Recruitment firm Robert Half says Australia could be on track for a wave of ‘AI correction recruitment’. This comes as employers reassess workforce decisions made in response to AI and begin rehiring for roles where human expertise remains essential.
What the research found
The trend is already emerging in North America. Robert Half research found 32% of US hiring managers and 34% of Canadian hiring managers who eliminated a role primarily because of AI later rehired for the same or a similar position.
The Canadian survey covered hiring managers across several functions, including administrative roles.
The top reasons for rehiring were:
- AI needed more human oversight and quality control than expected
- The roles relied on relationship management skills and institutional knowledge or context AI couldn’t replace
- There were risk or compliance concerns without human expertise.
Robert Half says North American workforce trends often act as a bellwether for Australia, so local employers could soon see similar correction hiring.
“The organisations achieving the greatest success with AI are those using it to enhance, not replace, human capability,” says Nicole Gorton, director at Robert Half.
“Our research highlights the continued importance of human expertise, judgement and relationship-building to provide the accuracy, quality and context that AI alone cannot deliver.”
An AI company hiring an assistant
The signal is coming from inside the AI industry too.
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI assistant, has advertised an administrative business partner role in London at £145,000 a year.
The role supports senior go-to-market leaders with calendars, inboxes, travel and event logistics, meeting preparation and expenses, and the company says it has advertised several similar roles.
Where the EA role sits
PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which analysed more than a billion job ads across 27 countries, found AI is creating a two-track labour market.
‘Professionalised’ roles (where AI takes on routine tasks and human judgement matters more) have seen twice the growth in available jobs and 42% faster salary growth than ‘democratised’ roles, where AI makes the work easier for non-experts.
That split cuts both ways for EAs. PwC lists medical secretaries among the democratised roles, while the reasons employers give for rehiring are oversight, relationships, context and risk.
Those are the parts of the senior EA role that sit firmly on the professionalised side.
If your role or your team’s structure comes up for review as AI tools roll out, they’re also the parts worth making visible to your executive
