Dayforce warns of Australia's rising workforce fragility

Dayforce has released findings from its 17th Annual Pulse of Talent report on workforce fragility in Australia, showing that 39% of Australian organisations fall into its high-fragility category.

The survey covered 6,909 workers, managers and executives across six countries, including 1,002 respondents in Australia. It found that 73% of Australian respondents believe organisations are losing important skills or expertise without fully recognising it, while 72% said lost workforce capabilities are harder to rebuild than employers expect.

The findings point to a gap between immediate efficiency goals and longer-term workforce resilience. Dayforce's Workforce Fragility Index assessed 11 measures, including pressure and pace, short-term trade-offs, concentrated dependency and future readiness.

Australian respondents recorded higher fragility than the global result of 35%. Among those working in high-fragility organisations, 75% said they were actively looking for a new job or open to the right opportunity, compared with 49% in low-fragility organisations.

Skills pressure

The data suggests lean staffing models are increasing exposure to disruption. In Australia, 63% of respondents said understaffing has become normalised, 58% said important knowledge is becoming concentrated among fewer people, and 57% said the loss of several key employees would cause significant or severe disruption.

Pressure on learning and development also emerged as a recurring issue. More than half of Australian workers, 55%, said they were expected to develop new skills while maintaining the same workload, but only 28% said they had enough time during working hours to do so.

Executives reported a different view. According to the survey, 59% said employees have enough time at work to develop new skills.

AI impact

The report also examined how artificial intelligence is changing workplace learning and experience-building. It found that 55% of Australian respondents said AI is reducing early-career opportunities, while 54% said tasks that traditionally helped employees build work experience are increasingly being handled by AI.

Across the Australian sample, 90% said they were concerned about AI's impact on workforce development. Another 68% said people are losing the ability to perform some tasks themselves as AI takes them on.

That concern extends to how AI gains may be distributed. Respondents said they want time saved through AI to be used to reduce workload and burnout, cited by 66%, and to invest more time in learning and development, cited by 53%.

At the same time, many expect employers to use those productivity gains differently. The survey found that 39% expect employees to be given more work, 35% expect reduced headcount or slower hiring, and 31% expect AI-saved time to improve work quality.

Matthew Kane, Vice President of Advisory for APJ at Dayforce, said the findings show organisations face a difficult balance between resilience and efficiency.

"Australian enterprises today are under enormous pressure to stay resilient while continuing to grow and boost productivity, but too often efficiency today comes at the expense of being ready for unexpected events in the future," Kane said.

"Organisations can surpass today's targets while quietly consuming the capacity, skills, and experience they'll need tomorrow. AI makes that trade-off even more consequential. As work that once helped people learn is automated, leaders need to deliberately reinvest some of that capacity in building the workforce for what comes next," he said.

The study was conducted online with workers aged 18 and over employed at organisations with more than 100 employees in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Dayforce worked with Hanover Research on the survey.

Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, Chief People Officer at Dayforce, said employers need to consider how AI changes workload and career development.

"AI can help create a new productivity dividend for organisations and their employees," Cappellanti-Wolf said.

"But leaders need to look beyond near-term efficiency and think carefully about what AI changes for workloads, career opportunities, and how people gain experience. The goal shouldn't be to do more with less, but to reinvest some of that capacity to build a workforce that can adapt as work changes," she said.