There is a particular kind of financial risk I see repeatedly among senior executives, and it rarely looks like financial distress.

More often, it looks like a good house, two professional incomes, private school fees, investment commitments, regular holidays and an executive salary of $200,000 or more. From the outside, everything appears comfortable. The problem becomes apparent when one of those salaries suddenly disappears, and a household that looked financially secure discovers how heavily its lifestyle was built around two incomes continuing uninterrupted.

That is why, if I were sitting in a reasonably secure executive role today, I would not spend the rest of 2026 simply hoping my position remained untouched. I would be thinking seriously about how dependent I had become on one employer, one employment contract and one salary.

I suspect the next few months are going to be uncomfortable for quite a number of Australian professionals and executives. That does not mean the Australian employment market is collapsing. The broader numbers do not support that conclusion. The latest ABS figures show unemployment at 4.4 percent in June 2026, with employment increasing during the month.

But national unemployment figures only tell part of the story.

Inside corporate Australia, organisations continue to restructure, functions are being consolidated, work is being moved offshore, and artificial intelligence and automation are changing workforce requirements. Companies are looking closely at fixed costs, layers of management, duplication of functions and whether particular activities genuinely need to remain in their current form.

That should not cause every executive to panic. It should, however, cause executives to pay attention.

The language of restructuring is becoming very familiar

Earlier this year Telstra outlined proposed changes affecting hundreds of roles as it looked to simplify operations, reduce costs and move some work offshore. Chief executive Vicki Brady described the changes as part of the company’s efforts to “reduce complexity, be more competitive” and operate more efficiently.

Atlassian subsequently announced 1,600 global job cuts, including hundreds of Australian positions, as it redirected investment towards areas including artificial intelligence and enterprise sales. Officeworks has announced plans to move hundreds of Australian roles to India and the Philippines, citing rising costs, increasing competition and changing customer expectations. Woolworths has also moved to offshore hundreds of corporate positions across functions including People, IT and Finance.

These are different companies dealing with different commercial circumstances, but the terminology being used across corporate Australia is remarkably consistent: efficiency, simplification, automation, outsourcing, offshoring, AI, global capability centres, reducing complexity and reshaping the organisation.

Executives need to understand what those words can mean in practice. Sometimes they represent investment and growth. Sometimes they represent genuine productivity improvements. Sometimes they mean that a role that existed for ten years will simply not exist next year.

You do not need an economic crisis to lose your job. You only need your organisation to decide it no longer needs your particular role.

That is a much more personal form of career risk.

Seniority does not make you bulletproof

One of the more dangerous assumptions in executive careers is that seniority creates security. In some organisations, the opposite can be true because senior executives are expensive and their roles often sit directly in the line of sight when organisational structures are being redesigned.

A regional position can become a global position. Two business units can be combined. A new chief executive can flatten the management structure. A private equity owner can decide that the cost base needs to change quickly. An entire corporate function can be outsourced, moved offshore or substantially reduced through technology. None of this necessarily has anything to do with whether the executive concerned is talented or performing well.

I have spent more than 20 years around executive recruitment and career management and have seen very capable people lose their jobs for reasons largely outside their control. A merger occurs, ownership changes, a new CEO arrives, the board changes direction, a division is sold, or a global strategy removes the Australian position altogether.

Sometimes the role disappears before the executive has properly understood that it was ever under threat.

This is why I think senior people need to separate two ideas that are too often treated as interchangeable.

A high income is not the same as financial security.

You can earn $200,000, $250,000 or considerably more and still be surprisingly financially fragile. Lifestyle expenditure tends to expand around income. Mortgage repayments increase, school fees become entrenched, investment properties need servicing, cars are financed, and discretionary spending gradually becomes part of the normal household budget.

In many two-income professional households, both salaries eventually become built into the family’s financial architecture. Remove one and what appeared to be a prosperous household can become stressed much more quickly than people expect.

A $200,000 salary feels very secure right up until the day it stops arriving.

Redundancy before Christmas can be particularly difficult

Timing also matters, particularly at executive level.

An executive who loses their position in October or November may face a very different experience from someone beginning a search in February. Executive recruitment is rarely fast. As Christmas approaches, boards meet less frequently, decision-makers take leave, recruitment processes are postponed, and searches that were supposedly urgent suddenly disappear into January.

Then everyone returns, and the recruitment process starts moving again. There might be an initial discussion, two or three formal interviews, psychometric assessment, a presentation to the board, reference checking, remuneration discussions and contract negotiations. Senior appointments can take months to conclude even when everybody is motivated to move quickly.

It is therefore perfectly conceivable that somebody leaving an organisation in October does not receive another executive salary until March, April or later.

Six months without your normal salary can do considerable financial damage if the household was never structured to absorb it.

This is why I believe the best time to create financial options is while your salary is still coming in, not after the redundancy meeting.

Start with one additional source of income

If I were an executive today, I would set myself a relatively simple objective between now and Christmas: create one source of income that does not come from my employer.

It does not need to replace a $200,000 salary, and it does not need to become a complicated second business. The first objective is simply to prove that your knowledge, experience, skills or interests can produce revenue independently of your employment contract.

For a senior executive, there are far more possibilities than most people initially imagine.

You might package a specialist area of expertise into an e-learning course for businesses or professionals in your industry. A senior HR executive, for example, might develop an online program on workforce planning, managing difficult workplace investigations or leading through organisational change. A CFO might create practical financial literacy or commercial acumen training for emerging executives. A technology leader might develop a program helping boards understand cyber risk, AI governance or digital transformation.

You could develop an online training program or workshop series that organisations buy for their management teams. Instead of selling your time one hour at a time, you begin creating a repeatable product that can be delivered to multiple clients.

There may be an opportunity to undertake fractional executive work. A former or current CMO might spend one day a month advising a growing private company that cannot yet justify a full-time marketing executive. A CFO could provide financial oversight to several founder-led businesses. An experienced HR director might support a medium-sized business with remuneration strategy, succession planning or organisational redesign.

You could establish a small advisory practice around one problem you understand exceptionally well. That might mean advising family businesses on professionalising management, helping founders prepare for capital raising, supporting companies through acquisitions, advising Australian businesses entering Asia, assisting organisations with turnaround strategies or helping boards improve governance and risk frameworks.

There may be potential to secure a paid advisory board or non-executive director appointment. One board fee will not necessarily replace your executive income, but it can become an important foundation in a longer-term Career Portfolio and can introduce you to investors, owners, other directors and businesses that may generate further opportunities.

You could offer executive mentoring or coaching in a highly defined niche rather than attempting to become a generic coach. A sales director might mentor new sales leaders. A former CEO might work with first-time chief executives. A senior lawyer might mentor general counsels moving into executive leadership. An experienced operations executive could work with founders who have scaled quickly and suddenly find themselves managing a much larger organisation.

Some executives are well placed to create corporate training and facilitation programs. Leadership development, negotiation, stakeholder management, governance, commercial acumen, business development, presentation skills, crisis management and strategic planning are all areas where organisations will pay experienced practitioners to train their people.

Others can turn their experience into intellectual property. You might develop a diagnostic tool, methodology, framework, playbook, template library or subscription-based resource that solves a recurring business problem. Once you start thinking this way, the question becomes less about selling your hours and more about identifying what you know that can be packaged.

There is also writing. You could produce a specialist book, industry guide, paid newsletter or digital publication that builds your authority while creating a modest revenue stream. The commercial return from the publication itself may initially be small, but it can lead to speaking, consulting, training and advisory opportunities.

You might pursue paid speaking or conference facilitation, particularly if you have credible experience in an area where business audiences want practical insight rather than motivational theatre. AI implementation, business transformation, crisis leadership, cyber risk, capital raising, succession, mergers and acquisitions, workforce strategy and governance are all areas where genuine practitioners can differentiate themselves.

There are also less obvious possibilities. I know senior professionals who narrate books, translate material, write specialist website content, undertake research, sit on investment committees, provide expert assessments, review tenders, conduct due diligence or complete short-term projects through professional and freelance platforms.

And then there are opportunities that have little connection to the executive’s day job. Photography, art, property, writing, teaching, design, food, fitness or another longstanding interest can sometimes be commercialised gradually without turning it into a full-time venture.

There can be a strange level of snobbery around additional income at executive level. People sometimes believe anything they do outside their main position must somehow match the prestige of their corporate title.

I disagree.

You are trying to create resilience, not impress somebody at a networking function.

If you can independently generate $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000 a month, something important has happened. You have demonstrated that another organisation or individual is willing to pay for value you create, independent of your employer.

The first objective is not replacing your salary. It is proving that your salary does not have to be your only source of income.

That changes the way people think about their careers.

The Career Portfolio is becoming a form of career insurance

I have been talking with executives for years about developing what I call a Career Portfolio.

To me, this is much broader than the fashionable idea of having a side hustle. A properly developed Career Portfolio might eventually include a primary executive role, one or two board appointments, an advisory position, consulting income, investments, intellectual property, mentoring, speaking, teaching, or an ownership interest in a business.

It does not necessarily require leaving corporate life. For many executives, the strongest model will continue to have an excellent executive role sitting at the centre of the portfolio. The difference is that the job no longer carries the entire financial burden of the individual’s professional life.

That creates something executives tend to undervalue until they need it: choice.

An executive with several sources of income can negotiate differently. They can walk away from a poor employer more easily, reject the wrong role, take several months between appointments without immediate financial panic, accept a lower base salary in exchange for equity or a more interesting opportunity, or take a calculated entrepreneurial risk that would have been impossible if every household expense depended on their next monthly salary.

Most importantly, they are not making every career decision with the knowledge that the mortgage depends entirely upon the outcome.

That is genuine career leverage.

The old executive career model is starting to look concentrated

For much of the past 30 years, the accepted executive career strategy has been fairly straightforward: secure the next promotion, increase remuneration, take the larger role, move towards the C-suite and protect the salary for as long as possible.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach, but it concentrates an enormous amount of risk in one place.

One company. One employment contract. One source of income.

The corporate environment is changing around that model. Artificial intelligence does not need to eliminate millions of jobs for it to affect your career. It only needs to allow your organisation to perform a particular function with fewer people. Offshoring does not need to damage the entire Australian economy to matter to you. It only needs to reach your department.

Likewise, restructuring does not need to dominate the newspaper headlines to become a major personal financial problem.

This is where I think executives often make a mistake. They wait for certainty. They want evidence that their own organisation is about to restructure before they start preparing.

By the time the evidence becomes obvious, the opportunity to prepare quietly may have gone.

Don’t wait for the meeting invitation

I am not suggesting every executive immediately start a business, launch an online course and apply for ten board positions.

I am suggesting that senior professionals take an honest look at their career economics.

If your $200,000 salary stopped tomorrow, how many months could your household comfortably absorb the loss? What income would continue to arrive? How quickly could you turn your experience into revenue? Do enough people outside your current organisation know what you are capable of doing, or has your entire professional identity become tied to the company on your business card?

Then start examining what you already have that could potentially become an additional income stream. Could your twenty years of industry knowledge become an e-learning course? Could a framework you have used internally become a workshop for other businesses? Could you take one advisory board appointment? Could you provide one day a month of specialist advice to a growing company? Could you mentor three emerging executives? Could you create an online masterclass? Could you turn a recurring problem you solve at work into a consulting product? Could you write a practical guide or paid newsletter? Could you take a small fractional role with a business that needs your expertise but cannot afford or justify hiring you full-time?

You do not need to pursue all of them. In fact, I wouldn’t.

Pick the one that fits naturally with your capability, reputation, and available time and see whether anybody will pay for it.

Over the years, whenever I have coached executives, whether they were pursuing promotion, looking for their next chief executive role or starting to build a board career, I have encouraged them to think beyond the immediate job search and look at the next three to five years.

What do you want your working life to look like? What professional assets are you building? How dependent do you want to remain on employment income? Where could your expertise generate value outside your current organisation?

For me, the Career Portfolio sits right in the middle of those questions.

A sophisticated portfolio can take several years to develop. That is precisely why I would not wait until redundancy to begin building one.

The first step can be remarkably small.

Earn your first dollar outside your salary.

Then your first $1,000.

Then your first recurring client, board fee, course sale, advisory retainer or piece of independent work.

From there, you start building something much more valuable than a side hustle.

You start building options.

Between now and Christmas, that is what I would be doing. Not panicking, and not assuming the worst, but quietly reducing the amount of power that one employment contract has over my financial life.

Heading into 2027 with a $200,000 salary is a good position to be in.

Heading into 2027 with that salary, another source of income, a stronger external network, and the beginnings of a genuine Career Portfolio is considerably better.

The safest executive career may no longer be the one with the biggest salary. It may be the one with the most options.