At this year’s AFR Workforce Summit, one question resonated above all others for Chief People Officers, journalists and business leaders: how should I be preparing my children for a future workforce that will look so vastly different from the one I know today?

What advice should we be giving the next generation to ensure they are ready for the future of work? This was the defining question of the day at the 2025 AFR Workforce Summit held in Sydney.

Deb Yates, Chief People Officer at Coles, suggested that her own children look to the humanities, specifically advising them to study philosophy.

“Judgement, critical thinking, the ability to sit in something [will be important],” said Yates.

“If you’re [studying] engineering, do engineering and philosophy. If you’re [studying] business, do business and philosophy… It’s that purely human skill of being able to sit in really complex decisions and ponder.”

Jason Pellegrino, President of Domain at CoStar Group Inc, suggested young people seek out jobs in retail or hospitality to learn the essential art of managing difficult people.

Jobs and Skills Australia Commissioner Barney Glover said we should value obtaining a trade as much as we do a university degree.

“We need to see a rebalancing in our post-secondary education profile in this country, which means we’re going to encourage all young people into vocational training as much as into higher ed,” he said

Business Council CEO Bran Black kept his advice simple: “Do what you love, but just be great at it.”

This guidance for the future workforce emerged from an action-packed day of dialogue with business, industry and HR leaders from some of Australia’s largest organisations.

Every conversation either centred on, or heavily referenced, AI and its profound impact on our current and future workforces. This explained the collective hunger for advice for the next generation, as leaders grappled with how technology is shifting the skills landscape, influencing industrial relations, and remoulding the very roles our organisations have built work around for decades.

Below, we share key insights from the day for HR practitioners.

1. Workplace Relations Minister announces new AI Employment and Workplaces Forum

Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, opened the Summit with a keynote highlighting why gains from the AI era should be evenly spread amongst workers and businesses, and posed the question: How can we ensure AI is working for humans, rather than the other way around?  

To enable this, she announced the creation of a new AI Employment and Workplaces Forum, made up of business, union and government representatives. The newly established forum met today for its first ministerial-level meeting. 

“This tripartite forum will bring together government, employers and unions around the same table, demonstrating the good will of all parties to tackle this challenge in a constructive way.

“The Forum will examine five key themes which will be essential to the adoption of AI in workplaces: trust, capability, transparency, safety and productivity.”

She further clarified that no single stakeholder group would hold veto power within this collective.

Jane Hume, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations, was “pleased to see” that the government would not support a union veto over employers adopting AI, describing the decision as “very sensible”. 

However, she remained cynical about the efficacy of the new AI forum, questioning whether it would truly operate in a tripartisan manner.

Separately, Minister Rishworth referred to a soon-to-be released “gap analysis” report that the government is conducting to determine how existing frameworks and institutions are performing alongside AI adoption. She shared some early insights.

“Pleasingly, employment outcomes for young tertiary graduates have been positive, despite some expectations that they will be the canaries in the coal mine for AI in the workplace, we are not seeing an elevated rate of compositional change, meaning the mix of jobs in the economy is not changing faster than usual. 

“However, we are starting to see a slight softening in the rate of growth for occupations that are most exposed to AI adoption, like filing clerks or keyboard operators.”

Minister Rishworth clarified that while the data provides a valuable snapshot, it is a point-in-time assessment rather than a predictive forecast . She said the goal is for this data to offer a clearer understanding of current labour market dynamics and the direction of workforce trends.

“Employment outcomes for young tertiary graduates have been positive, despite some expectations that they will be the canaries in the coal mine for AI in the workplace.” – Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations

2. How CPOs are preparing their workforce for AI disruption

Chief People Officers from Coles and the Commonwealth Bank spoke to the ways they are preparing their workforce for the next wave of AI-related change in their workforces.

Kiersten Robinson, Chief People Officer, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, spoke about key lessons learned after the bank reversed a decision to cut 45 roles due to AI last year, saying that this proved to be a critical learning opportunity for the bank.

“The [big] learning for us was around understanding when you introduce technology, you’ve got to understand the full extent of the impact… I think we’ve become much more sophisticated in understanding how technology impacts not roles, but at the task level. 

“Each of us do several tasks in our roles. [When] you’re introducing a new technology, you can’t just assume that a whole role is no longer needed to grow it.”

Deb Yates, Chief People Officer at Coles, echoed this sentiment, stating that Coles is starting to see its specific tasks that are being automated, rather than entire jobs.

She uses the example of self-service check-outs at supermarkets.

“You can make an assumption that that job – the checkout operator – [is] no longer [needed]. But if you go to the back of the store, [you’ll find] a new department we call the ‘online department’ that’s servicing your click and collect. 

“It’s actually [a] very similar task that the person used to do at the checkout. They’re picking, they’re scanning, they’re putting product into bags, and then it’s being picked up through click and collect or delivered to your home. So roles and tasks are shifting, rather than reducing.”

Both CPOs note that employers have an obligation to prepare their people for this next era of technology-enhanced work. At CBA, they have introduced a future workforce program.

“We’ve got a lot more rigour and discipline around how we think about how tasks impact roles… and how we provide more clarity and more visibility… to employees on the skills that are going to be most relevant in the future.”

One initiative they’ve launched is called ‘Second Skilling.’ For employees who leave the organisation – and while not explicitly stated, the context suggests this would be as part of a redundancy – CBA supports them to develop skills for an entirely different career path. This also works for redeployments within CBA.

“What that looks like – and we’re still in our ‘test and learn’ phase – is giving those individuals the option of a four-week placement to experience a new role,” said Robinson.

“We are also providing learning pathways in areas like economic crime and lending, which include a four-week learning path that will give them micro-credential. Hopefully, if they choose to stay with CBA, they have enhanced their skills; if they choose to move to a different organisation, they leave with micro-credential.”

Coles is making a commitment to train all of its employees to use AI – even those whose jobs aren’t directly impacted by it, such as its frontline staff.

“[They might not] need it today for their job, [but] we think that’s going to be a life skill. We think it’s our obligation to our team members,” said Yates. 

3. Avoiding a two-speed workforce

Another conversation that cropped up multiple times was on the emergence of a two-speed workforce where productivity gaps are widening between those embracing AI and those who do not.

“We have one path, which is we do nothing, and we end up with a lot of people unemployed… or we actually look at reskilling, retooling [and] resetting expectations,” said Jason Pellegrino, President, Domain at CoStar Group Inc.

For teams that are using AI to supercharge productivity, Ben Chan, Chief AI Officer, Quantium, said that rethinking the make-up of teams is important, using the following analogy.

“If we were building something physically in this room, and all we had were shovels, we could probably fit 20 of us or so [in the room, if] we’re building something using shovels.

“If all of a sudden you give us excavators, you’re not going to fit 20 excavators in here. You probably have two or three, because you start to get into each other’s way. And it’s actually counterproductive.”

While this could look like blunt headcount reductions, an alternative could be a reorganisation of talent – such as with Coles’ example above – which upcoming AHRI research has shown is a popular choice amongst businesses in the upcoming quarter.

“I would advocate that role-related knowledge is becoming increasingly irrelevant to success.” – Jason Pellegrino, President, Domain at CoStar Group Inc.

4. How to hire in this new business context

Another topic of conversation for this panel was how to assess and nurture the right skills for this next era of work.

Pellegrino refers to his former role with Google, 10 or 15 years ago. He said Google would hire for specific attributes, such as cultural fit, role-related knowledge, problem-solving, leadership, etc.

“The data showed that of the attributes you look for, including cultural fit, the one that had the least correlation with success in a role was role-related knowledge. So that’s technical skills – have you done the job before?

“How many applicants are knocked out of your hiring system before an interview even happens simply because they haven’t done the job before? We are now in a world where the average half-life of a skill has dropped [significantly]. I would advocate that role-related knowledge is becoming increasingly irrelevant to success.

“It’s much easier to run a process with a ‘tick box’ for experience, but hiring for skills and attributes is what the future requires. Frankly, if you only hire those who have done the role before, you have to ask: is that role even going to exist in two or three years? There are so many parts of the employee life cycle that need to be rewired.” 

Chan said Quantium hires and coaches for five specific skills, none of which are technical. They are:

• Critical thinking: Chan said this is the most vital trait because AI is a “speed machine”. Without critical thinking to vet the output and identify the right problems to solve, the technology just makes you faster for the sake of being faster.
• Curiosity: He looks for individuals who wonder “what’s possible now” and proactively seek new ways to solve problems using AI tools.
• Adaptability: Candidates must demonstrate how quickly they can adapt to different environments and the constant stream of new technology being introduced.
• Persistence: Working with emerging tech is difficult and “not going to work the first time,” he said. Employees need the stamina to keep trying different approaches.
• Optimism: Even when faced with challenges or failures during the “test and learn” phase, the workforce must maintain the belief that there is a path forward, he adds.

“Those five things are now core to what we’re looking for… You can’t hire your way through a two-speed workforce. You have to build your way through it.”

5. Creating white space to “sharpen the axe”

In her opening address, Minister Rishworth also spoke of the potential psychosocial risks associated with heavy AI use in the workplace, including work intensification, psychological injury and cognitive overload.

“What initially looks like higher productivity, actually turns out to be unsustainable workloads,” she said.

“The use of AI-powered surveillance can also raise concerns about privacy and loss of autonomy for workers. Feeling like you’re always being watched significantly increases psychological stress and the risk of psychosocial injuries. 

“Business and government both have a responsibility to monitor and manage these emerging work health and safety risks, to safeguard workers and maintain trust in the adoption of AI tools.”

On the topic of wellbeing, Jason Pellegrino referred to the analogy of the two lumber jacks.

“The two lumberjacks [are] cutting wood all day. One of them is doing eight hours and puts it in a bucket and then sells the wood at the end of the day. The second one does exactly the same, but disappears for an hour in the middle of the day, but somehow ends up creating more wood and making more money.

“At some point, the first one [asks the second], ‘What do you do for the hour that you go away? Because you disappear for an hour, but you still chop more wood than I do?’ And the answer was, ‘I go home and sharpen my axe.’ In a world of AI, where everything is changing so fast, how do you think about sharpening your axe?”

His personal way to do this is to create “white space” in his calendar each week.

“I need to move away from the training of 30 years of work that [tells me] my personal worth and my value is how much stuff I fit into a day – how many meetings I can have back to back, how many hours I work. 

“Actually, what’s gold dust is the white space in my calendar. Now I insist on having at least 25 per cent of my day that’s white space, because that’s the time that I can sharpen my axe, that’s the time I can learn, that’s the time I can collaborate [and] think. I can’t do that when I’m going back to back in 30-minute meetings.”

While no one would argue that it’s important to create this mental space, AFR work and careers reporter Rachel Bolton made a salient point in saying: “Many leaders talk to me about their personal ‘white space strategy’ for carving out thinking time in their day, yet I have never heard one discuss a strategy for carving out that same thinking time for their workforce.”

This represents a critical pivot in job design. Beyond just adopting new tools, the real work lies in the ‘unlearning’ required of leaders. The sentiment from experts at the Summit was that businesses need to intentionally architect environments that provide the workforce with the cognitive room to adjust, iterate and, importantly, think.