21 Influential Leaders in HR in Education in Australia and New Zealand

Last updated: June 2026

The people and culture professionals leading HR inside Australia and New Zealand's education sector carry some of the most complex workforce challenges of any industry. They manage enterprise bargaining for workforces that can number in the tens of thousands. They build staff cultures inside institutions where the product is education itself, meaning every dimension of how people are led and supported shows up directly in student outcomes. They navigate psychosocial safety obligations, chronic recruitment pressure, and the structural tension between professional autonomy and organisational accountability.

As of June 2026, the education and training industry in Australia employs approximately 663,600 workers in school education alone, according to Jobs and Skills Australia data as of February 2026, making it one of the largest employing sectors in the country. That workforce has grown by 52,800 workers, or 4.2 per cent, over the past year. Globally, Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report documented that global employee engagement fell to 20 per cent in 2025, its lowest level since 2020. Education is not immune to that trend, and the leaders in this directory are on the front line of addressing it.

This directory profiles 21 people shaping the HR, workforce, and people culture conversation in Australian and New Zealand education. The list spans HR practitioners serving inside education organisations, union leaders whose work directly defines the workforce conditions of hundreds of thousands of educators, professional body leaders shaping HR practice across the sector, and academic researchers whose work informs how organisations understand and manage people. Every entry was confirmed against a primary source dated within the past 12 months.

Book Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold) and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, to facilitate a leadership offsite, Working Genius workshop, or keynote for your school, university, or TAFE leadership team. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why HR in Education Matters

Effective people strategy inside education organisations is not a back-office function. It is the mechanism through which institutions attract and develop the educators, researchers, and support staff whose work determines what students experience every day. When HR in education works well, schools and universities build cultures that retain their best teachers and academics. When it does not, the cost is measured in staff turnover, workload unsustainability, and reduced quality of learning.

The specific conditions of the education sector make this work genuinely distinct from general HR practice. Teacher and academic workforce shortages are structural, not cyclical, with the New Zealand Ministry of Education projecting shortages in multiple regions through 2026 and beyond. Enterprise bargaining in the sector involves complex multi-party negotiations with strong unions, long lead times, and outcomes that affect working conditions for years. Psychosocial safety obligations under model Work Health and Safety laws have created significant new compliance demands, particularly in sectors where emotional labour is high. And the vocational and higher education sectors are navigating simultaneous financial pressure, international student cap changes, and workforce transformation driven by artificial intelligence.

How This List Was Compiled

Each person on this list was selected for a documented, fact-checked contribution to HR, workforce strategy, or people and culture in the Australian and New Zealand education sector, confirmed within the past 12 months. The list spans four categories: HR and people and culture practitioners currently serving inside education organisations; union leaders whose industrial work directly defines workforce conditions for educators across the sector; professional body leaders shaping how HR is practised and developed across education; and researchers whose published work on HRM and employment relations is anchored in education institutions. No online activity criterion was applied. Every entry rests on two independent sources.

HR and People and Culture Leaders Inside Education Organisations

The first group in this directory are the HR and people and culture practitioners holding senior roles inside education organisations, from government school departments and universities to TAFE providers, early childhood networks, and independent schools.

1. Shaun Ruming

NSW Department of Education

Shaun Ruming has been Chief People Officer at the NSW Department of Education since November 2022, leading the people function for one of the largest government education employers in Australia. Prior to joining the Department, Ruming held the Chief People Officer role at Pandora Pacific and Greater Asia, and has previous experience including roles at Guardian Childcare and Education and McDonald's. His career has moved across early childhood, retail, and now government education, giving him cross-sector perspective on large-scale HR operations in complex environments.

The HR challenge at the NSW Department of Education is substantial by any measure. The Department operates across thousands of public schools and early childhood services throughout New South Wales, requiring people strategy that can function consistently across metro, regional, and remote settings simultaneously. Ruming's public LinkedIn commentary has addressed the specific skills HR professionals need in transforming industries, including leading cultural change within organisations undergoing significant structural reform, driving leadership capability and succession planning, and using data and insights to influence people decisions at the executive level. That combination of strategic ambition and operational scale defines the CPO role inside a major government education system.

2. Anna Welanyk

New Zealand Ministry of Education

Anna Welanyk leads Te Pou Ohumahi Mätauranga, the Education Workforce group, at the New Zealand Ministry of Education, a role confirmed as part of the Ministry's updated leadership structure effective 2 March 2026. The role carries responsibility for education sector workforce supply and leadership, sector payroll, collective bargaining, and pay equity across New Zealand's schools, kura, and early learning services.

Welanyk's contribution to the education workforce conversation in Aotearoa is among the most publicly documented of any person in this directory. She was cited in RNZ reporting in February 2025 on New Zealand's teacher shortage projections, noting that the Ministry's 2024 forecast identified 2025 as the year of greatest pressure for primary schools and 2026 as the peak demand year for secondary schools. In April 2026, she was quoted on the Ministry's funding of a new aspiring principal leadership programme through Waikato University, describing why principal preparation needed to address the increasing complexity of the role.

3. Alexis Beckwith

University of Melbourne

Alexis Beckwith has been Chief People Officer at the University of Melbourne since November 2023, leading the HR function for one of Australia's most research-intensive universities. She joined the University from Cushman and Wakefield, where she was Head of People for the Asia-Pacific region, responsible for 11,000 employees across the region. Her earlier career included senior HR roles at NBN, Mercy Health, TAL, and other complex organisations across financial services, telecommunications, and health and aged care.

At the University of Melbourne, Beckwith leads a people function spanning academics at the cutting edge of global research, professional services staff, and postgraduate researchers whose conditions sit at the intersection of academic and employment frameworks. The University's own statement on her appointment noted her record in championing diversity and inclusion, Indigenous advancement, and talent and leadership development across complex sectors, and her track record of improving employee engagement and driving large-scale transformational change. Managing people strategy at this level of institutional complexity places her among the most significant HR leaders in Australian higher education.

4. Phillip Vaughan

University of Queensland

Phillip Vaughan has been Chief Human Resources Officer at the University of Queensland since June 2023, returning to UQ after seven years at Monash University, including two years as CHRO there. Before his higher education career, he worked as the Queensland and Northern Territory Industrial Services Officer with the Independent Education Union, which gives him an employment relations background specific to the education sector that is unusual among university HR leaders.

In a March 2024 interview with HRD Australia, Vaughan described his work at UQ across several areas: finalising enterprise agreement negotiations that introduced new cultural leave for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and language allowances; expanding an LGBTQIA+ Ally Network that has been operating for 20 years; launching a new leadership capability framework; and working to close the University's gender pay gap incrementally year on year. His career path through education sector industrial relations before moving into university HR makes him an unusual voice on what it means to understand both sides of the employment relationship in an education context.

5. Kate Witenden

Australian National University

Kate Witenden is Chief People Officer at the Australian National University in Canberra, leading the People and Culture Division for one of Australia's most prestigious research universities. Her role involves setting up ANU staff for success, empowering managers to foster a positive staff experience, and driving excellence across the University's activities. Her name appears on the ANU leadership team list confirmed in a May 2025 open letter from the University's senior leadership team, and she is confirmed as current CPO as of April 2026.

The complexity of the ANU people function reflects the University's distinctive position as a federally funded research university with a strong national security and policy orientation, a highly international academic community, and a workforce operating under significant financial restructuring pressure. The Renew ANU financial sustainability programme, referenced in the May 2025 leadership communication in which Witenden was confirmed as CPO, signals an HR environment that requires navigating major organisational change alongside the standard complexity of research-intensive university employment.

6. Gemma Martin

UNSW Sydney

Gemma Martin is Chief People Officer at UNSW Sydney, one of Australia's leading research universities and consistently ranked in the global top 20 for graduate employment outcomes. The UNSW leadership and governance page confirms the CPO role has been held by Gemma Martin, who has been providing strategic people and culture leadership across the private and public sectors for almost 20 years, with experience spanning learning and development, culture, engagement, workplace relations, data and analytics, workforce strategy, and remuneration and benefits.

In November 2025, the UNSW Vice-Chancellor confirmed in a communication to staff that the University's Insight Survey results, sent together with Chief People Officer Gemma Martin, showed an overall staff engagement rate of 73 per cent, five percentage points higher than the 2023 survey for fixed-term and continuing staff, and nine percentage points above the average for global higher education institutions. Those results reflect a people function actively measuring and moving the needle on staff engagement in a complex institutional environment.

7. Andrew Phipps

University of Auckland

Andrew Phipps has been Director of Human Resources at the University of Auckland, known formally as Waipapa Taumata Rau, since 2013, having previously served as Deputy Director HR from 2007. The University of Auckland is New Zealand's largest university, and its HR function spans recruitment, employee development and training, performance management, compensation and benefits, employee relations, and health, safety and wellbeing. Phipps holds a Master of Social Sciences from the University of Waikato.

The longevity of Andrew Phipps's tenure at the University of Auckland, more than a decade in the Director role, represents a stability in leadership of the people function that is uncommon at this level in higher education. The University of Auckland's complexity as an institution, combining research-intensive activities, a large student population, multiple faculties and professional schools, and the specific obligations of operating within a bicultural Aotearoa New Zealand context, has been navigated consistently over that period.

8. Philip Taylor

Federation University Australia

Philip Taylor is Professor of Human Resource Management at Federation University Australia and the Associate Dean of Research in the Federation Business School. A researcher with more than 30 years of experience as an HRM researcher, policy writer, and adviser on workforce issues, Taylor has written over 160 books, journal articles, book chapters, reports, and commentaries on topics including employer behaviour toward older workers, workforce ageing, and developments in public policy aimed at extending working life. The award of major competitive research grants from the ARC in Australia, the SSHRCC in Canada, and the ESRC in the United Kingdom reflects the quality and international reach of that research contribution.

Taylor's significance for HR in the education context is dual. As a researcher whose work is anchored in a regional Australian university serving communities across Ballarat, Gippsland, and the wider Victorian region, the research questions are locally grounded and nationally relevant. The research areas of workforce ageing and employer behaviour toward older workers are particularly relevant for an education sector navigating teacher shortages partly driven by an ageing profession, and for universities managing academic workforce pipelines with increasing proportions of casual and sessional labour.

9. Julie Tickle

TAFE NSW

Julie Tickle is Chief People and Culture Officer at TAFE NSW, a position she holds having joined the organisation as a teacher in 2002 and progressed through a range of leadership roles over more than two decades. She is responsible for ensuring TAFE NSW operates in a safe, diverse, and inclusive work environment, and oversees the development of a capable workforce through effective people, safety, processes, policies, and programmes. TAFE NSW is one of Australia's largest vocational education and training providers, with more than 130 locations across the state.

The distinctiveness of Tickle's position lies in the career trajectory behind it. Having entered TAFE NSW as a classroom teacher and progressed to the most senior people leadership role in the organisation, she brings a practitioner's understanding of what it means to work in a TAFE environment, not just to manage people within one. That background shapes the credibility with which she can engage with educators and frontline staff on workforce and culture questions. Her appearance before a NSW Parliamentary Committee in 2022 on workforce matters demonstrated a willingness to engage publicly on complex institutional governance and employment questions.

10. Natalie Townsend

Goodstart Early Learning

Natalie Townsend is Chief People and Culture Officer at Goodstart Early Learning, Australia's largest early learning and care provider, operating 644 centres nationally, caring for 70,900 children from 59,500 families, and employing 14,900 people. Townsend leads the people and learning teams at Goodstart, with a stated focus on maintaining an inclusive and thriving environment for both Goodstart staff and the children the organisation serves.

Before joining Goodstart, Townsend served as Chief People Officer at the Residential Tenancies Authority, where she led a major HR transformation and held acting positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Customer Experience Officer, reflecting a depth of executive leadership beyond the people function alone. Her career also spanned roles within the Queensland Public Service, including Queensland Treasury and the Queensland Audit Office, giving her a public-sector employment relations background directly relevant to managing a large, geographically dispersed, purpose-driven workforce.

Hire Jonno White to facilitate a leadership team offsite or Working Genius workshop for your early childhood or education leadership team. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

11. Tina Flyger

Kingswood College

Tina Flyger is Head of People and Culture at Kingswood College, an independent coeducational school in Box Hill, Victoria, serving students from kindergarten to Year 12. She commenced in the role in 2024 and has built a public profile as a practitioner and speaker on what people and culture leadership looks like inside an independent school environment. In September 2025, she co-presented a session with Kingswood College Principal Chrissy Gamble at the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia Biennial Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, titled From Words to Action: Embedding Vision, Mission and Values into School Culture and Strategy.

The content of that presentation signals where Flyger's contribution sits: her work is not just about HR administration inside a school, but about the translation of a school's values and strategic direction into how people are attracted, developed, and led. Kingswood College's Strategic Plan 2025 to 2029 identifies exceptional staff as one of five pillars, and her stated approach, building a high-performing team with an unwavering commitment to placing students at the heart of what the school does, connects people strategy to educational purpose in a way that is distinctive within the independent school context.

12. Victoria Park

Newington College

Victoria Park joined Newington College, an independent school for boys in Sydney, as Director of People and Culture in September 2025, bringing more than 20 years of experience across leadership consulting, diversity and inclusion, and human resources strategy. She joined Newington from Symmetra, an inclusion and culture consulting firm, where she had been Executive Director of Leadership and Culture Consulting, working with organisations across Australia and internationally on inclusion and culture transformation. Earlier roles included work at PwC Australia and Grace Papers, a workplace gender equity platform.

The particular combination of inclusion expertise, leadership consulting experience, and strategic HR background that Victoria Park brings to Newington College reflects a growing expectation within independent schools that the head of people and culture role should drive genuine cultural transformation, not just manage employment compliance. Her appointment followed a period in which Newington College built out its people and culture team, signalling an institutional commitment to building HR capability as a professional function.

Education Workforce Leaders: The Union Voice

The people who define the actual working conditions of Australia and New Zealand's educators are not always found in HR departments. The industrial and professional unions representing teachers, academics, and education support staff are among the most powerful forces shaping the workforce experience in the sector. The leaders of these unions negotiate the enterprise agreements that set pay, workload protections, and conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers, and they drive the policy conversations that shape teacher supply and retention at a national and system level.

13. Correna Haythorpe

Australian Education Union

Correna Haythorpe is Federal President of the Australian Education Union, the organisation that represents public school, early childhood, and TAFE teachers and education support staff industrially and professionally across Australia. The AEU is Australia's third-largest trade union with close to 187,000 financial members as of December 2025. Her role as Federal President makes her the primary public voice of the profession on matters of workforce, conditions, and funding at the national level.

Haythorpe has been one of the most consistently quoted figures in national education workforce policy in 2025 and 2026. She has publicly named Australia's teacher shortage as among the worst in the OECD, citing TALIS data showing Australian teachers work an average of 46.5 hours per week, well above the OECD average of 40.8 hours, with almost two-thirds reporting high stress. Her advocacy on teacher recruitment and retention, workload reduction, and the proposed Teaching and Learning Commission has directly shaped the terms of the national workforce debate. Her advocacy that any new national education architecture must prioritise teacher recruitment, retention, and decent working conditions reflects a consistent, evidence-grounded approach to the workforce crisis.

14. Nicole Calnan

Australian Education Union

Nicole Calnan is Federal Secretary of the Australian Education Union, having been appointed to the role in 2025 following five years as AEU Deputy Federal Secretary. Before joining the AEU's federal office, she served in multiple roles with the NSW Teachers Federation from 2005 to 2020, including Organiser, Membership and Training Officer, and Deputy Secretary. She brought to regional New South Wales public primary schools before entering the union movement, giving her a practitioner's perspective that is relatively uncommon at federal secretary level.

As Federal Secretary, Calnan directs the staff and budget of the AEU's federal operation and oversees the administrative and industrial affairs of the union's national structure. She is Chairperson of the Board of Union Aid Abroad (APHEDA), supporting international solidarity projects across the Asia-Pacific region. Her transition from classroom teacher in regional NSW to the most senior administrative officer of Australia's teacher union reflects a career trajectory grounded in the conditions of the very workforce she now helps lead the industrial effort for.

15. Brad Hayes

Independent Education Union of Australia

Brad Hayes was elected Federal Secretary of the Independent Education Union of Australia in 2023, having previously held a variety of organising and leadership positions within the Queensland Branch and federal office of the IEU. The IEU represents the industrial and professional interests of 75,000 teachers, school leaders, and support staff working in non-government schools, preschools, kindergartens, and post-secondary training centres. He chairs the national IEU Organising and Campaigning Committee.

Hayes is a member of Commonwealth Ministerial steering groups for the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan and the Commonwealth School Reform Agreement, and is a member of various federal government education reference committees and Jobs and Skills Australia advisory groups. With 25 years of experience in the union movement, he has a particular interest in new and emerging union organising strategies, member campaigns, and modernised approaches to collective bargaining. His combination of deep organising experience and active engagement with federal government workforce policy processes makes him an important voice in how the non-government education sector navigates workforce challenges.

16. Dr Alison Barnes

National Tertiary Education Union

Dr Alison Barnes has been National President of the National Tertiary Education Union since 2018, representing 27,000 professional and academic staff across Australian universities and the TAFE sector in Victoria. She was re-elected in 2022 and again in the most recent contested election cycle. Before taking up her role as National President, she served as Assistant Secretary in the NTEU NSW Division and Branch President at Macquarie University, where she was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management with research interests including union strategy, workplace resistance, and industrial relations.

Barnes has been one of the most prominent voices in the public debate about university governance in 2024 and 2025. The NTEU under her leadership has exposed more than $280 million in wage theft across the university sector, driven parliamentary inquiries in NSW, Victoria, and federally, and campaigned aggressively on the casualisation of academic labour. The combination of academic expertise in industrial relations, active organising experience, and a willingness to name governance failures publicly makes her one of the most consequential figures in how Australia's higher education sector understands its employment relationship.

17. Damien Cahill

National Tertiary Education Union

Damien Cahill has been General Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union since his election in 2022, a contested election in which he ran alongside National President Alison Barnes. As General Secretary, he directs the NTEU's national staff and budget and is responsible for the operational and financial affairs of the union. Before being elected to the role, he served as NSW NTEU Secretary.

On his first day as General Secretary, Cahill outlined an agenda centring on enterprise agreements that give workers fair pay rises, more secure jobs, and sensible workloads, along with aggressive prosecution of wage theft, which he described as an unconscionable and disgraceful part of universities' business models. His stated priorities also include expanding the rights of casual academic staff, who he said had been not paid for all hours worked at far too many institutions. His tenure has coincided with a period of significant public scrutiny of university governance and employment practices, and his willingness to name specific institutional failings publicly has shaped the terms of the national debate.

Professional Body Leaders Shaping HR in Education

The professional bodies for human resources in Australia and New Zealand both play a significant role in the education sector, through the accreditation of HR qualifications at universities, the development of professional standards that education sector HR practitioners use, and the relationship-building between academia and the profession that shapes how the next generation of HR leaders in schools, universities, and TAFEs are trained.

18. Sarah McCann-Bartlett

Australian HR Institute

Sarah McCann-Bartlett is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Australian HR Institute, the national body representing around 20,000 HR and people management professionals in Australia and globally. She joined AHRI from a background in membership and trade bodies across Australia, the UK, and the USA, having previously held the roles of Director General of the British Constructional Steelwork Association, Deputy Commissioner of the Victorian Building and Plumbing Commissions, and President and Group Manager Americas at the Woolmark Company.

Under her leadership, AHRI accredits HR qualifications across Australian universities, which directly shapes the pipeline of HR professionals entering the education sector. She has been one of the most quoted voices on psychosocial safety in Australian workplaces, the strategic elevation of HR in executive decision-making, and most recently on employer behaviour toward older and younger workers. AHRI's quarterly Australian Work Outlook report, which she helped develop, is among the most practically useful regular publications available to Australian HR practitioners, including those working in schools, universities, and TAFEs.

19. Nick McKissack

Human Resources New Zealand

Nick McKissack is Chief Executive of Human Resources New Zealand, the professional body representing more than 2,600 HR members across Aotearoa. Under his leadership, HRNZ has strengthened its strategic influence, championed sustainability and bicultural initiatives, and led major technology advancements in how the profession operates. The HRNZ Outstanding Service Award in 2025 recognised his transformative contribution to the profession and his long-range impact on the direction of HR in New Zealand.

McKissack's relevance to the education sector is specific as well as general. HRNZ has built strong relationships with New Zealand universities, formalised most recently through a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Auckland Business School, a relationship in which HRNZ Academic Branch President Deepika Jindal played a central role. His long-range investment in university relationships to develop the next generation of HR professionals in New Zealand, and his stewardship of HRNZ through its 40th anniversary year in 2025, reflects exactly the kind of institution-building contribution that matters for how HR capability in the education sector develops over the next decade.

HR Academics and Researchers: The Knowledge Foundation

The research and teaching that takes place inside education institutions shapes how HR is understood, practised, and developed across every sector, including education itself. The academics in this section are producing work that directly informs how people leadership in the sector is understood, and in some cases actively bridging research and practice through professional body leadership and industry collaboration.

20. Professor Greg Bamber

Monash University

Professor Greg Bamber is a Professor in the Department of Management at Monash Business School and Director of the International Consortium for Research in Employment and Work. With more than 200 publications in leading journals including the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Relations, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management, he is among the most cited employment relations and HRM scholars in Australia and internationally. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and has served as President of the Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association.

Bamber's relevance to the education workforce context is anchored in decades of research on workplace change, AI and technology's implications for the workforce, HRM and organisational change, and dispute resolution, all of which are live questions in Australian and New Zealand education in 2026. He was quoted in SBS News in January 2026 on the implications of AI for Australian employment, specifically on the risk that clerical and administrative roles in education and elsewhere face automation pressure. His combination of comparative international employment relations expertise, active research output through 2025 and 2026, and institutional position at Monash Business School makes him the most credentialled employment relations and HRM scholar on this list.

21. Dr Deepika Jindal

University of Auckland Business School

Dr Deepika Jindal is a Professional Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland Business School, where she serves as Subject Group Lead for Management and Programme Director for the Master of Business Management programme. She has taught HRM and related courses at the Business School since February 2014 and holds a PhD in HRM from the University of Auckland. She was recognised as the HRNZ HR Person of the Year in 2025, winning both the Leadership Award and the supreme individual award at the NZ HR Awards, reflecting the profession's view of her contribution to shaping the next generation of HR leaders in New Zealand.

Jindal's contribution spans teaching, research, and the active bridging of academic knowledge and professional practice. As President of the HRNZ Academic Branch, she has championed collaboration between universities and HR practitioners in New Zealand and played a central role in the Memorandum of Understanding between HRNZ and the University of Auckland Business School. Her research on job crafting and career crafting is directly applicable to how education organisations support staff engagement and professional development. In 2026, she received the HRNZ Volunteer of the Year award for her leadership of the Academic Special Interest Network, recognising the sustained commitment to professional community-building that characterises her contribution.

Notable Voices Considered and Not Included

Discovery for this directory was extensive, covering more than 45 targeted searches across all education sub-sectors in Australia and New Zealand. Several leaders were actively researched and considered but could not be confirmed in a current education-sector role within the past 12 months.

Anna Phillips held distinguished CPO roles at Australian Catholic University and then Monash University, where she was quoted as recently as November 2025 on the University's mentoring programme. She departed Monash in late 2025 and moved to a people leadership role outside the education sector, placing her outside the scope of this directory at the time of publication.

Linda Carroll built an exceptional track record as Chief People Officer in the early childhood education and care sector, including roles at Affinity Education Group and G8 Education, where she was named HR Director of the Year at the Australian HR Awards in 2019. In 2025, she was promoted from CPO to Chief Operating Officer at G8 Education, moving her beyond the people function specifically.

Laura Warren was recognised as HRNZ HR Person of the Year in 2023 and was named in the HRD New Zealand Hot List in 2024 for her people and culture leadership at Otago Polytechnic. However, Te Pukenga, the national polytechnic network in which Otago Polytechnic was operating, was being disestablished from 1 January 2026 as polytechnics returned to regional independence. Her current confirmed role could not be established against a primary source dated within the 12-month window required for inclusion.

Common Mistakes in Education Sector People Strategy

Education organisations consistently make a small number of predictable errors in their approach to HR and people strategy, and the leaders in this directory are, in many cases, working directly against those patterns.

The first mistake is treating the education workforce as interchangeable. Schools, universities, and TAFE providers frequently manage their teaching and academic workforce using HR frameworks designed for general professional services environments, without accounting for the specific conditions that make educator motivation and retention distinctive. Research consistently shows that autonomy, professional development, meaningful relationships with students, and a sense of purpose are the primary drivers of educator engagement, not the transactional factors that dominate HR thinking in other sectors.

The second mistake is underinvesting in HR capability at the school and centre level. The gap between a well-designed people strategy at the system or institutional level and what actually happens in classrooms and centres is primarily a function of whether the managers closest to the work have the people leadership skills to implement it. System-level HR investment that does not reach the frontline manager level tends to produce impressive policy documentation and disappointing operational outcomes.

The third mistake is treating enterprise bargaining as a compliance event rather than a people strategy opportunity. Enterprise agreements in Australian and New Zealand education set not just pay rates but working conditions, workload protections, professional development obligations, and the structural frameworks within which staff wellbeing either functions or fails. Organisations that approach enterprise bargaining purely as a cost management exercise tend to produce agreements that technically meet legal requirements while generating the very dissatisfaction and disengagement they are trying to avoid.

The fourth mistake is neglecting psychosocial safety as a workforce sustainability issue. Teaching, early childhood education, and educational support work all involve sustained emotional labour in service of other people. The model Work Health and Safety laws that apply across most Australian jurisdictions now require organisations to proactively identify, assess, and manage psychosocial hazards. For education organisations, this is not a marginal compliance matter. It is a central workforce sustainability question.

Implementation Guide: Building People Strategy That Works in Education

For school principals, university people leaders, TAFE executives, and early childhood directors seeking to strengthen the people function in their organisations, the work of the leaders in this directory points toward several practical priorities.

The first is grounding people strategy in the specific purpose and conditions of education work. Every person in this directory operates inside or in direct service of institutions whose reason for existing is the learning, development, or research outcomes of the people they serve. People strategy that does not keep that purpose visible at the centre of every HR decision tends to drift toward generic frameworks that neither resonate with educators nor produce distinctive results.

The second is building manager capability as the critical link in the people strategy chain. The HR function can design excellent frameworks for recruitment, performance, wellbeing, and development, but those frameworks only produce results when the managers closest to the work know how to use them well. Investment in people leadership capability at the principal, head teacher, centre director, and academic program coordinator level is where HR strategy becomes operational reality in education organisations.

The third is taking workforce data seriously as an input to strategic decisions. Several of the leaders in this directory have explicitly noted the growing importance of people analytics and the ability to translate workforce insights into strategic conversations with institutional leaders. Education organisations that rely on intuition and historical precedent for workforce planning decisions are increasingly disadvantaged compared to those using data to understand retention risks, skills gaps, and workforce supply trends.

The fourth is approaching psychosocial safety not as a compliance burden but as a workforce sustainability investment. The evidence on educator wellbeing is unambiguous: staff who experience high psychological safety are more effective, more likely to stay, and more capable of supporting the wellbeing of their students.

For leadership teams ready to build the communication culture, conflict resolution skills, and team dynamics that underpin genuine psychological safety, Jonno White works with education leadership teams around the world on exactly these challenges. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

The Working Genius framework, created by Patrick Lencioni's The Table Group and completed by more than 1.3 million people globally, is among the most practically useful tools available for building team culture. Bring Jonno White in to facilitate a Working Genius session or executive offsite for your education leadership team. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a Chief People Officer at a university do differently from a standard HR director?

A Chief People Officer in a university manages a workforce spanning internationally recruited researchers, professional services staff, sessional and casual academics, and postgraduate researchers, often under multiple enterprise agreements. The role requires deep understanding of higher education industrial relations, academic career pathways, and the intersection of research mission and workforce management that a standard commercial HR director role does not.

Why is HR in the early childhood education sector so challenging?

The early childhood sector combines a predominantly female, relatively lower-paid workforce with high emotional labour demands, staffing ratios governed by regulatory requirements, and dispersed small centres where local management capability varies significantly. Recruitment and retention challenges are structural, driven by pay equity issues and a chronic national shortage of qualified early childhood teachers, with direct consequences for child wellbeing outcomes.

How does enterprise bargaining in education differ from other industries?

Education enterprise bargaining covers workload protections, class size limits, professional development obligations, non-contact time entitlements, and pastoral care responsibilities beyond just pay. Negotiations involve well-organised teacher unions with significant industrial history and produce agreements setting conditions for years at a time, making enterprise bargaining a central rather than peripheral HR function in education organisations.

How do education unions influence HR and people strategy in Australian and New Zealand schools?

Education unions in Australia and New Zealand are among the most active and well-resourced in the labour movement. They negotiate enterprise agreements that directly set workload protections, pay structures, and conditions for hundreds of thousands of educators. Their advocacy on teacher recruitment, retention, and wellbeing shapes government policy and the terms of the national workforce debate. Understanding how the unions approach workforce issues is essential context for any HR leader operating in the sector.

Final Thoughts

The 21 people in this directory are doing some of the most consequential people and culture work in Australia and New Zealand. The education sector is where teachers are either attracted and retained or lost. It is where university researchers either thrive or leave for institutions overseas. It is where early childhood educators are either supported to build careers or burned out within a few years. And it is where the industrial and professional frameworks that govern all of that are negotiated, researched, and built. The HR and workforce leaders who shape those outcomes deserve to be far better known than most of them currently are outside the sector itself.

For education leadership teams wanting to build the communication skills, team culture, and leadership frameworks that make great people strategy actually work, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), works with schools, universities, TAFEs, and early childhood organisations globally. Jonno hosts The Leadership Conversations Podcast with 230+ episodes reaching listeners in more than 150 countries, and achieved a 93.75 per cent satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Whether virtual or face to face, international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Jobs and Skills Australia. (2026). Education and Training industry profile, February 2026. Jobs and Skills Australia.

Gallup. (2026). State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report. Gallup.

Australian Education Union. (2026). Organisation page and contact details. AEU Federal Office.

Human Resources New Zealand. (2025). NZ HR Awards 2025 Winners. HRNZ.

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For a broader view of the thought leaders shaping HR practice across Australia and New Zealand beyond the education sector, see the full directory at consultclarity.org.