Executive Journey
Why Great Individual Contributors Don’t Always Make Great Leaders
Leadership continues to be one of the greatest challenges as our world of work evolves. I work in this space
January 13, 2026
Debates about workforce models in Australia’s resources and energy sectors, particularly FIFO versus residential, often mirror contemporary arguments about office-based work versus hybrid and remote arrangements. In both cases, discussion is frequently reduced to competing positions about which model is “better”.
For the C-suite, that framing is not useful.
Workforce models are not expressions of culture or preference, and they are not fixed or universal. They are governance decisions. They determine how strategy is translated into an operating model, how risk is distributed through the organisation, and how defensible those choices remain over time.
FIFO, DIDO, residential employment, hybrid work, office-based work, and WFH settings should be understood as outputs of organisational design rather than standalone policies.
They reflect decisions about how assets and functions are structured across their lifecycle, where authority and accountability sit, how flexibility is retained or constrained, and where operational, safety, and industrial risk ultimately resides.
When workforce models are treated as discrete “people” issues, risk is often shifted unintentionally away from explicit oversight and into operational fault lines. That is not a people failure. It is a governance one.
FIFO, including DIDO variants, remains a rational and in many cases essential feature of operating models in the resources and energy sectors.
Where deliberately designed, FIFO and DIDO support access to scarce capability and preserve flexibility across project phases and commodity cycles.
Where they are inherited rather than designed, they become a source of unmanaged exposure, surfacing later as cost volatility, succession fragility, or industrial escalation.
The distinction is not the model itself. It is whether it has been explicitly governed or simply allowed to accumulate by default.
Residential employment reflects a different organisational commitment. In the right context, it can strengthen continuity and long-term operational control.
From a governance perspective, residential strategies behave as structural commitments with limited reversibility. They lock in cost structures, constrain future organisational options, and narrow leadership and specialist talent pools while limiting mobility.
These consequences surface most clearly at senior and specialist levels, where labour market scarcity collides with relocation reality. If those constraints have not been consciously accepted, the risk sits squarely with the executive.
Uniform workforce models are often adopted in the name of simplicity, consistency, or perceived fairness.
From a governance standpoint, uniformity concentrates risk.
Different parts of the enterprise carry materially different safety exposure, labour market constraints, leadership leverage, industrial sensitivity, and succession risk.
When executives impose a single workforce construct or ideology across those differences, they are not simplifying governance. They are avoiding it.
Roles reveal the failure. The failure itself sits at the level of organisational design.
While workforce models such as FIFO, DIDO, residential, hybrid, WFH, or office-based arrangements can trigger disputes, escalation typically reflects failures of design, consultation, or proportionality rather than the model itself.
In the Australian industrial relations environment, defensibility turns on whether workforce decisions are grounded in operational logic, applied consistently, and integrated with WHS obligations, including fatigue and psychosocial risk controls.
This is not an HR test. It is a governance test, with executive accountability attached.
Before debating FIFO versus residential, or hybrid versus office, the governing question for the C-suite is this:
Have we deliberately designed our operating model to deploy different workforce structures where they best support strategy and risk, and can we demonstrate that those choices are defensible, proportionate, and understood by our board?
If that question cannot be answered clearly, the issue is not the workforce model. It is the governance of the operating model itself.
FIFO, DIDO, residential employment, hybrid work, office-based work, and WFH settings are governance tools.
The C-suite is accountable for how those tools are assembled into an operating system, and for the risks that system creates or mitigates over time.
Where workforce models materially affect safety, cost, or strategic optionality, they belong at the centre of executive governance, with accountability attached.
Leadership continues to be one of the greatest challenges as our world of work evolves. I work in this space
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