A new report from the Future Skills Organisation (FSO), the Jobs and Skills Council for Australia’s finance, technology, and business sectors, was submitted to the federal government this week. Its central point gets lost in most AI coverage: the technology isn’t the bottleneck. The skills to use it are.

Patrick Kidd, FSO’s chief executive, put it plainly: “The risk for Australia isn’t that AI is advancing too quickly – it’s that AI capability is spreading too slowly. If skills remain concentrated in only a few pockets, the productivity gains will concentrate too.”

That’s not an abstract concern. For small business owners, it maps directly onto something real: the businesses pulling ahead on AI are the ones where staff actually know how to use it. The ones not moving are often stuck not because the tools are too complex, but because nobody on the team knows where to start.

The numbers are worse than the headlines suggest

A 2025 Salesforce survey of more than 14,000 workers across 13 countries, including over 1,100 Australians, found that only 41% of Australian workers say their workplace is prepared for AI. That’s below the global average of 48%, and far behind India (83%) and Saudi Arabia (70%).

Only 28% of Australian workers believe their national government invests enough in AI upskilling programs.

The gap isn’t just about budget. Kidd’s report found there’s no shared language for what AI capability even means across different roles, industries, and training providers. A course that calls itself “AI ready” in one context might mean something completely different from what a small business owner actually needs their staff to do on a Tuesday morning.

“There is no shared language or standard for AI capability. Pathways into training and work are unclear, and learners and employers lack confidence in what training actually delivers,” Kidd said.

That’s a real problem when you’re trying to decide whether to send your office manager to an AI course. You have no reliable way to know if it’ll change how they work.

This isn’t just an enterprise problem

Big companies can hire an AI strategy team. Small businesses can’t. Which means the skills gap hits them differently.

A small café, trade business, or professional services firm doesn’t have a dedicated person to figure out AI adoption. The owner is also the operations manager, the HR function, and often the IT department. If nobody on the team has built real AI capability, the tools sit unused, or get used badly.

We published research from MYOB yesterday showing that Australian SMEs using AI are growing 2.8x faster than those that aren’t. The businesses on the wrong side of that gap aren’t necessarily making a strategic choice to skip AI. Many just don’t have anyone who knows how to put it to work.

That’s the skills gap at the small business level. It’s not about training programs and national frameworks. It’s about a single staff member who knows enough to build a workflow that saves four hours a week.

What Australia Is Doing. And Where It Falls Short.

The FSO report is a step forward. The government tasked FSO to map Australia’s AI capability, identify gaps, and set out what the training system needs to do next. That report is now with government.

In August, FSO and the National AI Centre will co-convene a National AI Skills Forum, bringing together industry, training providers, unions, and government to act on the recommendations.

Comparable countries aren’t waiting. The UK, Singapore, and EU members have coordinated national strategies combining skills frameworks, targeted training programs, and sustained multi-year investment. Australia has good intentions, a submitted report, and a forum in three months.

That’s not nothing. But it’s also not fast.

What small business owners should do now

Stop treating AI as an IT problem. The FSO report makes clear that AI skills are now foundational for almost all workers, not just technical staff. Your receptionist, bookkeeper, site supervisor, they all have repetitive tasks AI can reduce. Training one person well across those roles is worth more than buying a new platform.

Find free training that exists now. Anthropic launched a free AI Fluency for Small Business course this week in partnership with PayPal, built around real business owners teaching practical skills. That’s the kind of resource the national system should be pointing businesses toward. It’s available now.

Don’t wait for a perfect framework. The training system will catch up to AI eventually, but on a government timeline. The businesses waiting for credentials and official pathways are the same ones who’ll still be waiting in 2027.

Test capability when you hire. “AI experience” on a resume means almost nothing right now because, as Kidd notes, there’s no shared standard. Ask candidates to walk through how they’d use AI on a specific task in your business. The answer, or the blank stare, tells you more than any course certificate.

The FSO report and the August forum are part of the solution. But the skills gap is here now, and the productivity numbers suggest the gap between businesses that move and those that don’t is already widening.

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