Fixing productivity with better work design

Australia’s productivity debate is often conducted in broad economic terms, but for frontline employers it is a very practical issue. They are responding to volatile trading conditions, complex compliance obligations and pressure to maintain service quality, while employees juggle work with study, caring responsibilities and wellbeing.

Clayton Pyne, chief executive of workforce management and HR software firm Humanforce (pictured), has spent years working alongside frontline employers across retail, healthcare and hospitality. His view is direct: the system is out of date.

"Productivity debates in Australia are often framed through the lens of labour costs, from wages and penalty rates to perceived inefficiencies," says Pyne. "But after years working alongside frontline employers, a different reality is clear. Productivity does not fail because people cost too much today, it fails because work and the systems that support it are designed for a world that no longer exists."

The cost of getting the roster wrong

The consequences of that mismatch, Pyne argues, are not soft or anecdotal. Research commissioned by Humanforce and conducted by Forrester Consulting found that 32% of frontline workers feel overburdened by inadequate HR resources, 30% feel unsupported, and 28% say these barriers increase their risk of burnout. In a labour market already contending with persistent workforce shortages, those numbers carry real weight.

"This is also why cost cutting rarely delivers sustainable productivity gains," says Pyne. "Reducing hours, tightening labour budgets or pushing teams harder may create short-term relief on paper, but it almost always introduces longer-term friction resulting in less engaged workers, higher turnover and increased overtime, greater reliance on agency labour and elevated compliance risk."

The implication is significant for any business leader who has reached for the lever marked "efficiency" and found it only made things worse. The problem, Pyne says, is not the workforce. It is the design of the work itself.

Scheduling as a strategic question

For decades, rostering was treated as an administrative necessity, a process optimised for cost and compliance with little thought given to the experience of the people on the receiving end. Pyne believes that framing is now a liability.

"When rosters and scheduling tools feel opaque or inflexible, managers spend more time firefighting and filling gaps than leading teams, impacting on business output and customer service," he says.

He describes four elements that need to work together for scheduling to genuinely support productivity: it must respond to real demand, remain cost-aware and compliant, and be designed around the people doing the work. When any one of those is missing, engagement and efficiency both suffer.

The data on flexibility is striking. Humanforce's research found that as many as 89% of frontline workers say they would consider leaving their current role for one with a better schedule.

"Flexibility is no longer a perk, it's a necessity," says Pyne. "When flexibility is designed properly, employees feel respected and in control of their time, while organisations benefit from higher fill rates, stronger retention and more productive teams."

The human dimension in an AI-driven world

This conversation is also playing out at a senior level. Amanda Bardwell, chief executive of Woolworths Limited, recently spoke to the tension between award conditions and the flexibility frontline workers actually want.

Bardwell argued that, contrary to some claims, workplaces can introduce changes that lift productivity while also helping staff—for example, by allowing shifts to be split so parents can pick up their children from school. She said the current award framework doesn’t offer the flexibility frontline workers want and also falls short in delivering the productivity outcomes businesses need.

Pyne sees this as evidence of a broader shift in how business leaders are thinking about productivity and employee experience. He is also clear that technology, including artificial intelligence, has a role to play, but not the one that is sometimes assumed.

"In an AI-driven world, the human dimension matters more, not less," he says. "The skills hardest to automate, including judgement, empathy, manual dexterity and human connection, are the essence of frontline work. AI is not taking the shift, but taking the paperwork, freeing people to focus on the moments that actually drive service quality, care and performance."

Connected systems, not fragmented ones

One of the less visible drags on frontline productivity is the fragmentation of the systems meant to support it. Hiring, onboarding, rostering, time and attendance and payroll are often managed on separate platforms, producing manual workarounds, delayed decisions and a disjointed experience for employees and managers alike.

"The biggest gains come when these frontline essentials are connected," says Pyne. "When onboarding flows straight into compliant rostering and pay, people become productive sooner. When skills, certifications and availability are visible in real time, managers can deploy labour more effectively and safely, without introducing compliance risk or administrative burden."

He describes a modern human capital management approach as one that links performance insights and development pathways to how work is actually performed, allowing organisations to build capability rather than simply plug operational gaps.

Where to start

For organisations wondering where meaningful change actually begins, Pyne's answer is deliberately grounded.

"The answer is unlikely to be found in another round of cost cutting," he says. "The bigger opportunity lies in redesigning how frontline work actually happens today, not how it was structured ten or twenty years ago."

He points to the roster itself as the natural starting point, the place where demand, cost, compliance and employee experience all intersect, and where getting the balance right has an outsized effect on everything else.

"When those elements are treated in isolation, productivity becomes a constant struggle," says Pyne. "When they are designed to work together, productivity becomes a natural outcome rather than a forced one. And when that happens, organisations don't just reduce waste, they lift service quality, team stability and performance in the moments that matter most."

This article was produced in partnership with Humanforce