In Australia’s current economic times, the recruitment of permanent employees has been tight with many ups and downs creating a lot of uncertainty within the marketplace. This has led employers to spasmodically hire casual employees on a ‘needs’ basis to appease immediate labor requirements rather than keep their long term staffing levels in mind.
While the upside of this has helped the employer to meet its staffing levels for the immediate future, for employees wanting to find and commit to long term jobs, this has been an incredibly frustrating time. Therefore on the downside for employers, some organisations have found they’ve missed out on the ‘perfect’ candidates because they weren’t able to offer long term opportunities to candidates.
The job market is looking to stabilize in the next 6-12 months, bringing the dilemmas back to employers as positions will become available but the availability of skilled workforce will diminish with increased demand for workers.
Larger industries will require skilled technical employees and may also attract those people to remote locations in South Australia and the more densely populated areas of the state will again result in severe skill shortages. At Qest Human Resources we are strongly encouraging our clients to look into their crystal ball now and strategically plan to forecast their potential staffing requirements for the next 6-12 months and commence recruiting now.
Employers should also be looking at implementing staff retention practices to avoid any disappointment in the future and losing their skilled, reliable and available employees to competitors. It is essential that employers move forward now by being proactive with highlighting their future recruitment needs, identifying the skills needed to perform job roles, increasing performance and retaining productive employees.
Recent decreases in South Australia’s unemployment figures indicate that the skilled employment market may well decrease sooner rather than later. Therefore by forecasting now on labour requirements, implementing strategies to improve performance and retain existing employees, employers will limit the possibility of being caught in the candidate short market that we’ll in evidently find ourselves in once our economic situation improves.
David Arcangeli, Director Qest Human Resources
a: 8 Greenhill Road, Wayville SA 5034
t: (08) 8372 7817
f: (08) 8372 7800