Will 2025 Be the Turning Point for Sydney’s HR Recruitment Market?

As we begin 2025, I believe the Sydney HR recruitment market is poised for growth, driven by an anticipated rise in business confidence. With at least one interest rate cut expected in the first half of the year, this is likely to boost hiring activity, translating into an increase in HR job openings.

The correction is over

The market correction that characterized 2024 is now behind us. Following the post-COVID hiring surge, many HR teams reached full capacity, leading to fewer replacements after departures. Restructures were often a cost-cutting exercise with headcount almost always reduced.  However, this adjustment phase may be over, and we can expect HR teams to stabilize or even grow in 2025. A continued reduction in HR team sizes would result in overburdened teams, creating operational challenges.

Which skills are in demand?

In terms of role demand, Talent Acquisition—especially at the strategic and management levels—had a quieter year in 2024. However, as business confidence recovers, we foresee an uptick in demand for both entry-level and mid-level roles (salary range: $90k-$140k), alongside a resurgence in higher-level positions focused on employer branding, employee value proposition, and recruitment strategies. As vacancies rise organisations will likely seek to avoid overburdening their existing talent acquisition teams, leading to increased reliance on recruitment agencies.

Other specialist roles, particularly in Employee Relations and Industrial Relations, will continue to see strong demand. With new legislation on the horizon, expertise in these areas will remain essential.

Workplace Trends

As for workplace trends, employers are expected to take a more assertive stance on in-office attendance. While the general preference for a hybrid model remains, with employees typically favouring two days in the office and three at home, employers will lean toward a 3 day office mandate. HR professionals, particularly in generalist, employee experience and organisational development will need to navigate this shift while maintaining employee engagement to minimise turnover.

Summary

In summary, the Sydney HR recruitment market in 2025 will experience a recovery fuelled by increased hiring across the board, with a particular focus on ER and TA.

Be an HR Generalist and a Subject Matter Expert in Employee Reward

As a HR Generalist your role is naturally varied which can lead to a broad but shallow skillset, which is fine especially if you operate in a large HR team with centres of excellence.  However, if you operate in a smaller organization, you may be asked to take on in-depth projects within a specific discipline of HR. 

Clearly it is not possible to be a specialist in every area so choosing one or two disciplines is a smart way to keep develop your skillset and give yourself an advantage in this competitive job market.  It may not always be your choosing – it may be that your organization needs project completing and doesn’t have the budget for external support.  We find that the best developed specialist skillsets are acquired via a combination of inclination and opportunity.

In this first article we explore one of the most requested skillsets in HR Generalists – Employee Reward.  Below is list of Reward responsibilities / specialist element of the discipline to check off on your way to becoming a Reward SME! 

Compensation Philosophy:

At the heart of every successful Reward strategy lies a clear Compensation Philosophy. This philosophy defines your organization's approach to pay, encompassing market positioning, pay for performance, and internal equity. By articulating these principles, you establish a foundation for fair and competitive compensation practices that resonate with your workforce.

Salary Structures:

Crafting robust Salary Structures is essential for maintaining internal equity and external competitiveness. These structures delineate pay ranges aligned with job levels and market rates, ensuring transparency and consistency in compensation decisions across the organization.

Job Evaluation:

Objective Job Evaluation processes assess the relative value of each role based on factors such as skills, responsibilities, and working conditions. By systematically benchmarking job roles, you establish a framework for equitable pay scales and career progression paths.

Market Pricing:

Benchmarking pay rates through Market Pricing against industry surveys and competitor data is crucial for staying competitive in talent acquisition and retention. This data-driven approach ensures that your compensation packages remain attractive and aligned with prevailing market standards.

Merit Increases:

Determining Merit Increases based on performance and budgetary considerations reinforces a culture of performance excellence. By linking pay raises directly to individual achievements, you motivate employees to strive for continuous improvement and contribute to organizational goals.

Variable Pay:

Designing and administering Variable Pay components such as bonuses, commissions, and incentives incentivizes performance-driven outcomes. These programs not only reward exceptional contributions but also align employee efforts with strategic objectives, fostering a culture of accountability and achievement.

Equity Compensation:

Offering Equity Compensation options like stock options, restricted stock units, and employee stock purchase plans can be instrumental in retaining key talent and aligning employee interests with long-term organizational success. These incentives serve as powerful tools for attracting top talent and retaining high performers.

Executive Compensation:

Crafting Executive Compensation packages tailored to senior leaders, including base salary, performance incentives, and perquisites, ensures alignment with executive performance and shareholder interests. These packages play a pivotal role in attracting and retaining leadership talent critical to driving organizational strategy.

Benefits Strategy:

Your Benefits Strategy goes beyond traditional health and retirement benefits to encompass a comprehensive approach to employee well-being and satisfaction. Selecting and managing cost-effective, competitive benefits packages enhances employee engagement and supports recruitment efforts.

Health Insurance and Retirement Plans:

Providing robust Health Insurance coverage and Retirement Plans beyond the Superannuation Guarantee demonstrates your commitment to employee welfare and financial security. These benefits are essential components of your overall Reward strategy, influencing both recruitment decisions and employee retention.

Wellness Programs and Paid Leave:

Investing in Wellness Programs that promote employee health and well-being contributes to a positive work environment and reduces absenteeism. Similarly, administering Paid Leave policies that include vacation, sick time, and personal days supports work-life balance and enhances overall employee satisfaction.

Payroll Administration:

Ensuring accurate and timely Payroll Administration processes are critical for maintaining employee trust and compliance. Seamless payroll operations demonstrate organizational reliability and underscore your commitment to fair compensation practices.

As HR professionals, your expertise in navigating the complexities of Compensation & Benefits is instrumental in shaping organizational culture, fostering employee engagement, and driving business success. By embracing innovative strategies and leveraging data-driven insights, you continue to elevate the employee experience and position your organization as an employer of choice.

Connect with us for more insights and guidance on your journey to HR mastery!

Connect with us for more insights and guidance on your journey to HR mastery!

The HR Hierarchy: The 3 Levels

This may look like HR 101, but when we talk to HR Professionals we hear some many different versions of how HR duties fit into these three buckets! We also hear a variety of opinions on which level is the most important and how that fits into the responsibilities of specific HR roles.

Sense check your understanding with our summary below!

1. Transactional HR: Laying the Foundation

At the foundational level, Transactional HR tasks encompass the day-to-day administrative functions that keep the HR department running smoothly. These include activities such as payroll processing, benefits administration, and record-keeping. While these tasks may seem routine, they form the bedrock upon which the entire HR structure is built. Without efficient transactional processes, the operational and strategic aspects of HR would falter.

Transactional HR professionals are meticulous in their attention to detail, ensuring accuracy and compliance in all administrative tasks. Their role is akin to that of architects, laying the groundwork for the broader HR initiatives that follow. By mastering transactional duties, HR professionals establish a solid framework upon which to build more complex strategies.

2. Operational HR: Orchestrating Cohesion

Moving up the ladder, Operational HR involves the coordination of HR activities to align with organizational goals and objectives. This tier focuses on optimizing HR processes and procedures to enhance efficiency and employee satisfaction. Operational HR professionals act as navigators, guiding employees and managers through various HR policies and programs.

In the operational realm, HR professionals play a pivotal role in talent acquisition, performance management, and employee relations. They craft tailored strategies to attract, develop, and retain top talent, thereby ensuring organizational success. Moreover, operational HR specialists serve as advisors to management, providing insights and recommendations based on data-driven analysis.

3. Strategic HR: Steering Towards Future Success

At the pinnacle of HR responsibility lies the Strategic level, where professionals are strategic partners to senior leadership. Strategic HR transcends day-to-day operations, focusing instead on long-term organizational objectives and sustainability. HR leaders at this level are akin to visionaries, shaping the company's future direction through people-centric strategies.

Strategic HR professionals are adept at identifying trends, anticipating challenges, and designing innovative solutions to drive organizational growth. They leverage data analytics and predictive modeling to inform decision-making, ensuring that HR initiatives align with broader business goals. Moreover, strategic HR leaders champion diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, recognizing them as catalysts for organizational excellence.

Let us know what level most resonates with you! Comment down below.

Let us know what level most resonates with you! Comment down below.

Why are so many HR Careers peaking too soon?

Content Writer:

Matthew Mayoh , Director

⌛ Reading Time: 10- 15 mins

Every year I update my salary guide. As part of this process, I examine and analyze every vacancy and compare it to the salary data I get from job seekers. It’s a fascinating task (no, really, it is) because it tells me all kinds of things about the state of the jobs market and what’s happening in the world of HR. By reading the numbers I get a black and white insight into what trends are happening, where the growth is, and what my corporate and applicant clients need to know.

But when I sat down to do it this year, something leapt out at me like nothing else. And it was this: there a lot fewer jobs paying more than $150,000 a year than those paying below that figure.

In other words, $150K is the line in the sand. It’s where the jobs dry up and the market thins. It’s where careers top out and get stuck. It’s the point where a lot of HR people resign themselves to salary stagnation.

Duck below the $150k threshold and things look very different. Here, there are plenty of roles. There is transience (i.e. people move about regularly). Most people looking to build a career have options.

But above that - and especially as you push onto the high one hundreds or low two hundreds - there is a dearth of decent roles and a glut of good candidates.

The career triangle is changing shape

The first thing to say is that it’s not an entirely new thing. Most professions are characterised by the career triangle, where there are lots of roles at the bottom and then fewer at the top. This is only natural. Not everyone can be HR Director can they? But when we picture a career triangle, most of us probably picture an equilateral triangle. In case you can’t remember Year 8 maths, that’s the one with three equal length sides. It narrows very gradually as you move up.

But that’s not what the HR career triangle looks like anymore. The career options for HR professionals now narrow much sooner than they did in the past. People stop rising when they hit middle management and instead of an equilateral triangle, the HR career triangle is more of an isosceles triangle.

The limitations of being Gen X

One of the main reasons the HR career triangle is stretching and narrowing is simply because of the number of people compared to the number of roles in today’s market.

There are a lot of baby boomers sitting towards the pointy end of that triangle who haven’t retired yet and are instead staying on to top up their super funds.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that they should move on. We’re living longer, we’re fit for much longer, and it’s only natural we should work for longer too. But that does have ramifications for the next generation coming through - the younger Gen Xers and older Gen Ys, now in their 30s and early 40s. We’ve learned that we can’t expect to be hitting the same career milestones at the same point as those 10 or 20 years older than us.

And many of us now seem to accept we won’t be travelling as far up that triangle as we once might have hoped.

The squeeze on the middle

But it can’t all be pinned on the boomers. We also need to look to the waves of ‘drives for efficiency’ that have been hitting corporate HR departments for almost a decade now.

These have usually involved telling people at the top to be more ‘hands on’ and the people at the bottom to ‘step up’. And, the result of this is that the middle managers, who were the link between the two, have less to do - much less. In fact, may of them have so little to do that they find themselves without a role at all.

In very large corporates it has been a bit more sophisticated than this but the effect has still been the same. There, HR Operations teams have centralised volume tasks and newly established centres of excellence have pushed the task of designing of new HR and change initiatives to SMEs - usually at the expense of skilled HR people who sit in the middle of my triangle.

The result is that it’s a long way to the top from the middle-tier HR jobs to HR Director without all the nice career stepping stones along the way that once existed - you know, the roles where you’d learn the skills and get the experience you needed to one day run the show.

The $1,525 question

So with fewer roles at the very top and a much longer road to get there, the logical question becomes is it worth it? And, in strict dollar terms, I’m not sure it is.

Think about it. What’s the difference between making $150,000 and year and $180,000 a year? I know, it sounds obvious enough: it’s $30,000 a year, or $2,500 a month.

But after tax we’re actually talking $18,300 a year or $1,525 a month.

For that extra $1,525 in your pocket you’re usually going to be expected to work a lot more hours and you’ll be put under a lot more pressure. You probably have to work weekends, spend time away from the family, and do things you’d prefer not to do. Because, quite simply, when something goes wrong, for $180,000 a year - or just $1,525 a month more than you used to make - the buck now stops with you.

But life is about more than money, right?

Of course you can’t analyse it just by numbers. Senior roles are often stimulating and provide some people with a lot of job satisfaction. But they’re also challenging. You’re now going to be responsible for those junior staff who are making mistakes and looking for fast career progression without putting in the hard yards like you did. They’re going to be leaving you if they don’t get their way and it’ll be your job to placate them while making sure you get the best results for the business.

You’re also going to have those senior staff now approaching you to personally, asking you to deal with the most sensitive people-related issues in your organisation and holding you personally responsible for your team output. 

For many of us, this sounds like a lot of extra hassle. For some of us, it’s exactly the kind of complexity and pressure that will bring the best in us. Only you can decide which side of the fence you fall on.

Then there is the status, of course. A lot of people like being the boss. There’s nothing wrong with that either, especially if you’re good at it. And that alone will make some people keep striving towards the pinnacle, no matter how hard it’s becoming to reach it.

Is it time to re-evaluate?

What is your plan of attack?

That said, you don’t have to be gifted to realise we can’t all make it to the top. A look over my salary numbers and job vacancies reinforced that in very real terms. So I think it’s time that the HR profession sat down and thought long and hard about what other career paths there are and how we stay engaged and stimulated. Do we encourage more movement across specialisms? Do we start moving internally or externally into other business roles, such as change and operations? (For instance, look at how well lawyers and accountants do just that.)

Or do we just sit back and accept small, incremental rises for the rest of our career once we hit middle management?