AHRI’s research shows Australian businesses are contending with the ‘5R effect’ – recruitment, redundancy, reorganisation, reskilling and retention all happening at once. To understand how HR can respond to this complex environment, HRM spoke with Deloitte’s CHRO to learn how she is approaching this challenge.

Australian employers are optimistic about their growth, with the latest AHRI Quarterly Work Outlook report showing net recruitment intentions at their highest point since tracking began in 2023. 

Yet this story comes with a caveat. Restructuring and redundancies are occurring at the same time, driven by cost pressures and technological disruption.

AI and automation in particular are reshaping the skills organisations need. Most employers (9 in 10) expect roles to undergo considerable change in the coming year, with almost a third of employers saying that 20 per cent of roles in their organisation are already at risk of disruption.

Despite this, 34 per cent of respondents said they didn’t have a strategic workforce plan in place – meaning a workforce plan that extends beyond 12 months.

“With the disruption and the pace not only of technology and AI, but also labour market shifts as well as geopolitical shifts, there is a lot that organisations are trying to grapple with,” says Tina McCreery, Chief HR Officer at Deloitte.

“Where HR teams need to be front and centre is in determining how all these disruptors are hitting our organisation, over what time period, to what level, and what this means for our workforce strategy.

“This is a huge opportunity for HR to show the benefits of their commercial knowledge, their business knowledge and their HR knowledge. It all comes together to help businesses set themselves up for both now and the future.”

Below, McCreery explains how Deloitte is navigating the ‘5R effect’ – the combined impact of recruitment, redundancy, reorganisation, reskilling and retention – to build a workforce positioned for long-term success.

Workforce choices: balancing now and next

While it’s critical that a strategic workforce plan outlines a vision for the future, it’s also important to ground it in the here and now, in order to build momentum and action.

At Deloitte, workforce planning starts with what McCreery calls “workforce choices”.

“Based on our strategic workforce plan, we then ask: what are the workforce choices we need to make in relation to workforce skilling, size, shape, et cetera?” 

For Deloitte, these choices are not abstract concepts. They involve mapping future scenarios – looking three to five years ahead – while also committing to tangible actions within the next 12-to-18 months.

“We are responding and setting up our business to be future-ready, but also making sure our clients are actually getting what they need from our people.”

This two-speed approach is deliberate. The distant horizon gives the firm a directional view of how client demand, technology and skills shortages are likely to evolve. The closer horizon ensures immediate decisions, such as recruitment priorities, reskilling initiatives or structural adjustments, are consistent with that future state.

It also helps Deloitte avoid the risk of investing time and money into a big, shiny strategy that ultimately goes unused and doesn’t move the business forward in a meaningful way.

Workforce choices make planning tangible. They force leaders to weigh trade-offs, allocate resources and decide where to double down or pull back.

This dual-horizon approach mirrors an AHRI Work Outlook report finding, which showed that organisations are dealing with short-term volatility, while simultaneously preparing for long-term transformation. For HR leaders, the challenge lies in balancing both without losing sight of either.

“This is a huge opportunity for HR to show the benefits of their commercial knowledge, their business knowledge and their HR knowledge.” – Tina McCreery, Chief HR Officer, Deloitte.

Reskilling and reorganisation: the impact of AI on role and task redesign

For McCreery, what makes the current disruption unprecedented is the depth at which AI will reshape work.

“AI is already changing jobs. That’s different to any tech disruption we have seen previously, which means you’ve got to get down underneath the job and task architecture to really understand how that tech is going to change things,” she says.

Rather than roles disappearing wholesale, tasks will shift, requiring organisations to redesign jobs to remain purposeful. 

“You’ve got to make sure that the human element is substantive and adds value.”

To ensure this happens, Deloitte uses a “work analyser” tool. 

“It breaks down a role into tasks and activities, then looks at what’s repeatable, what AI can do, and it gives you a percentage of the role that could be augmented or replaced,” says McCreery.

Its power lies not just in prediction, but in creating a factual basis for conversations about workforce design. 

“There is a lot we don’t know about the tech and AI, but [the tool] overlays parameters around repeatable work and helps us make directional decisions.”

For HR practitioners, the lesson is to move beyond broad assumptions about automation and drill down into the task level. By analysing which activities are most likely to be standardised or automated, organisations can begin to ask targeted questions, such as:

• If 20 per cent of a role can be automated, what higher-value tasks should flow down to that level to keep the role purposeful?
  
• If disruption is concentrated in a particular job family, should reskilling or redeployment start there first?
  
• What does this mean for early-career pipelines – are new recruits being trained for tasks that will soon disappear?

This kind of modelling doesn’t give a definitive roadmap, but it enables HR to turn an overwhelming challenge into a series of practical workforce choices. 

A choice that Deloitte made early on was to invest heavily in AI training for all employees – before it was in vogue.

“We have been investing really heavily in reskilling all of our people in AI,” says McCreery. “It’s just a baseline capability now. We are running large AI skills academies, certifications, badging – while not losing that human capability piece, which means continuing to invest in human skills like communication, problem-solving and lateral thinking.”

Recruitment: casting the net wider

Deloitte is familiar with another challenge highlighted in AHRI’s research: that businesses are looking to grow their talent pool (69 per cent) but struggling to get the right, skilled talent on board (33 per cent).

McCreery highlights challenges across the whole industry in attracting employees with the depth of technology and digital skills that businesses need.

“It’s still very difficult to get the right engineering and tech skills in the Australian market because those skills have just not been coming through universities. That is a core issue for every employer in this country,” says McCreery.

Rather than competing endlessly for the same small pool of candidates, Deloitte has invested in alternative talent pathways.

“There is a lot of untapped talent in the Australian workforce. You have to go into those untapped talent pools in order to fill these skill gaps.”

At Deloitte, this includes talent programs for socioeconomically disadvantaged students, including Bright Start, which subsidises degrees while providing on-the-job experience, pathways for elite athletes and Olympians transitioning to corporate careers, and tailored recruitment for veterans.

Each initiative combines targeted outreach with structured support to bridge the skills gap and ease the transition into professional services.

“For most of our alternate talent pools, we do quite a big piece on transition. We have large onboarding programs that help them with that transition both from a professional perspective and a personal perspective. 

“We’ve designed alternative employment contracts that give them flexibility to continue training, take additional leave and manage their commitments alongside corporate work.”

Exploring non-traditional sources of talent could also look like partnering with community organisations, rethinking entry requirements or creating bespoke onboarding and mentoring programs to help new hires succeed.

“There is a lot of untapped talent in the Australian workforce. You have to go into those untapped talent pools in order to fill these skill gaps.” – Tina McCreery, Chief HR Officer, Deloitte.

Retention: a shifting employee value proposition

Generational change is reshaping expectations of what an attractive employer looks like, says McCreery.

She cites the recent Deloitte Access Economics study of younger workers, which found that career models built on linear progression to partnership may no longer resonate.

“We are now thinking about the shift from 2025 to 2030. What changes do we need to make to our career models and to our employee experience to ensure we can attract and retain early career talent?” 

Deloitte is exploring how career paths might flex to accommodate employees who don’t aspire to leadership roles but still want opportunities to specialise, pursue side ventures or dedicate time to not-for-profit work, for example.

Image: Tina McCreery

Reward and recognition expectations are also shifting. Employees are no longer simply motivated by money alone. There’s more that they want – and expect – from the employment relationship.

Flexibility remains Deloitte’s number-one driver of retention, with 12 different types of arrangements available to employees, including:

• TimeFlex: not being constrained by the traditional nine-to-five work day.
• MicroFlex: taking short breaks throughout the day to attend appointments, go to the gym, pick the kids up from school, etc.
• PlaceFlex: being able to work anywhere in Australia and from select overseas countries.
• FamilyFlex: for working parents during the school holidays.

Other options include career breaks, study leave and extended parental leave – all designed to make work more sustainable across different life stages.

“Flexibility is the number-one reason people stay at Deloitte,” says McCreery. “We absolutely value in-person connection in our offices and at our clients’ sites, as it is how we learn, build relationships and it is great for wellbeing, but we also want our people to be able to flex [based on] their client, team and individual needs.”

Inclusion and career development are also central. 

“Making sure we have a diverse workplace and that everyone has a sense that they belong and that they can be their best is another piece that’s incredibly important.”

Redundancy: proactive planning

When asked about redundancies – which AHRI’s research highlights as a potential reality for 27 per cent of employers in the upcoming quarter – McCreery stresses prevention. 

“The remedy, or the mitigator, is having really good strategic workforce planning in place. Because if you’re really understanding the supply-and-demand levers of your business, you are able to then invest in reskilling, redeployment, internal mobility way ahead of time.”

This means treating redundancies not as an inevitable outcome of disruption, but as something that can often be mitigated through foresight. By anticipating where demand for certain skills will rise or fall, organisations can begin shifting their workforce well before painful cuts become necessary.

For HR leaders more broadly, this translates into several practical steps:

• Forecast early. Model potential shifts in client demand, technology adoption or regulation, and identify where pressure points will emerge.
  
• Invest in reskilling. Target the roles most likely to be disrupted and provide pathways into adjacent areas of work.
  
• Enable mobility. Build internal marketplaces or rotation programs that make it easier for employees to move into new opportunities as old roles evolve.
  
• Communicate with transparency. Show employees that planning is happening well in advance, which can sustain trust even during uncertain times.

Redundancies will never disappear completely – they are an unfortunate reality of doing business. But, by embedding these practices, HR can reduce the need for large-scale cuts and position the workforce for a smoother transition into new areas of demand.

The bigger picture

Across recruitment, retention, reorganisation, reskilling and redundancy, McCreery’s message is consistent: HR must position itself as a strategic partner guiding organisations through disruption.

“Strong strategic workforce planning skills are essential to getting all of this right,” she says.

“You really need to understand the mechanics of the supply-and-demand levers of your business so you can have a conversation around workforce choices. That is core to the commercial and financial running of the business.”

Build confidence in techniques like scenario planning, labour market analysis and strategic forecasting with AHRI’s Advanced Workforce Planning short course.