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Onshore, offshore or both? What Australia's blended teams mean for UK job seekers

Employer update · 2026-09-04 · 4 min read

In Australia, offshoring tends to be argued about in black and white: big companies sending back-office work overseas on one side, and on the other, a view that every offshore hire takes a job from a local. Inside most businesses the picture is less dramatic. Many are not picking one or the other. They are running a mix of both, on purpose, because they cannot find enough people to do the work.

If you are in the UK and thinking about working in Australia, this shift says a lot about which roles employers most want filled on the ground.

A shortage that hits revenue

Recent employer research confirms what recruiters have been saying for a while: unfilled roles now cost businesses money, not just HR time. Employers described service standards slipping, customers leaving, missed deadlines and, in some cases, new work turned down because the team lacked the time or skills to take it on.

The point is that these businesses mostly tried to hire locally first. They could not fill key roles fast enough, and the gap ended up on the balance sheet.

Why small firms see it differently

Public debate has focused on large corporate deals involving hundreds of roles. For the small and medium-sized businesses that make up most of the economy, the maths is not the same. A founder hiring a first operations or admin person locally can face a total cost well into six figures once superannuation, leave and overheads are added. For a young business, that hire may simply be unaffordable.

In that case, an offshore hire is not replacing a local job that was going to exist anyway. It is often the only way the role gets done, and it frees the founder and the existing team to focus on work that grows the business, which in time can include hiring locally. Treating a ten-person firm setting up its first support function in the same way as a national retailer reshaping its back office misses the difference.

The compliance gap

The research also found that most employers think compliance expectations for offshore arrangements have risen sharply in a few years, yet only a quarter feel truly confident about where they stand, and a fair number are unsure which standards apply. The common mistake is not deciding to offshore but setting it up badly. Worker classification, data handling, contract terms and how local employment law applies all need to be right from the start. The Fair Work Ombudsman's guidance on employer obligations is a sensible place for a business to begin.

AI is changing the work, not removing it

Many assume AI will make offshore hiring unnecessary. So far, the opposite seems true. Offshore teams are taking up AI tools as fast as onshore teams, or faster, and some of the quickest-growing offshore roles are in AI and automation: data analysts, automation specialists and AI engineers. Routine, rules-based tasks are the ones being automated. What remains and grows is work that needs judgement, such as reading information, understanding the customer and using AI sensibly within a particular business.

Which roles stay in Australia

Businesses that handle this well start by mapping the work their team really does each week: what is repeatable, what needs local market knowledge or client-facing judgement, and what is held up only because nobody has the hours. That usually leads to a split:

• Kept onshore: core roles, work that relies on judgement, and anything facing clients.
• Built offshore: support, operations and some specialist capacity, including newer AI and data roles.

Done properly, the offshore side does not compete with local hiring. It helps pay for it, by giving the business room to grow until a local hire makes sense.

What it means if you are moving from the UK

For someone planning to work in Australia, the lesson is fairly clear. Roles that need you physically there, that depend on local knowledge, or that involve hands-on skills, client contact or professional judgement are the ones employers are keeping onshore. Trades, healthcare, engineering and client-facing professional work fit that description well. Purely routine office tasks are the most likely to be done elsewhere or automated.

When you put your application together, make the judgement-heavy parts of your UK experience easy to see. You can shape your CV for Australian employers with Build AI CV and look through current jobs in Australia for UK citizens.

#skills shortages #australia #offshoring #employers #workforce planning #jobs in australia