Plenty of businesses understand how critical recruitment and retention is to their overall corporate strategy. Staff will continue to be the drivers of success for the majority, meaning recruiters have an ongoing role to play in putting the right talent in the right companies.
And yet plenty of businesses are not able – or are simply avoiding the methods – to make the most of a recruiter relationship, even though the hiring scenario is getting much more difficult.
This was emphasised in Manpower Group Australia’s latest survey of 1,500 employers around the country, in which researchers found that a huge 42 per cent are struggling to fill roles in their companies.
Many of these are in contractor positions, in industries such as trade employment, engineers, technicians, IT staff and labourers – all of which made the top 10 hardest jobs to fill in Australia at the moment.
Giving up?
However, perhaps the most worrying statistic from the survey is that the number of employers looking at strategies to improve their staff shortages is down by 5 per cent year-on-year.
“Globally we have seen the number of businesses taking on strategies to counter the talent shortage increase; while on home soil this number has dropped dramatically over a 12-month period. Australian employers are giving up,” opined Lincoln Crawley, managing director of Manpower Group Australia.
“We are observing a divergence across the economy: employers that fail to adopt non-traditional work practices risk becoming irrelevant to the new generation of workers; while those that innovate will succeed.”
Recruiters growing more important
While this does not necessarily correlate with businesses using the help of recruiters more often to find contractors, it’s easy to see how this could easily turn out to be so.
It could in fact turn into good news for those with the ability to put the right contractors in the right roles and close skill gaps.
The real question is are recruiters ready? Such professionals are already time-poor, and could be called on more readily by those struggling with recruitment.
Contractor services can help, by sharing the load placed on recruiters. Whether it’s payroll services, insurance or salary packaging management, there’s plenty of assistance out there to help professional recruiters do their jobs better – and pass that performance down the line to their partners.
