The 1.2 Million Question: Why Australia’s Tech Workforce Gap Is A Culture Problem, Not A Pipeline Problem
Hiam Sakakini, TechDiversity Foundation Guest Blog Contributor
We’re pleased to welcome Hiam Sakakini, Founder and CEO of The Culture Equation, as a guest contributor. Hiam works with leaders on the culture, alignment and governance questions that decide whether organisations adapt to AI responsibly, and that focus sits closely alongside our Academy’s AI governance programme and this year’s Awards theme, Influence Redefined: Power in Every Voice. In the piece below, she argues that Australia’s tech workforce gap is a culture problem before it is a pipeline one, and that diversity is one of the conditions that makes innovation possible rather than an optional extra.
Hiam is also bringing her team to this year’s Awards, having booked a table at the Gala on 31 July. For her, the night is a chance to be in the room with the leaders and organisations putting these ideas into practice, and to do it alongside the people she works with every day. Thank you, Hiam, for sharing your thinking with our community.
Hiam’s Blog:
Australia is expected to need an additional 1.2 million tech workers over the coming decade. Yet I can’t help wondering whether we’re focusing on the wrong problem.
Much of the discussion centres on building the talent pipeline through STEM education, training and recruitment. Those efforts matter. But over the past 18 months, I’ve seen something else happening inside organisations.
Some of the most adaptable, curious and future-focused people aren’t struggling to find opportunities. They’re leaving workplaces that make innovation unnecessarily hard.
In 2025, I observed that people were very fearful of losing their jobs to AI. Today, I’m seeing talented people become frustrated because they can see AI’s potential to improve how work gets done, yet they find themselves navigating internal politics, over-engineered policies and approval processes that seem to breed faster than rabbits.
People are adapting fast but leadership, culture and operating models are not keeping up. If the goal is to create better customer outcomes, reduce repetitive work and spend more time on activities that genuinely add value then nothing frustrates that more than workplaces where innovation gets stuck in bureaucracy and leaders are not providing the clarity needed to innovate with confidence. According to Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index only 28% of Australians say their organisation is clearly aligned on AI strategy and policies.
The irony is hard to ignore. Many organisations are worried about future workforce shortages while simultaneously creating conditions that push away some of their most capable and future-ready people. The issue isn’t the pipeline. More often than not, it’s culture.
The AI Conversation Leaders Are Arriving Late To
At the same time, I’ve noticed another challenge emerging that concerns me even more. Many leadership teams are arriving surprisingly late to the conversation around the ethical use of AI. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re still focused on the technology itself rather than the behaviours, decisions and consequences that sit around it.
Right now, many organisations are operating in what feels like one giant AI playground with very few fences. People are experimenting with tools, testing use cases and making judgement calls without a shared understanding of where the boundaries are, where the risks sit and what principles should guide decision making. The risk is not simply operational. It is ethical, cultural and reputational.
Without clear leadership, organisations can find themselves creating reputational damage faster than a toddler with a permanent marker in a freshly renovated house. The mess happens quickly. The clean-up takes much longer.
Why Diversity Matters More In The Age Of AI
This is where diversity enters the conversation, and perhaps not in the way many people expect.
The theme of the 2026 TechDiversity Awards, Influence Redefined: Power in Every Voice, could not be more relevant to the challenges organisations face today. As AI becomes embedded into products, services and decision making, the quality of those decisions increasingly depends on the quality and diversity of perspectives informing them.
The organisations getting this right understand that diversity is not separate from innovation. It is one of the conditions that makes innovation possible.
What Canva And DXC Teach Us About Innovation
Take Canva. As one of Australia’s most successful technology companies, Canva continues to maintain a strong focus on inclusion, accessibility and designing for a remarkably diverse customer base. Its success has never been purely about technology. It has been about understanding people. Different perspectives are not an optional extra within Canva’s model. They are fundamental to building products that millions of people around the world can use and trust.
DXC Technology’s Dandelion Program provides another powerful example. By redesigning recruitment and onboarding processes to better support neurodivergent talent, DXC challenged traditional assumptions about where capability comes from, how it should be identified and whether the traditional interview process is by default an exclusionary practice. Once redesigned the results were difficult to ignore. Some teams reported productivity improvements of up to 40%, alongside stronger retention.
The lesson wasn’t simply that representation improved. The lesson was that performance improved when more diverse forms of talent were given the opportunity to contribute.
For me, this is the real leadership challenge hidden beneath Australia’s workforce debate.
The conversation is no longer about whether AI will change the way we work. That question has already been answered. The question now is whether leaders can create cultures capable of adapting to that change responsibly, while retaining the very people who are most excited to help drive it.
At The Culture Equation, we often say “Alignment Before Adaptation.” Before organisations adapt to AI, they need alignment around how decisions are made, where human judgement remains essential and what principles will guide behaviour when the technology inevitably moves faster than policy. They need leaders who create environments where people feel safe to experiment, challenge assumptions and raise concerns before small issues become large ones.
Because AI will amplify whatever culture already exists.
Organisations with strong cultures of curiosity, learning and psychological safety will move faster because their people are willing to experiment, learn and adapt. Organisations where bureaucracy, hierarchy and fear dominate may simply find themselves accelerating the same old problems.
Australia’s workforce challenge will not be solved by education providers alone, nor will it be solved through recruitment strategies in isolation. It will be solved by leaders who create cultures where talented people want to stay, contribute and grow.
Perhaps that’s the real answer to the 1.2 million question.
