The Expectation Gap Between Employers and Employees

There’s a question that sits quietly in the background for every hiring manager: why do good people leave? It’s tempting to chalk it up to salary. A better offer lands, they take it, and you’re back to square one. 

The data from our 2025-26 NTP Market Insights & Salary Guide paints a more complex picture that reveals a disconnect between leadership and their teams that most companies don’t even realise exists.

The Chasm You Didn’t Know Was There

When we surveyed employees about burnout, 58% identified it as a major factor behind their decision to leave a role. That’s nearly 6 in 10 people telling us they’re running on empty. Now here’s the kicker: only 11% of hiring managers flagged burnout as a reason people move on.

That’s not a gap, that’s a chasm and it’s one of the clearest indicators we’ve seen that the people making hiring and retention decisions aren’t hearing what their teams are actually saying. If you’re a hiring manager relying on gut feel to understand attrition, the data suggests you’re likely missing a significant part of the story.

Money Still Matters

No surprises here: 69% of employees told us that a higher salary elsewhere is a key reason they’d consider leaving. It remains the number one motivator for moving on. But where it gets interesting, is that only 26% of hiring managers identified salary as the primary driver.

That means nearly 7 in 10 employees are motivated by money, while only 1 in 4 managers are hearing it. In a market where top tech and engineering talent is hard-won, that’s a retention problem hiding in plain sight. If you’re not willing to pay people what they’re worth, someone else will, and they probably already are.

Culture Is Closing the Gap on Salary

While salary leads the pack, it’s not operating alone. Organisational culture came in at 65%, sitting almost neck-and-neck with salary as a reason employees choose to leave. Burnout (58%), management style, and lack of flexibility and work-life balance all ranked highly.

This tells us people aren’t just chasing bigger numbers on a payslip, they’re leaving behind cultures that drain them, leaders who don’t inspire them, and environments that don’t respect their time.

If you’re consistently losing strong performers, salary is the first place to look but it’s not the last. You need to take a holistic view, starting with compensation and extending to what the day-to-day experience actually looks like for the people doing the work.

And here’s the critical takeaway: if you can’t win on salary, you must win on culture. 

Because when we remove salary from the equation, culture is the single most important factor people are looking for in an employer.

What Great Culture Actually Looks Like

We’ve got a ping pong table upstairs in the NTP Talent office, but let’s be clear — that’s not what we’re talking about.

When we asked employees to describe their ideal employer, the same themes surfaced consistently:

• Flexible working arrangements that genuinely support work-life balance. 
• Strong leadership with clear strategy and direction. 
• A positive working environment, the kind where you actually look forward to being in the office.

These are the building blocks. Great culture is about leaders you trust, an environment where you feel respected, a company with a genuine moral compass, and a place where you feel connected to the work you’re doing. It’s about real support for how people live their lives outside of work — not lip service on a careers page.

The Benefits Landscape Has Shifted

Attracting top talent starts well before the interview. It starts with what you’re offering, and what candidates valued last year isn’t necessarily what’s driving their decisions today.

The biggest surprise from our data was that salary packaging options surged to 81% appeal among job seekers, a jump of 43% from 2024. At the same time, remote and hybrid working options as a top-tier benefit fell by 48% compared to the previous year.

In a tighter economy, candidates are gravitating toward practical financial perks that put more money in their pocket right now. Salary packaging (where employees can pay for things like a car, laptop, or additional superannuation contributions from pre-tax income) delivers a tangible, immediate financial benefit. It’s a relatively straightforward lever for employers to pull, and it’s clearly resonating.

Now, before anyone reads this as a green light for a full return-to-office mandate, hold on. Flexibility hasn’t gone away. 78% of tech professionals still prefer a hybrid model that balances office time with remote work. The shift is more nuanced: remote work has moved from being the non-negotiable dealbreaker to being one important factor among several.

Just twelve months ago, 60% of professionals said they would flat-out reject an office-only role. Today, that number has dropped to just 15%. Candidate priorities are recalibrating with the market in real time, and your benefits strategy needs to keep pace.

Your Employer Brand Is Working Before You Are

Here’s something worth sitting with: before a candidate even hits “apply”, they’ve already formed an opinion about you. They’re checking your website. They’re scrolling your LinkedIn. They’re reading the reviews, the good, the bad, and everything in between. And perhaps most powerfully, they’re asking people they trust what it’s actually like to work for you.

Your employer brand is the sum of all of these touchpoints. It’s the story being told about what it’s really like inside your organisation built from your culture, the benefits you offer, and the quality of your leadership. That story is being written every single day, whether you’re actively shaping it or not.

If you’re finding it difficult to fill roles, it might be time for a brand audit. How does your company present itself to potential employees, both online and through the people who’ve worked with you?

The Question That Matters

If your dream hire went and researched your company right now, what would they find?

Does it reflect the culture you’re building? Does it highlight what you offer? Does it show the kind of leadership that makes people want to stay? Because in this market, that story is what determines who even bothers to knock on your door.

These insights are drawn from the 2025–26 NTP Market Insights & Salary Guide, our annual deep dive into what’s shaping hiring, retention, and compensation across Australia’s technology and engineering sectors.

Download the full Salary Guide

Want to talk through what this means for your team? Our specialist technology and engineering recruiters live and breathe this market. We’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch with NTP Talent