How to succeed in the current labour environment
Published on October 28, 2022
Surely it is far better to get someone with 80% of the skills working for you next week instead of having open vacancies and empty desks for months?
Since launching WorkinAUS at the RCSA conference in June, the WorkinAUS team have been on an incredible journey, working tirelessly to introduce the platform to Australian employers, and provide the tools that will help Australian businesses with the current labour crisis.
The media attention around the labour crisis has only grown over the preceding months, peaking with the Jobs and Skills Summit in September. What came out of the Summit were some very encouraging investments by the government which will no doubt yield some positive results over the mid-to-long term, but our view is there was very little there to really impact the crisis in the short term.
We need to remember that as we start increasing the amount of migration into Australia, we are also suffering a talent outflow as intrepid Australians venture overseas to experience travel/work and culture in other corners of the globe.
Businesses in Australia who want to get serious about winning in the current labour environment will need to think differently about their approach and be innovative and creative, rather than relying on tactics that worked in the past.
Too many firms are waiting for the government to solve the problem rather than think differently about solving the problem at hand. You can wait for more government intervention or use the tools that are available to you now and find clever solutions to solve immediate issues. A skilled migration agent can be your best friend in this department.
A large focus of our efforts has been targeting Working Holiday Makers in the UK and Ireland to supplement the locally available candidate pool on WorkinAUS, as they represent the quickest cohort of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers that any Australian business can bring onshore.
75% of Working Holiday Maker visas are approved within the week of application.
Perhaps because of old stereotypes I believed hospitality would represent far and away the greatest share of our applicant flow, but we’ve learned over the past 4 months that whilst this sector is well represented, it only ranks third on our list behind skilled trades and the broad engineering bracket.
It is clear from our application flow, that most applicants want to utilise their education and vocational experience here in Australia. They are looking to work, travel AND grow their skills. Smart firms are looking at this talent pool to get productivity into their business quickly. Surely it is far better to get someone with 80% of the skills working for you next week instead of having open vacancies and empty desks for months?
With the government now allowing workers up to the age of 35 to qualify for the Working Holiday Maker visa, workers coming into the country through this route could foreseeably possess 10-15 years commercial experience. That is a Senior Manager or Leader in many businesses.
A segmentation of our data from October is below showing the breadth of worker skills looking to come to Australia:
| Industry | % of Applicants |
|---|---|
| Trades | 13.16% |
| Engineering (inc Mining) | 9.02% |
| Hospitality | 9.02% |
| Health/Nursing | 6.77% |
| Technology & Data | 6.39% |
| Marketing | 6.02% |
| Administration | 5.64% |
| Education | 4.89% |
| Finance & Accounting | 4.89% |
| Retail | 4.51% |
| Recruitment | 3.38% |
| Sales | 3.38% |
The organisations we see making some interesting and successful moves in the migrant space are looking at this visa and targeting these workers knowing they can access the talent quickly and then spend 12 months working with the employee to assess if they are a good skills and cultural fit to pursue through a sponsorship pathway.
Other tactics being employed by successful players in this space:
- For recruiting firms having a recruiter or team administrator own the candidate experience and nurture the candidate onshore, providing an initial level of screening and funneling the applicants to the right Consultants or Recruitment Teams is a smart investment in time. (Often applicants won’t have applied for a visa yet and have no idea on the steps they’ll need to take. They may not even know which city or town they would like to move to, where in that city or town to live, or how to set-up their life when they arrive. By supporting a candidate through this sometimes-stressful process, you can win a great deal of loyalty and get a candidate aligned to your needs.)
- In regard to candidate attraction, successful firms are not just reposting a local job advertisement but customising their approach, to attract an audience who may not be aware of important items that locals take for granted. ( Educating overseas workers as to their Company Brand, Employer Branding and Employee Value Proposition. Just because everyone in Melbourne knows who you or your client is, doesn’t mean applicants from the UK and Ireland do. | Being clear on the benefits and lifestyle attached to the location of the job | Offering upskilling to migrant workers | Packaging up incentives tied to length of service | If possible, offering workers the opportunity to work in multiple locations around Australia during their employment.
Whatever your industry, there are quality candidates from the UK and Ireland already planning their move to live and work in Australia, there are many from the UK and Ireland already here, there are Australians looking to relocate, and Australians simply looking to make a change in their career and lives. If you are not seriously looking at all the genuine alternatives to solving your labour shortages, you can be sure that your competitors are.
