People and Culture Manager

Job description

🇦🇺 Heads up! This role is based in-person at our office in sunny Brisbane, Australia. 🇦🇺 –––––––––––––––––––– 🌎 About Askable AUSTRALIA Hey, we’re Askable - the world’s most loved user research platform. Loved by whom you ask? Woolies, Qantas, Canva, BUPA, CommBank, NAB, Telstra, BBC, Mastercard and hundreds more. Not bad right? We help teams run better research faster from real human insights so they can build products people actually want. Askable began in 2017 as an idea scribbled on a sticky note, born out of frustration with the clunky, outdated research processes we’d experienced firsthand. So, we set out to build a new way - one that makes quality research accessible to everyone, from Fortune 500s to startups hungry for insights. Now with offices in Brisbane, London, Chicago and Manila, we’re growing the team to bring Askable’s research power to researchers everywhere, so they can make smarter, user-driven decisions. –––––––––––––––––––– 🦄 Our culture Our culture drives everything we do. We live it, breathe it, and work every day to make Askable a place where people can thrive. We believe work should be fulfilling, exciting, and meaningful. Here, you’re not just part of a team. You’re part of a community that cares about what they’re building and how they’re building it. –––––––––––––––––––– 💡 About the role You'll lead Askable's people function with real room to build. There's no team to lean on day to day, and plenty of systems, policies and culture practices still need building, shaping or improving. We run on a delegated model: leaders own their own teams, and your job isn't to run every people conversation for them. Your role is to build the frameworks, judgement and trust that let them do it well themselves. Your legal grounding is Australian employment law and it needs to be deep; UK and US experience is a genuine bonus, not a dealbreaker. Across governance, compliance, systems and culture, you'll be the one making the tough calls and building things properly. You'll know when you need seek external or legal guidance on particularly squirrelly issues. –––––––––––––––––––– 🛠 What you’ll do Be the go-to for everything HR. Naturally curious and quick on your feet, you're the first port of call for governance, compliance and any tricky employment question that lands on your desk. Visas and work rights sorted. Sponsorship applications and renewals, handled well ahead of time — no last-minute scrambles. Build clean, clear employee processes. From onboarding to offboarding, you'll design the journey so it just works for every person, every time. Make our systems actually sing. Push DEEL well beyond the basics, and build reporting people genuinely want to use. Enable every leader to build exceptional people. You give them the ability and the tools to spot potential and grow it themselves. Enable the team to be awesome. Keep a genuine pulse on culture, and bring the Askable culture and values to life globally with initiatives that actually feel like us. –––––––––––––––––––– 🦉 Skills and experience you’ll bring To hit the ground running, you'll need HR chops where you've actually built the policy, process and paperwork yourself - not just kept someone else's system ticking over. You'll also bring: Legally switched on. Deep Australian employment law knowledge - Fair Work, awards, WHS, the works. Genuinely likeable. The kind of person people actually want to talk to, not tiptoe around. A fixer, not a filer. Comfortable walking into a half-built system and figuring out what should be fixed first. Happy flying solo. Confident working without an existing HR team or framework to lean on. Bonus points for UK or US employment exposure, or a track record of pushing DEEL (or another HRIS) well beyond its default settings. –––––––––––––––––––– 🚀 The mindset you’ll need Builder, not inheritor: You don't wait for someone to hand you a system. If it doesn't exist yet, you build it. If it half-exists, you're the one who decides whether it's worth keeping. Rigorous where it counts, inventive everywhere else: Employment law, WHS, visas - precision, no shortcuts. Culture, growth, systems - resourcefulness and ownership. You know which mode you're in. Enabler, not doer-of-everything: We run on a delegated model. Your job isn't to run every people conversation yourself - it's to build the frameworks that let leaders do it well without you in the room. Genuinely personable: People come to you because they want to, not because they have to. You bring people along through change instead of just announcing it. A font of knowledge, not a know-it-all. People walk away from talking to you a little better at their job than when they arrived - and you're just as comfortable saying "I don't know, let me find out." Comfortable without a playbook: This function moves fast and stays lean — you won't find a binder of step-by-step instructions. You build what's missing and make the call yourself. –––––––––––––––––––– 🙌 Perks and benefits Your excitement about the role itself is what matters most to us. Perks are just the icing on the cake - but let us share a few to whet your appetite. 🍰 AUSTRALIA Competitive salary A vibrant and social work environment Askable Days: a bonus paid day off every month (giving you a total of 7 weeks annual leave ! 🥳) Buffet lunch, every day! Free public transport to get you to and from the office And more! We'll be happy to chat about all our other perks during the interview process. –––––––––––––––––––– ☝️ Before you go... Research shows many people (especially women and minority groups) hesitate to apply unless they meet every single requirement. At Askable, we’re committed to building diverse teams with unique perspectives. If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly, we’d still love to hear from you.