The average salary for a People & Culture professional in Australia is $89,000. 

Entry-level roles such as HR Administrators start lower, at around $75,000. Moving up the career ladder, People & Culture Advisors earn around $90K-110K, with People & Culture Managers earning more – around $120K.

Currently, the top most desirable job factors on the minds of great People & Culture talent include:

1. Work-life balance and flexible work arrangements
2. Salary and benefits
3. Generating positive environmental or social impact
4. Professional development opportunities
5. Working in a great team

A variety of technical and soft skills are required by the modern HR professional to thrive in a complex professional environment. Some of the top most in-demand skills we see include:

1. Empathy and EQ
2. Adaptable mindset
3. Conflict management
4. People analytics driven by AI
5. Talent strategy

These five skills enable great People & Culture professionals to thrive in the changeable, often stressful modern workplace: utilising the latest tools and strategies to keep the workplace operating smoothly, while remaining adaptable and empathetic to people’s evolving needs.

Key to improving employee retention in any team is to first understand the key factors driving people away. Generally, the best way to get these insights is to find out from your people, either through one-on-one meetings or anonymous feedback surveys. 

In our experience, these are four of the top factors affecting employee retention in Australia: 

1. Uncompetitive pay or benefits 
2. A lack of pay increases 
3. Seeing no future at the company 
4. Toxic workplace culture 

When you understand your key problem areas, you can then begin to implement strategies that directly address the root cause of these issues. Common strategies we see include: 

1. Offering pay on-par with competitors 
2. Providing desirable benefits to top up any pay discrepancies 
3. Creating a transparent, inclusive work culture 
4. Ensuring each employee has a clear career progression pathway 

This always depends on your business objectives, budget, time and the complexities of the market.

In-house recruitment can be both highly efficient and very cost-effective, giving you total control of the hiring pipeline and a sense of ownership over the process. 

However, if your team lacks the capacity to run this process effectively, you’re hunting for niche or hard-to-find skills, or the market is experiencing heavy competition, a specialist recruitment partner can provide that extra level of certainty. This is because recruitment teams like ours have spent years building vast talent networks across the country (and globe), enabling us to:

• Access hidden talent pools 
• Circumvent market competition to headhunt right-fit talent directly
• Maintain a team of high-quality temp staff who can hit the ground running in under 24 hours 

These factors make specialist recruitment teams very popular for finding urgent talent, key skills areas and high-level professionals.