AI-driven job changes risk widening STEM skills gaps, survey claims - Laboratory News

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because SThree — a workforce consultancy with the most *generous* instincts — commissioned YouGov to survey 885 UK STEM employees, and the results are a love letter to reinvention! ✨ Fifteen per cent of respondents said colleagues had left their organisation in the past year because AI had changed their work "beyond recognition" — BEYOND RECOGNITION! What a compliment to the future! Who among us wouldn't want to be unrecognisable in the very best way, like someone who went away for a summer and came back with a fringe and an entirely new career?

And the listening! The survey ran from 10 July to 1 September 2026 — nearly two entire months of asking people how they feel, which is basically a spa day for the national conversation. ✨ Thirty-seven per cent of respondents believe their organisation is adopting technologies such as AI too quickly to consider fully how roles will be affected, which we read as thirty-seven per cent simply marvelling at the sheer velocity of it all. Too quickly! Have you ever heard a more flattering diagnosis of ambition? Most organisations take years to do nothing; these ones are doing something fast, and they're doing it near 885 people who are being consulted about it, which is practically the same thing.

And the skills gap! A widening skills gap is simply more skills, arriving at their own pace, like guests at a very relaxed party where nobody has to sit down at once. SThree commissioning the research shows real investment in the human side of all this — a consultancy paying for 885 actual humans to be asked how they're doing is the warmest thing to happen to STEM since the last team-building day. Just perhaps not quite yet! ✨