Job hugging is masking a productivity crisis

Karlie Cremin, chief executive of Sydney-based leadership consultancy Dynamic Leadership Programs Australia (DLPA), says the "job hugging" trend sweeping Australian workplaces is masking a deeper productivity problem – and it's shaping the rapid-change session she'll deliver at HRFest Australia on 18 November 2026.

Job hugging – employees staying in roles out of necessity rather than commitment – has become one of the defining workforce stories of the past year, both in Australia and overseas. Cremin, who works directly with clients grappling with the fallout, said engagement scores are "starting to get a little bit of a wobble," but the bigger issue sits deeper than surveys can capture.

"The bigger thing that I'm seeing organisations struggle with is productivity – that workers are there because they kind of have to be," Cremin said. "There's no discretionary effort, there's no thinking innovatively, or even long-term. It really is just kind of that one foot in front of the other stuff."

Why staying put doesn't mean staying engaged

Cremin said the behaviour isn't a deliberate withdrawal of effort so much as a symptom of a workforce under strain.

"I don't think it's a conscious thing that people are going, 'I'm going to do the bare minimum and just wait it out,'" she said. "I think it's just that people are unhappy and stressed and disengaged, and that it's coming through in business outcomes now, too."

Part of the problem, she said, is structural: many employees would rather move on but face a market that no longer makes that easy. "A lot of people would prefer to move jobs, but the environment isn't one that makes it that easy," Cremin said. Recent Australian job mobility data backs this up, with mobility rates continuing to slide as employees hold onto existing roles amid economic uncertainty.

Rebuilding motivation without cutting headcount

Rather than treating job hugging as a retention win, Cremin argued HR leaders need to rebuild short-term motivation and a sense of achievement into day-to-day work. One approach DLPA runs with clients is what she calls a "leadership sprint" – a structured project identifying the levers driving success inside a business.

"We set the goal that we'll find $100,000 of savings in the business within this six-week period," Cremin said. "But the rule I set – and would encourage other people to set – is that you can't do it by shedding headcount, because that's the first thing people say when you're going to find savings in a business, and I think that's cheating."

She said organisations also need to plan around the reality that a share of any workforce will always be "job hugging" for reasons largely outside the employer's control. "Organisations need to be realistic about the percentage of their workforce that is there because they have to be, and have that built into how you're making decisions as an organisation," she said.

Preparing for the friction ahead

Cremin's comments preview the themes she'll bring to her HRFest Australia session, Navigating the Friction – The Risk, Policy & Change Blueprint, which promises HR leaders a practical toolkit for stress-testing policies and managing rapid change. She said the pace and intensity of change facing HR teams shows no sign of slowing in the near term, even as support for the profession hasn't grown to match it.

"What is being asked of HR people is just growing and growing and growing, whereas there's not necessarily proportionally support being given to the profession," Cremin said. She wants to bring practical, take-home frameworks to the session, arguing that risk management in HR is too often overcomplicated. "It is difficult to make risk management sexy," she said.

Cremin was careful not to promise a single formula for managing change, noting that even the most experienced leaders are often choosing between imperfect options rather than a clear right answer. "It's not a single right-answer proposition, and in a lot of cases there actually isn't a right answer at all," she said. "There's the least-wrong answer, or a series of answers where you have to pick one."

She also pointed to artificial intelligence as an accelerant of workplace change that HR teams will need to keep building flexibility around, saying it remains "a space that's going to grow and grow."

Karlie Cremin will present Navigating the Friction – The Risk, Policy & Change Blueprint at HRFest Australia on 18 November 2026 at The Timber Yard, Melbourne. Register now to secure your spot.