It’s that time of year again when the Peoplecorp team bravely make their predictions for the upcoming 12 months, but before that we have reviewed our predictions from this time last year!
For a reminder of what we thought would happen last year, you can watch this short video here:
The headline predictions we made are below, with a mark out of 10 on how we think we did!
An increase in Reward, ER and Change roles, and a decrease in Talent Acquisition roles: 8/10
The flow of jobs in 2023 was certainly lower than the previous two years. And yes, TA roles were in far smaller numbers. We found that the volume of ER roles remained high, and whilst we still had a number of Reward and Change roles, the increase in this area was not as high as the ER space.
Interim market will grow: 8/10
Our Contract & Interim team were pretty busy so this market did definitely grow. We found that a lot of the interim work was for longer fixed-term contracts, rather than really short interim gigs. Perhaps this was down to the work volumes remaining high and the need for key people to do that work, rather than very short projects.
Increase in international mobility: 9/10
Yes, this part of the market came back with a huge boom. We saw the number of work holiday visa candidates jump back up to even higher than pre-Covid levels.
A levelling off of rem packages 9/10
Yes definitely. We noticed that the silly money that some businesses had been throwing at candidates when making offers tapered off, and whilst rem packages have not gone backwards, they have generally plateaued in the past 12 months.
Competitive candidate market for clients: 5/10
In 2021 and 2022 at times it felt like an all-out war between companies to grab the best talent, and so we had predicted that this trend would continue. In reality, as the job market softened somewhat, this competitiveness subsided over the course of the year, so that from around September onwards we did not see as much competition. If anything, we have seen the Client take back a bit more control from the Candidate.
An increase in condensed working weeks: 6/10
I am not sure if we could say that this has become a full trend and that there was a significant increase in condensed working weeks, but definitely some clients have hired top talent by making this adjustment. And almost every client we have worked with has entertained the option at least.
Completion bonuses for interim roles: 6/10
There was an increase in completion bonuses in the first half of 2023 for roles at the $180K+ level; less so in the 2nd half of the year. We noticed that this helped to attract more talent in a highly competitive market, and also offered an incentive for candidates to complete the entire contract.
People to spend more time in the office: 8/10
We saw a number of organisations ask their people to come back to the office at least three days a week, and some also asking people to be in the office every day. Certainly in Sydney the city has felt busy on most days, although Friday is the day to drive into the city if you don’t want to be stuck in traffic!
Annual Reward Review