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When street smarts beat book smarts — and why "if it's not on my payroll, it's not my problem" no longer holds up. Dave Kenyon sits down with Joe Collins, Founder and CTO of Helixx/Cobot, a workforce technology consultancy specialising in multi-site operations across construction and industrial sectors. They dig into why compliance gets harder as businesses scale, the real risk in fragmented subcontractor data, and why Joe, a self-taught technologist, still won't let AI make the final call on his own team.
About our guest
Joe Collins is the founder of Helixx/Cobolt, a workforce technology consultancy helping Australian construction, manufacturing, and distribution businesses streamline operations through ERP strategy, automation, and system integration. He built his career without a traditional degree, learning the mechanics of business, compliance, and risk from the ground up, and now advises businesses on where "off the shelf" software falls short for complex, multi-site workforces.
What we cover
- Street smarts vs book smarts, and why Joe chose real-world experience over a degree
- The biggest shift in construction workforce management: compliance now runs onshore, offshore, and through every layer of subcontractors
- Why "if it's not on my payroll, it's not my problem" is a dead model
- Where payroll accuracy and award/EBA compliance actually breaks down
- Best-of-breed vs all-in-one systems — and why "one throat to choke" isn't always the right call
- What other industries can learn from how construction manages a workforce it can't always see
- Our Humans vs AI, Change Your Mind, and Prediction & Warning games
- Why Joe still rings a human consultant before trusting AI with payroll or construction expertise
- Joe's warning: sleepwalking into bad data quality before scaling into AI
Links
About OAHI
OAHI is a workforce management platform helping organisations manage time & attendance, payroll compliance, and award interpretation with greater accuracy and less manual overhead. Evolving Workforce brings on industry leaders to unpack the real challenges shaping HR, payroll, and workforce technology today. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
Chapters (enter separately in Buzzsprout's Chapter Editor)
- 00:00 – Cold open: "if it's not on my payroll, it's not my problem — it is now"
- 01:00 – Dave introduces Joe Collins, founder of Cobolt
- 02:00 – Street smarts vs book smarts: Joe's path without a traditional degree
- 04:00 – Self-taught in programming, business, and automation
- 05:00 – The biggest shift in construction workforce management: compliance density
- 06:00 – Why construction workforce risk is higher than most industries realise
- 09:00 – Where payroll accuracy and award/EBA compliance actually breaks down
- 11:00 – Best-of-breed vs all-in-one: the "single source of failure" trade-off
- 14:00 – What other industries can learn from construction's layered subcontractor model
- 17:00 – Game: Humans vs AI — where the line sits in payroll and workforce data
- 20:00 – Keeping a human in the loop across time & attendance, rostering, and payroll
- 22:00 – Game: Change Your Mind — rethinking the Salesforce AI layoffs a year on
- 25:00 – Game: Prediction & Warning — AGI scepticism and the limits of context windows
- 28:00 – Prediction: build-your-own vs best-in-breed workforce tech, five years out
- 30:00 – Warning: data sanitisation is the layer nobody can skip
- 33:00 – Final advice: vet your vendors, ask the hard questions
- 35:00 – Closing thoughts and wrap-up
