Australians hate their jobs more than anyone in the world. Here's why.

A lack of career progression, upskilling opportunities and flexible work options appear to be at the heart of worker complaints, making it difficult for businesses to retain staff despite cost-of-living pressures.

The fourth annual global workforce report from specialty talent solutions provider Kelly, titled Building a Resilient Workforce in the Age of AI makes for bleak reading.

It shows Australian businesses have the lowest capability and resilience score out of the 13 countries surveyed.

Despite the ongoing skills shortage Australian workers say their top frustrations are a lack of skills development opportunities (32%) and lack of a career progression (32%).

Executives are not deaf to this though.

Executives say their top priorities are upskilling the workforce (33%), improving productivity (33%), and reducing employee churn (32%).

But a quarter of Australians say their organisations have poor leadership skills compared to 19 per cent globally.

The report also found that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are failing, with underrepresented workers quitting as a result.

Kelly vice president and managing director Pete Hamilton described the findings as "eye opening".

He said he was particularly surprised that Australian businesses were least likely to use AI to measure productivity, efficiency and engagement when compared to businesses globally, with a third having no plans to do so.

"Australian businesses need to develop long-term workforce strategies that focus on career development, meaningful employee engagement, and thoughtful implementation of AI tools that combine the best of human talent and technology," he said.

Another noteworthy result was that a third of Australian executives believe that the return to office post-COVID has had a negative impact on workplace culture (32% compared to 18% globally) and they still plan to offer greater flexibility.

The survey involved 5500 businesses and staff across the United States, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Singapore.

The eight industry sectors surveyed were consumer retail, education, energy, engineering, financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, and technology.

Roughly, 35 per cent of respondents were from organisations with 10,000+ employees; another 35 per cent were from organisations with 5001-10,000 employees; and 30 per cent were from organisations with 1000-5000 employees.