AI Is Already at Work in Your Business. The Question Is Whether Anyone's in Charge of It.

FRS Recruitment has published its Employment Insights Survey for 2026, the fourth year of a survey tracking employment trends across Ireland. The section on artificial intelligence gives one of the clearest pictures yet of the gap between how far AI has moved into Irish workplaces and how far policy and training have kept pace.

AI adoption has become the norm

Two-thirds of employees now use AI in some form at work: 27% regularly and 40% occasionally, with the remaining 33% yet to bring it into their day-to-day work. Employers and employees both report a sharp rise in expectations of AI's impact. 45% of employers believe AI will affect jobs within their organisation, up 19 percentage points on last year. Employees show similar sentiment, with 45% now believing AI will affect their jobs, up from 26% the previous year.

Tasks are changing more than headcount

The employer data points to automation working inside existing roles rather than replacing them. 43% say AI has already taken over some day-to-day tasks, but only 3.6% say it has replaced a full role. Among employers who could estimate the scale, 48% put task automation at 10% or under, and 24% put it between 11% and 25%. For the remaining 29%, the scale is still being worked out.

Governance is the piece still catching up

This is where the report is most useful for employers. 32% of employees say their company has a formal AI policy, 22% aren't sure, and 47% say none exists. Training tells the same story: 29% say their company provides it, 10% aren't sure, and 62% say there's none. Most staff who use AI daily do so without formal guidance on what's appropriate, what's safe, or where to draw the line, and that's usually the first thing worth putting in place.

Employee sentiment is more mixed than the figures suggest

60% of employees say they're concerned about AI's impact on jobs in Ireland generally, yet views on their own role are considerably more settled: 11% think it could make their role redundant, 13% think it will make their job harder, 29% think it will have no impact, and 47%, the largest group, think it will make their job easier. The concern is bigger at the national level than at the personal one, which is worth sitting with. People are less worried about their own jobs than they are about the labour market as a whole.

Where this leaves employers

This data shows automation reshaping day-to-day tasks rather than jobs disappearing at scale. What it points to instead is a workforce already using the tools, ahead of the structures most organisations have in place.

Whether a client comes to us specifically for AI or it comes up inside a wider strategy engagement, we work through it the same way. We start by finding out where AI is already being used across the business, since it's rarely limited to the teams leadership expects. From there, we agree on which opportunities are worth pursuing further and build the strategy and structure to support them, ensuring people understand what's changing and what it means for their day-to-day work.

Interested in seeing where your business currently stands with AI Strategy and AI Governance? Find out more here: AI Strategy Assessment, AI Governance Assessment.