2027 starts in November

On Melbourne Cup Day the Reserve Bank raised rates for the fifth time this year. Real wages are still going backwards, and draft laws would change what you can put in an employment contract. Each of those lands on a people decision you will make before Christmas.

December is when budgets get locked and leaders switch off. January brings back a team that has spent the break thinking about what they want next.

The organisations that start 2027 well will make a handful of people decisions in November. This is a short guide to them.

The year you’re planning for

Australians are staying put. Just 7.2% of employed people changed employer in the year to February 2026, down from 7.7% the year before. Of everyone who left or lost a job, only a quarter did so to get a better one or simply for a change, down from a third in 2023.

That has not made hiring easy where it counts. Jobs and Skills Australia’s June quarter survey put the national fill rate at 69.1%, up slightly on the quarter but still a point lower than a year earlier. Skill Level 3 roles, mostly technicians and trades, remain the hardest to fill, at just 55.5% in the March quarter.

And pay remains the pressure point. Wages rose 3.2% over the year to June, but after inflation, real wages fell 0.8%. Unemployment rose to 4.7% in September, and on 3 November the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.85%, the highest level since 2008.

Put those together and low turnover starts to look less like loyalty and more like caution. Many people have stayed because moving felt risky, not because they are committed. 2027 could change that calculation, and one reason is a law designed to make moving easier.

1. Check your contracts before the rules change

On 7 September, the Government released draft legislation, the Competition and Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Banning Unfair Non-Competes) Bill 2026. As currently drafted, it would:

• Ban non-compete clauses for employees earning at or below the high-income threshold, which is $190,100 this financial year, and for casual employees regardless of earnings.
• Ban co-worker non-solicitation clauses for every employee, at any salary. These are the clauses that stop a departing employee from taking colleagues with them.
• Ban cascading restraints, the stepped 12-month, 6-month, 3-month style of clause, and limit any remaining restraint to protecting confidential information and client relationships.
• Make no-poach and wage-fixing agreements between businesses a form of cartel conduct.

That sounds like plenty of time. Three details in the draft suggest otherwise:

• Changing a contract can bring it under the new rules. Existing restraints would generally keep applying, but if an employment arrangement is varied after the law starts, even for a reason unrelated to the restraint, the restraint is assessed under the new regime. Promotions and role changes in 2027 are the obvious triggers.
• It is not just the contract. The draft covers workplace policies, deeds and side arrangements, and terms in enterprise agreements, so a restraint buried in a policy manual counts too.
• Including a banned clause would itself be a breach once the penalties apply, even if you never try to enforce it.

2. If you can’t restrain them, retain them

One line in the draft deserves attention. Courts have previously accepted ‘maintaining a stable workforce’ as a business interest a restraint could protect. Under the draft, it would not be. Keeping good people would rest where it arguably always belonged: on whether they want to stay.

Start with succession. For every critical role, ask two questions. If this person resigned tomorrow, is anyone ready now? If not, is anyone ready within twelve months? If the answer to both is no, that role is your biggest 2027 risk, and it will not show up in any budget spreadsheet.

Our consultants often see resignations land in the first weeks of the new year, once people have had the break to think about what they want. A succession plan made in November means a January resignation is a transition, not a crisis.

Then ask your people what would keep them. A short engagement or stay survey in November gets honest answers before everyone switches off for summer, and it tells you where the risk sits while there is still time to act on it. Tools like Tandem Surveys and Meloplan let you run the survey and set 2027 goals in one place.

3. Set your 2027 pay budget on real numbers

Large pay rises have become less common. In the June quarter, 79% of jobs had a wage change of less than 4% over the year, the largest share since 2022. With real wages still behind prices, that creates an opportunity as much as a risk: a well-targeted increase for the roles you cannot afford to lose now stands out more than it would have two years ago.

So budget by role, not by flat percentage. Identify the people and skills that are hardest to replace, check their pay against the current market, and put the money there first. A 3% rise across the board can leave your hardest-to-replace people feeling no different from everyone else, which is exactly the feeling that turns a January rethink into a resignation.

4. Forecast headcount and skills together

Headcount tells you how many people you need. Skills tell you which people. And the roles themselves are moving: globally, among employers planning to add staff this quarter, 62% say the main reason is changing roles and skills, ahead of expansion or backfilling.

Start with what you already know: growth you have committed to, contracts ending, parental leave, flagged retirements. Then sort every role into one of three groups:

• Must be filled by the end of March. These need action now.
• Can wait until mid-year. Plan and budget them, but do not rush them.
• Could be filled differently. An internal move, a development plan, a contractor or an outsourced function may do the job better than a permanent hire.

For each skills gap, there are three options: build it through training, borrow it through a contractor or consultant, or buy it through a hire. Most businesses default to buying. Building is often cheaper, and it is one of the strongest retention tools you have. Do this before the budget is signed off, not after. A headcount number without a plan behind it is the first thing cut in February.

5. Roles you need by February

In October, we set out why a February start needs a decision now. In November, the same arithmetic still works, just. A search opened this month can produce an offer before the shutdown, with notice periods putting the start date in February or March.

Wait until January and you are recruiting when applications per job ad are at their seasonal high. That means more screening, more competition from every business that waited, and a start date drifting towards April.

The plan you make before Christmas

None of this needs to be complicated. Before the break:

Two or three focused conversations in November can save months of scrambling in the new year.

2027 doesn’t start on 1 January. For the businesses that get it right, it starts now.