Australia’s productivity numbers are, to put it bluntly, dismal.
Politicians talk about industrial reform, AI adoption and red tape, but almost no one is talking about a quieter but increasingly problematic drag on our economy.
That’s the growing number of highly capable people, disproportionately women, sitting in jobs beneath their abilities because leaving means giving up the one thing that lets them stay employed at all — flexibility.
It has essentially become a new kind of golden handcuffs.
Golden handcuffs used to represent a salary too good to walk away from, long after the job had lost meaning and challenge that no longer stretches you.
For a significant cohort of the workforce, mostly working mothers, flexibility has become the same trap.
Once they’ve fought to earn a flexible arrangement, many won’t dare risk it by chasing a promotion, a role change, or a genuinely challenging project elsewhere.
They stay, they get comfortable and they can become disengaged.
That’s not a personal failing. It’s a rational response to a system that still treats flexibility as a favour rather than a design feature.
Because gaining flexibility often means accepting less; less interesting work, fewer promotions, lower visibility with leadership, thinner networks.
The research bears this out. International reviews of flexible work consistently find it helps women hold onto their place in the labour market, while the evidence that it helps them climb is far weaker.
It’s known as flexibility stigma.
Flexibility, managed well, has a range of significant benefits to individuals and organisations and workers are sending a clear message about what they need.
When a Perth construction company advertised a role built around school hours, it received hundreds of applications.
There’s an enormous, underused pool of highly skilled people who would happily take on bigger roles, harder problems and more responsibility if they weren’t being forced to choose between meaningful work and simply staying in the game.
Conversations about productivity and about flexibility are not at odds.
The most recent Intergenerational Report projects a significant decline in Australia’s fertility rate, alongside the share of working age Australians continuing to shrink over the next four decades.
If we keep making it harder for people to have children and juggle the jobs both parents need in the current economy, we’re unlikely to reverse that trend.
Getting more out of the existing workforce isn’t a nice-to-have anymore — with fewer new workers on the horizon, it’s one of the few productivity levers we can actually pull.
The latest ABS data shows Australia’s job mobility rate has slid to just 7.2 per cent, the lowest in years, with the drop even sharper among women.
We’ve become a nation of reluctant stayers, and flexibility, for many, is one more reason to stay put rather than stretch.
Employee retention is often considered a win, but what does it mean for productivity when the people staying are disengaged, under-stretched and quietly job-hunting in their heads?
The federal government often points to policies on paid parental leave and expanded early childhood education as evidence of its commitment to boosting workforce participation.
Both are worthy and necessary, but neither tackles the unspoken cost of flexibility that’s considered a privilege to be earned rather than part of workplace infrastructure.
If we’re serious about the productivity crisis, the fix needs to go further than just getting more people into the workforce.
People can’t contribute everything they’re capable of offering in a workplace culture that deals them out of doing more because they have other responsibilities as well.
Real flexibility is not a perk, it’s a productivity tool, and we need to start treating it that way.
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