AI Is Already Cutting Jobs at Australia’s Biggest Companies — The Lesson for Small Business

WiseTech announced plans to cut 2,000 jobs in February 2026. Atlassian cut 1,600. Block: the company behind Afterpay: slashed nearly half its global workforce. Telstra cut more than 2,350 roles, saving $181 million in labour costs, while reporting that 86% of its consumer service interactions now run through digital self-service channels.

Every one of those companies cited AI.

If you run a small business, none of those headlines directly affect your payroll. But they tell you something about where every industry is heading: and the CBA story buried in the same week’s news is the one worth paying attention to.

The CBA chatbot that made things worse

In July 2025, Commonwealth Bank cut 45 jobs after introducing an AI voice bot to handle customer service. Management said the bot was reducing weekly call volumes by around 2,000. The workers who trained the chatbot: using their own expertise to teach it how to answer questions: were then made redundant.

By August 2025, CBA reversed the decision entirely. Call volumes had actually risen after the bot was introduced. Customers couldn’t get the answers they needed, so they called back. Team leaders were pulled onto phones. Staff were offered overtime. The bank apologised.

The CBA is not a small business. But the mistake it made is one any business can make: assuming that automating a task solves the underlying problem, rather than just changing where the friction shows up.

Disruption is coming, extinction probably isn’t

Law firm Bird & Bird published an analysis this week framing the choice as “adapt or perish.” That’s a bit dramatic. The more likely outcome for most businesses: as they note themselves: is disruption, not extinction. The companies that come out ahead are those that treat AI adoption as something to plan, not react to.

Bloomberg estimates banks globally will cut up to 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years. That’s not a small business number, but it signals something real: AI-driven competitors are going to undercut pricing and capture market share in almost every sector. Waiting to see how that plays out is a decision too.

Three questions worth asking now

Bird & Bird’s framework is built for boards and restructuring advisers, but the underlying questions apply at any scale.

Operational: Which parts of your business are most exposed to AI doing the same work faster or cheaper? That’s not a threat to panic about: it’s a signal about where to focus. If an AI tool can handle the repetitive parts of a role, that’s time your staff could spend on work that actually requires a human.

Strategic: Are any of your competitors already using AI to deliver the same service at lower cost? If they’re not yet, it’s worth assuming they will be. That doesn’t mean copying them: it means knowing what the competitive pressure looks like before it arrives.

Financial: What does your business model look like if a competitor starts using AI to undercut you by 20%? Stress-testing that scenario now is cheaper than discovering the answer when it happens.

The practical lesson from the CBA story

The CBA didn’t fail because it adopted AI. It failed because it automated a customer touchpoint without understanding why customers were calling in the first place. The bot could answer scripted questions. It couldn’t handle the messy, context-dependent ones: which turned out to be most of them.

That’s the real test before automating anything: does the AI handle the actual variation in what customers or staff need, or just the easy 20%? If it’s the latter, you’re likely to shift the problem rather than solve it.

Move thoughtfully. The businesses that will struggle aren’t the ones that are slow to adopt AI: they’re the ones that adopt it without thinking through what happens next.

Sources

• Adapt or Perish? What AI Disruption Really Means for Business. Bird & Bird, May 2026
• CBA backtracks on AI job cuts as chatbot lifts call volumes. ABC News
• Telstra profit climbs as AI rollout deepens job cuts. IT Brief Australia
• Wall Street expected to shed 200,000 jobs as AI erodes roles. Bloomberg

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