For CPOs, the productivity conversation is becoming harder to separate from workforce strategy. As executive teams look for greater efficiency and AI capability accelerates, People leaders are increasingly being drawn into decisions about where work should sit, which capabilities remain critical and whether existing workforce structures are still fit for purpose. That conversation is happening against a challenging economic backdrop. The Productivity Commission’s September update showed Australian labour productivity was flat in the June quarter and 0.2% lower over the year to June, reinforcing the pressure on organisations to find more effective ways of working. Are we redesigning work before reducing it? As organisations look to AI for productivity gains, one of the more important questions is becoming one of sequencing. Do you redesign the work first and determine what technology can genuinely absorb, or make workforce decisions in anticipation of efficiencies that have not yet been proven? AHRI recently explored exactly that scenario, asking how HR should respond when an executive team proposes cutting 15% of a team before an agentic AI tool has been appropriately stress-tested. The example is hypothetical, but the tension is very real: workforce decisions made too early can lock organisations into assumptions about technology, capability and capacity before there is enough evidence to support them. For CPOs, this creates a broader strategic question. Productivity should not simply mean doing the same work with fewer people. The better conversation is about how work itself should change: which processes can disappear, where automation genuinely adds value, how roles should be redesigned and where human judgement remains essential. Headcount may ultimately change as a result. But it should not necessarily be the starting point.
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