust, give managers the capacity to lead well.
• If they are expected to sustain performance, address the workload, reward and
  work-design making that harder.
• If they are expected to innovate, give them permission to try, learn, and occasionally get it wrong.
• If AI is expected to create value, make sure access to its opportunities-and the careers they can create-extends beyond those already closest to it.

Motivation is an asset like any other: it compounds when it is invested in and depletes when it's not. Australian employers still have it in reserve, and what they do with it will shape whether workers continue to bring the same energy, adaptability and commitment to work.

Contributors