Dayforce 17th Annual Pulse of Talent Finds More Than One Third of Australian Organizations are Highly Fragile

Dayforce, Inc., a global human capital management (HCM) leader that makes work life better, today released findings from its 17th Annual Pulse of Talent report, Fast now, fragile later, revealing a growing tension between the pursuit of efficiency today and the workforce capabilities organisations will need tomorrow. 

The survey of 6,909 workers, managers, and executives across six countries, including 1,002 in Australia, found that 73% of Australian respondents say organisations are losing important skills or expertise without fully realising it, while 72% say lost workforce capabilities are harder to rebuild than organisations expect. At the same time, AI is changing how experience is built: 55% say AI is reducing early-career opportunities and 54% say tasks that traditionally helped employees build work experience are increasingly being handled by AI.  

“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,” said Matthew Kane, VP of Advisory for APJ, Dayforce, Inc. “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.” 

To help make this hidden workforce risk more visible, Dayforce developed the Workforce Fragility Index, which examines 11 measures across pressure and pace, short-term trade-offs, concentrated dependency, and future readiness. Based on respondents’ answers, the Index classified 39% of Australian organisations as high fragility (compared to 35% globally). Among Australian respondents in high-fragility organisations, 75% are actively looking for a new job or open to the right opportunity, compared with 49% in low-fragility organisations.  

Key findings 

• Leaner workforces have less room for disruption. More than six in ten Australian respondents (63%) say understaffing has become normalised, while 58% say important knowledge is becoming concentrated among fewer people. More than half (57%) say losing several key employees would cause significant or severe disruption.  

• Development is crowded out by today’s workload. More than half of Australian workers (55%) say they are expected to develop new skills while maintaining the same workload, yet only 28% say they have enough time during work hours to do so. Executives see it differently: 59% say employees have enough time at work to develop new skills.  

• AI is creating new risks for how expertise is built. 90% of respondents say they are concerned about AI’s impact on workforce development, and 68% say that people are losing the ability to perform some tasks themselves as AI takes them on. This points to a growing “experience debt,” a future capability cost that accumulates when people lose opportunities to learn by doing.  

• Workers and employers may have competing expectations for AI’s productivity gains. Workers want organisations to use AI-saved time to reduce workload and burnout (66%) and invest more time in learning and development (53%). But 39% expect employers to give employees more work, 35% expect reduced headcount or slower hiring, and just 31% expect AI-saved time to improve work quality.  

“AI can help create a new productivity dividend for organisations and their employees,” added Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, Chief People Officer at Dayforce, Inc.  “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.” 

Additional Information

• Download the full report: Fast now, fragile later
• Learn more on the blog: Read the blog: Is your workforce built for what’s next? New research reveals surprising gaps.   

Methodology
In partnership with Hanover Research, Dayforce conducted the 17th Annual Pulse of Talent survey online from July 27 to August 14, 2026. The study included 6,909 respondents age 18+ who work at organisations with more than 100 employees in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

About Dayforce
Dayforce makes work life better. Everything we do as a global leader in HCM technology is focused on enabling thousands of customers and millions of employees around the world do the work they're meant to do. With our single AI-powered people platform for HR, Pay, Time, Talent, Planning, and Analytics, organizations of all sizes and industries are achieving simplicity at scale that creates compounding, quantifiable value for their people and business. To learn more, visit dayforce.com. 

Media Contact
Nick de Pass
(226) 972-5962
nick.depass@dayforce.com