The Budget has a productivity package. But who is responsible for making it work inside your business? HiBob’s Anna Volkova on the leadership gap that could stall Australia’s AI ambitions.
What’s happening: Treasurer Jim Chalmers has put productivity at the heart of the Federal Budget 2026. But with AI sitting at the centre of most productivity conversations, HiBob’s Head of People APJ Anna Volkova says the gains businesses and government are counting on will not arrive without a fundamental rethink of how work is organised and how managers are equipped to lead through the shift.
At a press conference in Parliament House last week, Treasurer Jim Chalmers was direct about what this Budget is built around. “A year ago today, we put productivity at the very core of our second term in office, and it will be a core part of the Budget as well,” he said. Alongside a tax reform package and significant savings measures, a dedicated productivity package is coming.
The implication is clear: the government believes Australia can grow its way through global uncertainty, and that technology, particularly AI, is a big part of how that happens.
It is a reasonable bet. But Anna Volkova, Head of People at HiBob APJ, says the way most businesses are currently deploying AI means the productivity gains the Treasurer is counting on are far from guaranteed.
“AI investment will only deliver results if organisations fundamentally redesign how work gets done,” she says. “Most companies are still layering AI on top of existing workflows instead of working around it. Real productivity gains only appear when organisational design and workforce planning are fundamentally redesigned, not just augmented.”
In other words, buying the tools is not enough. If the way a business is structured, the way teams are managed, and the way decisions are made stays the same, AI becomes an expensive add-on rather than a genuine productivity driver.
Volkova points to a specific part of the organisation where this problem is most acute. “The real productivity risk is underinvesting in leadership capability and manager readiness,” she says. AI is already changing what frontline work looks like, which means the job of a manager is changing too. The shift is away from monitoring whether tasks get done and toward coaching people on judgment, and on managing outputs that now involve both humans and AI systems. “If the government’s productivity package doesn’t account for this leadership enablement, these gains will stall.”
The layer of the business she flags as the biggest make-or-break point is the middle. “Mid-level roles are exactly where process ownership sits and where AI adoption either scales or stalls.” It is where the gap between a technology investment and a genuine productivity outcome is most often decided, and it is also the layer that tends to get the least attention in AI transformation conversations.
The data backs the urgency. HiBob research shows 67% of Australian employees believe it is their employer’s responsibility to prepare them for the impact of AI. That is not a small number. It points to a workforce that is watching and waiting for leadership, not just tools. “If we want to see collective impact, businesses will need to move past a tech rollout mindset and, instead, think about it as part of the people strategy,” Volkova says.
Her version of what a genuine productivity multiplier looks like is grounded and practical. “The real multiplier will be leadership capability combined with the force of AI: how quickly leaders align on new ways of working, how well managers are equipped to lead through the new shift, and how clearly they reset expectations for a human-plus-AI workforce.”
The Treasurer’s productivity ambitions are real and the Budget investment behind them will be substantial. But as Volkova’s argument makes clear, the return on that investment will ultimately be decided not in Canberra but inside individual businesses, in the decisions managers make, the way teams are restructured, and whether people strategy keeps pace with the technology being dropped into their laps.
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