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Episode 140 - How much unpaid overtime do recruiters work?
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Episode 140 covers news outlining who are the largest staffing firms in Australia by revenue, an acquisition by Norwest Recruitment and latest WEGA data. The government cutting jobs and sad news about a pioneer of the recruitment industry, Reed looses it's founder.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:00:08
Speaker
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00:00:23
Speaker
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Recruitment News Australia: December 9, 2025
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. This is the news for the 9th of December 2025. Ross And I'm Adele Last.
Australia's Largest Staffing Firms in 2024
00:00:39
Speaker
Hayes ranked as the largest staffing firm in Australia according to a new report by staffing industry analysts. Overall, the report listed 30 Australia-based staffing firms with annual revenue exceeding $75 million. dollars Those firms generated $17.6 billion in 2024, accounting for 39% of the market according to the report.
00:01:03
Speaker
Australia's staffing market ranks as the sixth largest in the world, with revenue of $45 billion dollars in 2024, down 5% on the 2023 result.
00:01:15
Speaker
The five largest staffing firms in Australia based on 2024 staffing revenue are Hayes at $2.23 billion, Recruit, the Japan-based owner of Chandler McLeod and People Bank, $1.95 billion, Persol, the Japan-based owner of Persol Australia and ProGrant, at $1.75 billion,
00:01:37
Speaker
Randstad, the Amsterdam-based owner of Randstad Australia, at $1.6 billion. And the only one listed on the Australian stock exchange, PeopleIn, at $1.14 billion.
PeopleIn's Divestment in TechForce
00:01:50
Speaker
And speaking of PeopleIn, Adele, a couple of weeks ago, they announced a binding agreement to divest its 79.3% stake in tech force personnel for million, dollars with the deal expected to be completed by the end of next weak In the statement released to the ASX, PeopleIn said since acquiring its stake in TechForce over four years ago, the company has almost doubled its earnings and the transaction has been strategically timed at a high point, realizing a more than 100% return on investment over the four years of PeopleIn's ownership.
00:02:30
Speaker
According to statements at the time of the acquisition, so these were statements I found on Shortlist in mid-2021, TechForce's owner and CEO Justin McNichol retained a 20.7% stake in the company. And at the time of the acquisition, he received $13.4 million up front, with an additional $13.1 million dollars in cash plus quarter of a million dollars in people in shares and an additional $2.72 million to be payable as deferred cash consideration subject to agreed post-completion transition arrangements.
Financial Discrepancies in TechForce Sale
00:03:11
Speaker
Hang on, Ross. If my maths is correct there, that sounds like they are selling the company now for less than what they bought it for previously.
00:03:20
Speaker
Well, that would seem to be the case. It would seem to be like there's there's something that I'm a bit puzzled by because just basically adding up what was announced at the time of the acquisition, people in paid approximately $28 million dollars in total, which would seem to be about right because at the time of the acquisition, they said the tech force would add about $5 to $5.5 million dollars in EBITDA per annum.
00:03:52
Speaker
So that means to me, if you use a multiple of about sort of $5 to $5.5, then that $28 million probably sounds about right. Yet,
00:04:05
Speaker
They're now saying they're selling for $23.5 million, which is about a $5 million loss. And yet they're saying they've made 100% on the deal. So something's not right somewhere.
00:04:20
Speaker
Do we know who's purchasing TechForce?
Speculation on TechForce's Future Ownership
00:04:23
Speaker
No statement was made about the new owner or the acquiring entity.
00:04:33
Speaker
I'm going to guess, and it is purely a guess, I'm suspecting they've probably sold the business back to Justin McNichol, either completely or Justin McNichol and other investors. that That would be my guess.
00:04:51
Speaker
Okay. So watch this space. Yes, watch this space. There may be more information released once the deal has been completed.
Norwest Recruitment Acquires Trace Personnel
00:05:00
Speaker
And in other acquisition news, Norwest Recruitment has acquired trace personnel, according to announcement issued by both businesses last week. Trace personnel based in the Sydney CBD was established by Tracey Sheehan in early 2001 and specialised in accounting, credit and other finance roles.
00:05:19
Speaker
And Norwest Recruitment was established in mid-2002 Borkham Hills, and provides a range of accounting and other white collar recruitment services in Sydney's Northwest.
00:05:30
Speaker
Erica Westbury is Norwest's owner and managing director. Based on Tracy Sheehan's LinkedIn profile, it appears she's not moving into an operational role within the merged businesses and combined the entity will now have 15 employees.
Gender Pay Gap Analysis
00:05:46
Speaker
right, Adele, let's get into the latest Workplace Gender Equality Agency scorecard. It was released late last month. More than 8,200 employers reported in, covering over just under five and a half million Australian workers. So it's a huge data set.
00:06:05
Speaker
That really is. And the headline is that the gender pay gap has narrowed, but only slightly. It dropped 0.7 percentage points, now sitting 21.1%.
00:06:16
Speaker
which means that for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns 78.9 cents on average. So over a year, the difference is just under $28,500. So not small change.
00:06:34
Speaker
No, that's not. That's essentially a car, a deposit, school fees. it could be life impactful, in fact. What caught my eye was the breakdown by state and territory. Every region... Reduced its gap, but WA still has the biggest one at 28.8%, while Tasmania sits lowest at 10.6%.
00:06:54
Speaker
Well, WA is always an outlier, no surprise here. Mining, construction, heavily male-dominated industries dominate in the West, and they are obviously responsible for that difference. Speaking of differences, um the differences in discretionary payments pretty wild, Adele. Men earn 60% more than women in bonuses, allowances and overtime.
00:07:21
Speaker
And those payments make up 12% of men's total remuneration compared to only 6% for women. So even when base salaries look closer, all the extras seem to be widening that gap again.
00:07:34
Speaker
There is one area that's improving, parental leave. Men are taking more of the primary carer leave. So 20% of all primary carer leave now is taken by men and that's up three percentage points in a year.
00:07:48
Speaker
Well, that is good to see. When men take leave, workplaces get better at normalising flexibility and it definitely reduces the career penalty on women. Absolutely. But leadership numbers, well, mixed bag. Women are 22% of CEOs, no change in a year, slight movement in the layers below. Women make up 39% of key management personnel and 43% of managers.
00:08:12
Speaker
Still, even when women reach the top, they're paid less. Women CEOs earn $83,493 less in base salary than male CEOs,
00:08:21
Speaker
four hundred and ninety three dollars less in base salary than male ceos Add bonuses and super and that gap seems to blow out to $185,000. Wow, that's that's pretty staggering. Same role, same responsibility, but very different pay packet.
00:08:39
Speaker
Well, probably you know no surprise when two out of three employees work in organisations dominated by one gender. And this, of course, will then feed into culture, opportunity, pay structures.
00:08:51
Speaker
I mean, boards reflect that fact as well. Women only hold one third of board seats, 21% chair roles, but of boards remain a sausage fest. So no women in that group yeah in 2025. It's honestly unbelievable. Yeah, but's that's for sure. And here's the kicker.
00:09:14
Speaker
Half of employers reporting have a gender pay gap above 11.2% and only 22.5% of employers fall within the target range of a gender but pay gap of minus 5% to plus 5%.
00:09:29
Speaker
So while the government would like to show a national number that's improving, the employer level reality is patchy at best and in many cases really nowhere near equitable. Yep. Really highlights progress is happening, but it's slow and it's definitely not evenly distributed.
Compliance Issues and Worker Recovery
00:09:45
Speaker
Adele, let's jump to the Fair Work Ombudsman's latest enforcement press release. More than $70,000 in back pay has been recovered for underpaid workers and almost $77,000 in fines has been slapped on employers, mainly for payslip and record-keeping breaches.
00:10:02
Speaker
And all of this came out of surprise inspections in some of the least compliant horticultural regions, the Riverina in southern New South Wales and Coffs Harbour in northern New South Wales, as well as Victoria's Sunraysia district. These areas have been flagged for years.
00:10:21
Speaker
The FWO said a lot of these workers are vulnerable visa holders, which makes proper pay and record keeping even more crucial. Exactly. And the Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth commented that most of the back pay and fines were incurred by labour hire providers, not the growers themselves, although some growers were caught out to.
00:10:42
Speaker
And her warning was pretty sharp. Some growers seem to think they can outsource compliance to dodgy labour hire operators. As we know in the recruitment sector, you can't.
Government Savings and Public Sector Changes
00:10:51
Speaker
Now, shifting gears to Dirl Victoria's independent review of the public service.
00:10:56
Speaker
Final report is out and it's huge identifying nearly $5 billion dollars in savings over four years. Central to that is a reduction of more than 2,000 full-time equivalent positions. It's a structural rethink, not just trimming around the edges. Yeah, the review called Independent Review of the Victorian Public Service, led by Helen Silver, says the VPS has become top heavy since the pandemic. Too many senior roles, too many fat cats, too much bureaucracy.
00:11:28
Speaker
So the recommendations go straight for the leadership layers. An immediate cut of 332 senior executive and specialist roles. That's an attempt to reset the executive to staff ratio back to 2019 levels.
00:11:40
Speaker
Then there's also a mid-tier shake-up she's proposing, reducing VPS5 and VPS6 roles and redistributing work downwards. She's saying it probably won't reduce total headcount in that ban, but it should save around $125 million dollars through reclassification. Massive part of the reform is public entity consolidation. I found this interesting. Victoria has over 500 public entities and the report basically says that's too many. They recommend abolishing or merging 78 entities and scrapping up to 90 advisory committees. That alone cuts 536 ongoing FTE.
00:12:19
Speaker
Plus digital transformation, AI, shared services, digitised processes, predicting 197 FTE reduction. And the portfolio specific reforms add 384 more fte cuts. That includes pausing early learning centre construction, reducing industry support duplication and ending programs like doctors in secondary schools and COVID special leave.
00:12:44
Speaker
And finally, Sir Alec Reid, founder of one of the yeah UK's largest recruitment businesses, the Reid Group, passed away last week at the age of 91.
Tribute to Sir Alec Reid
00:12:53
Speaker
Reid began his career in 1960, setting up his company with just £75 and grew it into a significant global recruiter with over four and a half thousand employees and an annual turnover of over one billion pounds sterling. Despite the company's expansion into Australia, it didn't really work and they shut the local operation around a decade ago Known for his philanthropic work, Sir Alec donated an incredible, nearly 350 million pounds to different causes, including women's rights, addiction recovery, education and the arts.
00:13:34
Speaker
The two biggest high street agencies in u k the UK in the and 1980s, Hayes and Reid, have now sadly lost their founders in 2025. And that's the news for the 9th of December 2025. Stay tuned now for question of the week.
Unpaid Overtime: Past and Present
00:13:59
Speaker
Question of the week. How much unpaid overtime do recruiters work? This is an interesting question, Ross. Where does it come from? The Centre for Future Work have released the results of research, which says the average Australian worker logs nearly 3.6 hours of unpaid overtime every week, which equates to four and a half full-time work weeks of unpaid labour every year.
00:14:26
Speaker
And it had me wonder because back in the day when I was a desk level recruiter, I did a lot of overtime, a lot. And I think it's changed, but I'm not sure. So what do you reckon?
00:14:41
Speaker
Are recruiters working a lot of unpaid overtime these days, Adele? That seems pretty logical to me or reasonable to me in terms of that number. Kind of that three, three and a half hours extra a week would sound about right to me if you just asked me anecdotally. i think that it has had an evolution, let's say. i agree with you that i think back in the day that extra hours that were unpaid were completely normal. Mm-hmm.
00:15:15
Speaker
Well, I worked a lot of hours, so I don't know about you, but I was getting to the office at Between 7.30 and quarter to eight in the morning, there was an eight o'clock vacant job meeting and I was leaving at the earliest at 5.30, typically between 5.30, quarter to six. I was typically having lunch at my desk. I certainly wasn't taking a full hour unless I had an errand to run.
00:15:38
Speaker
i would suggest, I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say that I was working an average week that was probably closer to 55 hours hours rather than 38. Torture a slave camp by the sounds of it, Ross. Terrible. Well, it was normal.
00:16:00
Speaker
Like it was normal to me. i honestly don't recall thinking anything of it. I mean, you're quite a bit younger than me. So what was your experience when you first started and how did that change, if at all?
00:16:13
Speaker
Well, it wasn't dissimilar. I agree. There was a requirement that you were at your desk at a certain period of time. And we're going to, um you know, there'll be screams of shock from our younger listeners, I'm sure, when they hear this. But you had to be sitting at your desk at 8.30 and that means you were ready to go. So no getting up five minutes later and making a coffee or having a chat with a colleague. You had to have done all of that stuff.
00:16:36
Speaker
sit down, ready to start work at 8.30 and you worked through usually until at least 5.30. 8.30 to 5.30 was pretty standard hours and I agree with you. Lunch breaks were pretty rare. We ate at our desk unless you had somewhere that you needed to be and that was the norm. You know you really ah needed to put in those hours in order to get the job done, so to speak. But I think there was a bit of that perception too. I do recall, you know, finishing earlier in terms of the things I needed to do that day, but there was real reluctance to leave any earlier than your boss. you You didn't want to get up and start packing up until your boss kind of looked like they were packing up or that, you know, they'd given the nod. So i think that has changed in more recent times. I'm pleased to say I think that it isn't the case that, You have to be at your desk for a certain number of hours in order to look like you're working hard. But I think it probably gives maybe, again, younger listeners a little window into what their boss came from and why maybe they're so crazy about the hours that we are working.
Cultural Shifts in Recruitment Work Hours
00:17:39
Speaker
no not ah not Look, um'm no doubt it was cultural. I mean, I worked fewer hours than people at Michael Page. Their ads, their display ads were very clear that you could contact the relevant consultant between 8am and 7pm. Although I will hasten to say this was in the era before mobile phones were prevalent and everyone had one. So you really did need to be at your desk to take calls and clearly that's changed now that people have mobile numbers and it's been that way for, I don't know, two and a half decades. so Maybe we should we should clarify this at the desk or the client, you know, available to your client from 8am to 7pm. Yes, as you're saying, you had to be at the desk because the client was calling on the landline. But being at your desk and working may be two different things. like Yes, well. Bottles of wine were open, I think, around five o'clock from my memory. You know, how much work was getting done in those last couple of hours?
00:18:37
Speaker
Well, I don't know. One of my former colleagues went to work at Michael Page and she said pretty much nothing happened after six o'clock. You're just waiting to get to seven. But she said it was serious. Like you really had to be there until 7pm, except probably Friday and they'd go to the pub early. But I mean, that's...
00:18:57
Speaker
That was not uncommon. I won't say 11-hour days, but that was all as result of the London recruiters coming to Australia and effectively imposing London hours in an Australian work environment. And I don't know when Michael Page stopped doing that, but I suspect they probably lost quite a few consultants who were like, I'm happy to work to 5.30, but I'm not going to work till 7 o'clock at night. Let's hope they're not still enforcing it, poor Michael Page recruiters. But... Yeah, I agree. I think it's a cultural thing that's come potentially from the London kind of style of working. And nowadays, obviously, you don't need to be at the office in order to continue working. with flexible work arrangements and hybrid working and working from home, obviously, there is greater opportunity for recruiters to be working extra hours, working over time,
00:19:52
Speaker
being paid for it still. I don't see that's happening, but to, you know, have that flexibility to be able to do it at times that suit them. And I mean, it clearly varies in terms of hours according to the sector that you're in. I mean, teacher recruitment, I know filling locum jobs where teachers are casual relief teachers, people who work in that sector start at 6am typically because that's when they're getting calls from principals for bookings. And I'd imagine nursing, it's kind of not too dissimilar and labour hire, I'd imagine nursing that when you're in industrial, you're starting at, don't know, you're working tradies hours, 7am to 3pm? What's your experience of that? Yeah, I've done a big ah portion of my career in that blue collar space. And we did have people that were were required to start earlier in order to match client hours. So they might have clients that started shifts at as early as, you know, 5 or 6am. And that recruiter needed to be available because if a candidate was going to call in sick or was going to not show for a shift, they need to be able to refill the shift. So it was a dilemma we had to address in recruit in recruitment, in blue collar, in that space of allowing recruiters to be able to start earlier and finish earlier. It was usually that kind of situation or time in lieu, potentially, if they ended up working a full day, they were able to, you know, have some flexibility the next day or at another time, that kind of, of their choosing. But again, um very rarely have I ever seen it being paid as overtime.
00:21:30
Speaker
Right. And do you think it makes a difference as to how much you can earn in commission? Because in my day, the fact that I was getting paid commissions or bonuses to deliver results meant that I'm doing the hours to make sure that I could fill the jobs. And even though as a temp recruiter, I didn't have to meet candidates for interviews as early as late as later some of my perm colleagues, it certainly was an incentive for me. But I know certainly talking to some recruitment agency owners, they still seem to think that even that incentive doesn't have recruiters want to work more than seven and a half, eight hours a day.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well, again, I think this speaks to the cultural and and social change that we've gone through, you know, as a society in moving away from this idea that, well, if you're going to be paid for it, what's the problem? You know, if you're going to get the bonus and you're going to get the extra um commission, then what's the problem that you're being asked to work back or that you're required to work back? And society's shifted in that sense of saying that isn't worth it. The money perhaps isn't worth it. And this is the The argument that probably goes on, um maybe not directly, but, you know, that the tug, the pull push and pull that goes on in many agencies, I'm sure even today, of agency owners who may have come from the old school way, the way we're describing when we started, versus new recruiters coming into the industry with a completely realistic societal norm of going, I don't want to work that hard. i'm happy to not be paid that much and have better balance. And this is this is the struggle that
Conclusion: Unpaid Overtime in Recruitment
00:23:08
Speaker
we see.
00:23:08
Speaker
I think with our question of how much unpaid overtime do recruiters work, I think the answer to our question is we're aware it's probably on par with that average from the study of around at least three hours a week. You know, will it ever become paid? Probably not in our lifetime.
00:23:25
Speaker
No, i certainly don't think so.