The hidden productivity drain costing Australian businesses thousands of hours: Omniche Advisory says organisations are overlooking a major productivity opportunity by allowing highly skilled employees to spend too much time on repetitive tasks

SYDNEY, Aug. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Omniche Advisory, a technology advisory that partners with executive teams and boards on strategy, AI, data and hands-on delivery, says Australian businesses are sitting on a significant productivity opportunity. Skilled employees are spending too much of their week on admin, reporting, email and data-gathering — what the firm calls "work about work."

"The conversation around AI has become too focused on what technology might replace, when the more useful question is what it can give back to people," says Christie Cash, AI and data executive advisor at Omniche Advisory.

Peter Gunn, Chief Information Officer and CEO at Omniche Advisory, says the starting point should be where time is being lost, not which tool to buy.

"Not every process needs AI thrown into it - and a lot of times automation is enough. We've moved to where everybody, as individuals, can benefit from AI in some way. But there are parts of workflows and processes where AI isn't always the best solution,"

The question is: where are we spending time that could be spent helping customers, being creative, solving problems or developing people," Gunn says. "We don't want to put AI on a problem that doesn't need it."

Cash says this isn't about replacing people. It's about clearing away repetitive work so skilled employees can focus on higher-value work.

"The goal isn't to make people work faster so we can give them even more work," Cash says. "It's about asking what innovative or important work we could do with the time we give back to them."

Omniche works with functional leaders across finance, HR, marketing, IT and operations to identify where processes are creating friction, then weighs opportunities against business impact, effort, risk and return.

Human judgement remains central to the approach. Cash compares AI to an enthusiastic intern: "It can produce something incredibly useful, but you wouldn't send it to a client or your boss without checking it first."

"If we can take three days of manual work and turn it into three hours, that's not just an AI story," Cash says. "That's three days of someone's time that can be used differently. That's where the real business value is."