There is a big push right now for AI and efficiency. Every week brings a new tool, a new capability, and a new expectation that businesses will adopt it or fall behind. I have been thinking a lot about what it is all for.
The promise of technology has always been that it would make our lives better. More productivity should mean more time for the things that matter. Healthier lives. Stronger communities. A lighter footprint on the planet. But that is not what tends to happen. Nearly a century ago, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that productivity gains would deliver his grandchildren a 15-hour work week. Productivity rose roughly as he forecast. Working hours barely moved. The gains were absorbed into output and consumption instead of leisure.
I worry we are repeating that pattern with AI. Workers are not working less. They are expected to work faster, with more powerful tools at their fingertips. The benefits of a productivity gain flow to whoever holds the power to claim them, and by default that is rarely the people doing the work.
The treadmill problem
Here is what this looks like from inside a small business. We are expected to spend more on tools to become more efficient. At the same time, clients expect to pay less because we are supposedly more efficient. The tools do not translate into more profit or more breathing room. They become a cost of entry. Everyone adopts them, the gains compete away, and we all run faster to stand still.
There is a genuine upside. These tools let a small firm like ours compete with much larger organisations. Technology has lowered the barriers to entry, and that means more people can own and run a business rather than working for a large corporation. I think that is a good thing for our economy and our community. But it does not feel like a triumph when margins are tight and the effort is high.
The thing I keep coming back to is this. When a tool saves a team five hours a week, that time goes somewhere. By default it goes into higher targets, because nobody consciously decided otherwise.
Where the gains land is a choice
As a business owner, I can decide otherwise.
That is the real lever owners hold. Not lobbying, not grand policy. The thousands of small decisions about how work is designed. Whether efficiency gains become breathing room for staff or just higher output expectations. Whether we keep hiring and training junior people even when AI makes it tempting not to, so the bottom rungs of the career ladder stay bolted on. Whether the people who help build the value of a business get to share in it.
At Approach Consulting, we are trying to act on this rather than just talk about it. A few of the commitments we are working towards:
Most people will never lobby government about AI. They are busy raising families, earning a wage, and getting through the week. Their experience of this technology will be shaped almost entirely by what their employers decide. That puts a quiet responsibility on those of us who run businesses. We are a small minority with our hands on a lever, and what we choose to normalise matters.
What we are trying to build
When tools make us more efficient, we want that to show up as saner workloads and better quality work, not just higher targets. Our value to clients comes from consultants who are not burnt out and who have the time to do thoughtful work.
We are building pathways for our team to share in the ownership and success of the business over the long term. If staff help create the value, they should participate in it.
And we will keep using our position honestly. Recruiters sit close to the world of work. We set terms for contractors and advise clients on how roles are designed. That gives us a chance to push back when a role is a burnout machine, and to model what fair, sustainable work looks like.
The future is not automatic
AI does not have to widen inequality or grind people down. But it will by default, unless deliberate choices are made to steer it elsewhere. Most of those choices sit with employers and governments, not with markets or the technology itself.
I cannot fix the macro picture from a recruitment firm in Canberra. None of us can individually. But if enough business owners decide that efficiency gains should buy their people a better working life, and prove that a profitable firm can run that way, that becomes something others can copy.
That is the future I want to help build. One where the technology serves the people, and not the other way around.
Michael Hoole is a Director of Approach Consulting, a Canberra-based executive recruitment, labour hire, and scribing firm working with government and private sector clients across Australia.