Welcome to that super show, the podcast. We talk about all things super from the inside. I'm Neil Benson, founder of Novagentic.

And I'm Sarah Penn, CEO of Mayflower Consulting. Each week we unpack what's changing in the industry, what funds are wrestling with, and how tech and regulation are shaping the landscape.

Sometimes we bring in expert guests, but mostly it's just us having a real conversation about how super is working and what could make it even better.

Let's get into it. Okay. Hello. Hello, everyone. Today we are joined by Victoria Butt. She is the CEO and founder of Parity Consulting.She leads one of Australia's most trusted specialist recruitment and market insights firms across product, marketing, digital and data.Her team has gathered insights from nearly 5,000 professionals this year, giving her a front row view of how people are feeling about work, where salaries and bonuses are heading, and what's really shaping the talent market going into 2026. She's also a passionate advocate for better leadership, meaningful work and genuine career development. And with all that. Hello, Vic.

Hi.

Thank you. And you forgot that I'm an aggressive wine snob as well.

Oh, yes, excellent. Oh, we'll have to get a wine recommendation to finish up.

I can't pick one, there's too many.

Okay.

Victoria, it's great to have you on the show. Welcome. Thank you.

Thanks so much.

We've got a great list of questions for you today. First of all, what is the name of the report that has just been published?

So the theme of the report is Keeping Pace and of course that references AI, but the name of the report is A Salary Guide and Insights 2025-26. And it's our 11th edition. So this is our 11th year of publishing this date. And I have to say, it is absolutely the most detailed.You can imagine what the first year looked like. It was a bit low end, but we've just better and better. And now like you say, we've just. Just 5,000 contributions is huge.

And is this financial services, Victoria, or just superannuation? How far does it go?

Yeah, and look, that is. That is the ultimate question, right? With any kind of data, it's the validity of the data. So the. Or the relevant. Should I say?So it's 80% of the 5,000 have come from within services and just under 40% from wealth management. And super great. Awesome.

Very relevant. Yes, good.

Exactly. So speaking of data, what were your biggest surprises this year?

Yeah, thank you.That's the first I look at, I have to say, whenever I get the data, I just jump in And I'm like, oh my goodness, give me some news that I either didn't expect or something ideally is very positive. It was mostly what we expected and my team expected in terms of salary levels, bonus levels, how people were feeling.But the sort of, let's just say the three main surprises was that how much passion and emphasis people are putting on the return to office mandates and how aggressive the language has become.So it was very aggressive when we started getting people back from COVID and then it died down a bit because you couldn't find staff for love nor money. So you, you needed to not be too hard on your staff to come back to the office. And now of course that's changed.The direction of travel is actually afford days mandated and of course we have exceptions and things and I can go through the different, the different exceptions later, but the aggression in language and the fact that the employer and the employee are quite far apart in their view. The second one was the motivations and what people are really wanting.What came at number two this year was exciting work and interesting projects and that had never featured in the top five ever.

Does that mean dealing with regulation and legislation changes? Is that kind of.

It's just been a bit shit. If you look at the wealth management market. Super.In general it's dictated by regulations, it's dictated by M and A, it's dictated by so many things that are out of people's natural control and typically it can be quite boring and it has been very BAU focused. So people are just genuinely wanting to do new and exciting things. So that actually came in at number two, that superseded learning and development.

Right?

Yeah. Right. What was number one?

Remuneration.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Stupid question.

Not at all. So look, Rem. Rem has been number one for 11 years.

Yeah.

As you would expect.And one of the cool ones, I hope you don't mind me saying actually, is in the last few years the values align and making values based decisions, making those decisions to decide whether to move or not has come up the pegging order.Unfortunately it's gone down again this year and look, I do think that is when there is so many people that have been displaced, you can't be as indignant about your values and principles when you need to pay your bills, basically. Which is a shame, sadly.

Very true.

Speaking of which, Victoria, we've seen a number of funds merge over the last couple of years and I think at the operational level, you know, people handling complaints, people handling claims, there just hasn't been enough staff.So I don't imagine they've been too broadly impacted, but, you know, a chief marketing officer, there might only be one in the new merged organization. How have those kind of mergers and acquisitions impacted roles and things in the marketplace? What have you seen there?

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I been asked this question quite a bit, actually.So on the face of it, you would sit there and go, okay, we've got duplication, cmo, cmo, head of marketing, you know, type thing. What's really interesting is that that isn't. Isn't always the case. I think duplication absolutely would up to about 30% of the time.You've got like, for like every fund is so different.And so what we've actually found is that the duplication hasn't been as much of a problem because what the funds have, I think, have done their best with is have tried to move people into other areas that will lend itself to their skills. What's been more of the problem is the culture clash and how these integrations are being managed. These are huge, complex integrations.Culture is can, can make or break very quickly. It really is a very precious entity culture. And I think when you put two together, less is. Is the problem with, okay, you've got duplicates.So we're going to exit, we're going to exit that cmo, we're going to exit that head of product, we're going to exit that person. We're going to keep what we think is the best. It doesn't actually work like that.What happens typically, other than, you know, good 70% of time, is that you actually take both. The future of marketing, for instance, is different to the past. And so you.One that's perhaps go to market focused and one that perhaps is more data focused, for example. But where it really impacts the people is when the merge carries on and it goes over time and budget. And also there's. There's culture issues or just.Just in general, where there's challenges from a culture perspective, that's when people will opt out and have opted out. The other point to make here is there is also the challenge of people holding on too tight.But unfortunately that also comes with other issues where you're almost a bit hostaged in that environment.And if you're a bit pissed off or you've got happy about this new merge or you know something's going on, that's when culture really suffers because it becomes quite toxic.

What's that? Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

And it's so precious. Culture, it's, it's My goodness, it's as Precious as my 10 year old.

It literally is moving to the other end of the stick and looking back on the, the numbers and my stupid question before about what is number one, speaking of R.E.M. So one of the surprising things I thought out of the report is that salary budgets are basically at a five year low.They're only looking to go up one and a half to 2% in the next year. Why? What's going on?

Yeah, basically over the last five years the salary budgets have come down. We've had a spike in Covid where it hit over sort of around the 5% mark in that 2021, 22, but it's really gone down significant.It really just comes down to the macroeconomic market as well as confidence, geopolitical unrest. Obviously we've got so many different conflicts and it's just the movement and confidence of cash. So everything is tightened up.So whether you're in a fund manager where you've got so much market and margin squeeze that you're needing to compress your expenses, it's just happening everywhere. I also think why this is, this has occurred as well is because in Covid, businesses overspent on their, their payroll.So I don't know if you remember 2021, early 2022, you know, people asking for massive 35 to 40% pay jumps. So if you were moving around that time, our data suggests it was about 36% average pay jump in that pocket.If you was, if you were, you're an incumbent.One of the biggest challenges companies found is that they didn't know how to normalize your wages because they would be bringing these people in at a much bigger salary. So I actually think it's a combination overspend, just less OPEX budget for salaries.And of course the obvious is that at the moment you've got all of these recruitment phrases which they don't necessarily advertise, but trust me, they're there. It does mean that our contractor book and contractors that's gone up quite substantially because there is still work that has to be done before.We kind of know how that the future state looks.

But people don't want it on their balance sheet. So they're doing contractors and short term gigs.But are there any roles where it's still a good time to be looking for a new job that you know, becoming harder to fill?

Yes, absolutely. And I found this in the GFC and I found this any, any time of downturns is absolutely.So if I start with the technical side, we're still seeing people command really high day rates on, you know, really big complex programs of work, whether that's separations or of course, mergers and, and, and really, really highly complex pieces of work like custodian changes and SFTs. You know, you're talking about commanding serious money still in that area that has not slowed down.And we have a series of people that do that with us. And for us, you've then got the permanent work that we're doing, which is basically your GM level. So these are your real people leaders.The level that actually interestingly has very much thinned out over the last couple of years where they've taken roles out of that senior level and almost junior surprise them. They're actually something that's, that that's coming certainly coming back for us, which are senior roles. So, so this is, this isn't your exec.This is, you know, you real senior heads off really. And then the, the final part is in data. I mean of course it's in AI and of course it's in that area in cyber.And of course that, that is not what we, we inherently recruit for. But the data side has really, really come back with a vengeance.And it's not, it's not your standard data engineer, although I have a lot of respect for those people. It's more your change agents that sit with the business that are data strategists.

Right.

They're the ones that we've done a truckload of work for as well.

So these are the folks who can actually use the data to run a marketing campaign or plan a marketing strategy or analyze member sentiment, perform member insights, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, and they're also the one. And they also lift that up as well. So what they do is they look at the data from an enterprise level as well.And so they're actually working with the people that you just mentioned. So they, they can be the ones that are almost enterprise data strategists. And they're also punchy in terms of salaries as well.

Okay.

Yeah, I'll bet there's not many people actually who are really great at data and really great at data and really great at strategy and able to sort of deal with a C suite and operate at an enterprise level.

They are thin on the ground nine in the country and everyone wants them for 100 grand less than what they're earning, of course, but different story.

And how does that work, Victoria?

If I wanted to progress into that type of role other, you know, obviously having experience in that role for, you know, a Big bank or an insurance company would be great. But if I'm wanting, I'm aspiring to that.Are there certain qualifications or platforms and data technologies I can build my experience with in order to progress into those kind of highly sought after roles?

Yeah, absolutely. And that is a great question. We get asked a lot.So the reality is to get that level there's a lot more of the human skills and stakeholder management, which is something typically a course won't, won't help with. However, sponsorship and mentorship is critical for those data individuals.So making sure you've got the right sponsors that understand what your aspirations are and the mentors in place to, to help guide you there. So that's, that is one, one thing that I think a lot of people go straight to education and they do remote Harvard work.They're doing lots of things with unsw. I'm, I'm loving some of these courses by the way. There's a lot of free ST out there, which I think is incredible, especially with data and AI.I think it's just making sure that you're doing a balance. There isn't, there's not one holy growl. Although they all say that, I'm sure.But as headhunters we really value, we value the adaptability and one of the, the signposts for adaptability is curiosity and learning.

Absolutely.

So that, that would be the signpost. The sponsorship and mentorship stuff is just incredibly underra, especially in that data space.For whatever reason, it's not prioritized like it should be. Whereas you see the marketers of the world, they've now that mentorship, they've now the sponsorship.Well, well, let's say sponsorship, but mentorship, they're now. Whereas the, the data scientists are just a bit behind the eight ball as a rule.I'm not saying everyone, of course, but as a rule they're a bit behind the eight ball, I think on the sponsorship and mentorship side.

Yeah, interesting.

And do you mean as a group of people or do you mean more like.If I'm a data scientist and I'm thinking what I really want to be doing is running this whole ship, it sort of doesn't occur to me that finding a mentor and trying to get some sponsorship might be a good move, but I'll go and learn 15 new programming languages and I'll, you know, do all those things and. But people higher up the tree are still like, well, I don't really know what those things are anyway and I don't really care.

Yeah, it's the value we place on them and also that self awareness, do we need them?You know, there's also a lot of blind spots that we all have in terms of, you know, a lot of people just think do your job, get your head down and I'll be noticed. And frankly that hasn't been good enough for 10 years and it's certainly not going to be good enough for the next 10. So the data.And look, I'm talking, I mean this is, this is quite unfair. I'm talking about a whole frigging job family. So I have to caveat that this is.But the, our experience of, of hiring many, many data professionals is that it is a secondary thing that they might get to if it's sort of called out.And so we just try and encourage them to look at their whole self in terms of your education, your technical ability, but also your human, your human skills and stakeholder skills.

Speaking of that sort of second, second order of skills and things. One thing I've noticed, if you ask one data scientist, they'll ask another data scientist so they won't get that outside view.And at a macro level we see that in super quite a bit.Everyone's in super and they just move around from one fund to another and we don't get very much new ideas and new ways of thinking coming in from other, other industries, other verticals, other ways of thinking. Do you, do you see that when you're, when you're placing people 100% and.

It's not just data, by the way. Super. And no, no, I don't just mean superannuation.Investment management is the worst I think for looking, not looking outside of their domain and it's because they, they often can't because it's just so technical.You know, if you're in a fundy and you're, you're looking for someone that's going to, to be not too senior because you can probably get away with it too sooner. But there's also other challenges with that because you know, the fund managers just don't respect people that aren't technical.And you know, there's other issues there. No, they don't.But super is similar like so, you know, a few years back and I haven't got the names to hand, but a few years back two or three of the funds actually went outside of superannuation. They took people well outside of the industry and they put them in at quite a senior level.So technically you shouldn't need to be technical, you know, day to day and for two out of three of those senior hires, it didn't work. One remains in our world and I think he's doing incredible. But my goodness, they've had to work incredibly hard to get the credibility.The thing as you guys know way more than I do.It's just the complexity and the legacy of the super and wealth management industry and incredibly frustrating for our clients to feel like they have to onboard someone with the domain expertise. They don't, you know, the job family, they've got that now.But the domain expertise as well as the bringing them into an organization like a super fund and it's just too hard. And so what it means is that we're all in a bit of a vacuum really. Right. You know, you're moving from one fund to another. Same thing.But in this market this is a square peg, square whole market. This is not an innovative, particularly innovative market. Square peg, square hole, square results.

Right.

But it is, it is. But look I'm, I don't, I don't feel in any way negative about this, although I'm, I probably sound a bit negative.I don't feel negative about this because it is a cycle. You learn the cycles and the signposts of the cycles. So you know, the innovation will come back.Square peg, round hole and great results, you know, they will come back.

Yeah. That's interesting. Looking into the industry, there's a lot of regulations and compliance you need to do.But when I think of the great campaigns that are run by Woolworths or Kohl's in supermarkets or in consumer electronics, we're not seeing any of those fresh ideas coming into superannuation and I'd love to see more of that.So yeah, it's maybe just a cycle and I've just got to be watching that cycle unfold over the next couple of years to see that, that level of innovation pick up again.

I think also as well that we've definitely, we've a couple of senior hires that we've done which haven't been in super recently but have been in like a non bank lending and some within services still in insurance. We have taken outside of the industry but we've kept within some core things like the channel of acquisitions. So B2B taking someone from B2C to B2B.Yeah, terrible idea.

I've seen it never works. Yep.

No, and I'm sure someone will come up and say I've done that and you know, but typically we just, we, we find that mentality doesn't work.But no, we have, we have taken some less Square pegs, They're a bit rounded, but they're typically, they're typically looking the same as the whole shape.

Yeah, I'm thinking forward to 2026, Victoria. You know, November, December, it's quite often a great time of year. People are looking for new roles to start kick off a new year.What are the big trends that you see coming? What are the highlights you're looking forward to in 2026? Is AI going to eat the industry?Should we all be looking to pick up skills with artificial intelligence projects? What's coming that we can look forward to from a career perspective?

Yeah, look, I think from a career perspective, we've broken the back of most of the pain. So if you are displaced, you're not in a job that you love and you're actually one of these people that has got one foot out the door.Next year we are seeing the employment market going up. I'm a big data person, so if you look at the seek report, they've actually been an increase in vacancies, which is really good.And then if we talk about some of our data, which we don't release publicly, we actually poll a lot of internal talent acquisition team and they've reported a 15% drop in quality applications, which basically means the pendulum is trending back the other way.So finding quality staff is going to be getting harder and harder, which means there's going to be more work on the market and so there will be less competition for people. And so that's a really good sign. In terms of your reference to AI. It is the only thing people are talking about at the moment.There's just everyone's watching each other, everyone's incubated something because AI is so new, you know, every other bugger feels like they're an expert at it. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of swelling of salaries in AI at the moment. And so it's almost like a force.But what I think will happen certainly in our world is that we will see mid, mid next year, we will see quite dramatic change in productivity and the ways that we're working. I do would like to say though, that the people say to me, oh, you know, do I need to go and do the courses? Do I need to do this? Do I need to do that?The answer is yes. It's not about going into Harvard and doing one of their awesome remote courses, although I really do think it's great because I've just done one.But actually the people that are going to kill it in this transformative market with AI are the ones that can get those fence sitters when it comes to AI and changing the way you're working.It's the influencers can swing those fence sitters because with any kind of change management, you've got the early adopters, you've got the detractors. Ignore both of them. It's the chunk in the middle that are the ones that. Yeah, yeah, they're your big, your big fence sitters.Not all of them, of course. And it's the individuals, whether they're senior, mid level or junior.It's the ones that can get others to change the way they're working and become more adaptable are the ones that will really kill it in this next sort of five to 10 years.

It's a definition of leadership. Those can influence others and help bring them along in the right direction.

It is, I think this is, anyone is going to be able to do this. Whereas leadership, typically you think about sort of people leadership and things like that.This is junior people are going to be able to really progress very well in this market if their core skill is adaptability.

Yeah, I don't think you need a job title to be a leader. I don't think you need to have reporting lines to be a leader. Direct reports like you said.If you're adaptable and you're showing others the way, the way forward, then.

Yeah, totally, yeah, no, absolutely.

It's so interesting because AI is all about computers taking everyone's jobs. Like if you, you know, the people freaking out about it.But actually what we're discussing is the fact that the people who are going to be most successful in this new very computer driven, AI driven era are the people who have the best human skills.

Actually.

Yeah, it's not the tech wizards, although they are incredibly valuable. But no, it's the ones that can, can, can influence and cajole and do that. And like Neil says, it doesn't have to be a job title to do that.

No, no, definitely not.

Victoria, what else is in your report that we ought to know? Any other key highlights and most importantly, where can people go to get a copy of it?

Yes, very important.

Well, there is a link in the file, note in the host notes. I believe what I'd love leaders to take more seriously right now is burnout of themselves and of their teams.This is actually significant fatigue and will actually be not just, you know, mental health claims and time off and things like that. This is actually going to affect a huge amount of people. We've seen an increase in burnout.And we typically do see an increase at the end of the year. And I think because organizations where they do have less budget to play with, you know, typically we're seeing.So I think that's one of the things that leaders should take seriously.I also think that if you look at the data and actually the data for over 10 years is that learning and development and career development is ranked very, very high.So leaders that don't have more than 1.5 to 2% salary increases, they can't give big bonuses, they can't, they can't progress their teams because they're not moving up or out. So their team can't move up or out. I do think the career development piece.So on average career development budget is anything from zero to a couple of grand per person. So obviously it can go up as well. But, but you're typically talking about that is average is about $300 per person career development.And the, the statistics, not our statistics but well known statistics, are that 80% of people won't use their career development and L and D budget. So there's potentially money there. And we know that people really want career development, but they're not using their budget.It's not a leader's responsibility to say hey, you should do this course and then follow them up when they don't do it.But I do think that knowing full well that there is career development there, as long as a leader is sharing that, that, that figure, often they won't know because HR&L and D hold the budget. So it's just been a bit curious about that. Now people are really aware that career development is really important.And then the other one is that attrition is at an all time low and attrition is sub 8% which is voluntary and involuntary. That's not good. Well, in fact that's bad.So you know, obviously as a recruiter, I appreciate, I am super subjective about this subject, but if you just take that out in terms of the fact that, you know, bringing new people in is, you know, innovative and things like that. If you, if you think about people sitting there, so they're sitting there, they can't move up, they can't move across, they can't do anything.They've been sitting there for, you know, years now. They're in a BAU market without budget for innovation, perhaps lots of regulatory reform, just feeling quite stagnant.And our statistics are showing that 78% of people are open to new jobs and 27% of that are actually looking. So you've got people that cannot move internally, cannot move externally, because they're trying to look, but nothing's there.Which will of course change towards the back end of the financial year. But it's just making sure that leaders can try and do their best to really promote internal opportunities.And I don't mean just the comments and physical moving. It could be project work, it could be philanthropy, it could be forums or working groups, it doesn't matter.But something has to be different for their people.

Great. Okay, well, some great tidbits there for anybody looking to progress their career in super this year and next year.Victoria, thanks so much for joining us and sharing.

No problem. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much. This is great.

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