Australia’s jobless rate has hit a 13 year low of 4.2%, however the impact of COVID-19 has reduced actual working hours, with many people working in less than a full-time capacity.  With this reduced availability of potential candidates, and the International border only just opening up recently, many businesses are still experiencing challenges with attracting, engaging and retaining staff in certain industries.

So here are our recommendations to beat staff shortages in your business:

Re-evaluate your recruitment strategy

If there’s one word for employers to use when considering their recruitment strategy it is ‘flexibility’.  The hard to fill roles include hospitality, sales staff, engineering and science professionals and drivers. Other in-demand jobs include building trades and business professionals.  When considering the roles you are recruiting for, the following aspects may make it more attractive to applicants:

• Flexible start and finish times with ‘core hours’
• Converting the role to hybrid or semi-hybrid
• Exploring offshore Talent
• Changing the role from full-time to part-time or job sharing options

Flexibility is becoming more of a key consideration for candidates applying for roles.  In fact, up to 60% of Australians don’t want to return to the office 9-5!. Following COVID-19, many are looking for flexible roles that allow them to manage their home and work lives.

Focus on your Employee Value Proposition

Businesses that are more successful in their recruitment strategy have a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP).  Businesses that have a great employer brand can attract and retain the best talent and generally have a positive working culture.  The process  to develop a strong EVP is to firstly understand what employees like and dislike about your existing culture.  Then there is a process of showcasing the positive aspects (often through employee-generated content) and finding solutions to remove or reduce the areas that employees didn’t like about the culture.

Focus on retention

Focusing on retaining your existing team should be a key consideration at all times but particularly when there are talent shortages.  Ensuring that there are processes around staff performance and feedback and that salaries are benchmarked against the market average are an essential part of this process.

Upskill your existing team

An ideal solution to filling talent shortages is to upskill your existing team.  This strategy has a two-fold benefit of developing talent for employee individual growth and to the business’s advantage. It’s also incredibly cost effective as it reduces the need to go to market for staff and the subsequent outlay of onboarding new talent.

Increase Contingent Workers

Working with a Recruitment Agency to explore Temporary Workforces  or Labour Hire solutions can be a useful partnership.  This can also be cost effective as it’s easy to increase or decrease resources according to need (some businesses have significant seasonal fluctuations).

If you would like to explore a temporary workforce, speak to the Recruitment team at Flexi Personnel.