Australia needs more skilled workers. It also needs to stop wasting their time

Australia has a skills problem. Few would argue with that.

Across utilities, mining, construction, facilities management, local government, emergency services and other essential industries, the pressure is remarkably consistent. There is more work to do than there are qualified people with the right skills available to do it.

Recruitment and training absolutely need to continue.

But there is a harder question to ask.

How much of the skilled time we already have are we wasting?

Headcount is not capacity

Jobs and Skills Australia reported that Technicians and Trades Workers remained the hardest occupational group to recruit in the June quarter of 2026, with employers continuing to face significant recruitment difficulty.

That labour constraint is very real. We see it every day in field service operations. Backlogs grow. Response times get longer. Overtime increases. Maintenance gets delayed.

This can restrict growth too. An organisation may have more work available, but without the capacity to deliver it, it cannot simply keep taking on new contracts.

This is where two things need to be separated.

Headcount tells you how many people you have. It does not necessarily tell you how much capacity you have.

We recently sat down with one organisation and looked closely at how its technicians were actually spending their working day. Around one-and-a-half to two hours per technician, per day, was being lost to administrative tasks and the tools and processes surrounding the job.

Think about that across hundreds of field workers.

These are skilled people. Their time should be spent doing the work they are qualified to do, not fighting paperwork, duplicating information or navigating processes that could be simpler.

This is not just an operational problem. It is a productivity problem.

The Productivity Commission's latest figures show Australian labour productivity was flat in the June quarter and fell 0.2% over the year, with hours worked continuing to outpace output.

In simple terms, working more hours does not automatically mean producing more. The same is true inside a service organisation.

Look at where the time goes

If leaders want to understand their real workforce capacity, they need to look beyond the number of people on the payroll.

How much of the working day is actually spent doing skilled work? How many jobs are completed first time? How much time is lost to travel? How old is the maintenance backlog? How often does somebody have to go back because the right information, part or skill was not available the first time?

Those measures tell you far more about the health of an operation. They also show how quickly small inefficiencies start to add up.

A repeat visit does not only mean another journey. It takes another slot in the schedule. It adds to the backlog. It delays somebody else's work.

The same applies when a highly skilled employee spends part of the day completing administration that could have been removed, or travelling across a city because the work was not allocated in the best way.

If organisations can remove some of those barriers, they create capacity without immediately adding headcount. That matters in a labour market where everyone is competing for many of the same skills.

Recruitment and retention will always matter. But organisations cannot become a 24/7, 365 recruitment agency and call that a workforce strategy.

Removing friction is not the same as pushing people harder

There is an important distinction here.

Improving productivity should not mean monitoring every minute of somebody's working day or simply trying to squeeze another job into the schedule. The aim should be to remove the things that stop skilled people doing skilled work.

Safe Work Australia made a similar point in new guidance on AI and digital technologies published in July. It recognised the potential for digital tools to improve productivity and safety, while also warning that poorly introduced technology can increase workload, intensify work and reduce workers' control.

That balance matters; good technology should make the working day simpler. Reduce unnecessary paperwork. Give people the right information before they arrive. Cut avoidable travel. Make it easier to match the right person and skills to the right job. Communicate better with customers so appointments are not wasted.

The outcome should be less friction, not more pressure.

That is important for retention too. People want to be able to do their jobs well. If highly skilled employees spend too much of their time battling inefficient systems and processes, that eventually becomes part of the employment proposition.

Better tools should allow people to spend more time on the work they are qualified to do and, in many cases, the work they actually enjoy doing.

Protect the skills we already have

Australia still needs more people entering skilled careers. We need to train them, attract them and give them good reasons to stay. But that is only one side of the equation.

The field workforce supports many of the assets and services that keep the country running. Roads, utilities, public services, communications, facilities and critical infrastructure all depend on skilled people being available when work needs to be done.

The same pressure is visible beyond Australia. Conversations with organisations in New Zealand and Singapore point to many of the same challenges: rising demand, constrained skills and increasing pressure on the people already doing the work.

So the skilled time we already have needs to be protected.

Understand where it goes. Measure the capacity of the workforce, not simply its size. Remove work that adds no value. Give people tools that help them use their skills properly.

And where legacy processes are holding people back, be prepared to make brave changes.

Australia's skills shortage is real. So is the skilled-time problem.

We need to tackle both.