Ignite Global is a leader in hiring, motivating and retaining top talent with management capability employee engagement, productivity and retention candidate.
future of work, The Great Resignation
9600 Great Hills Trail, Suite 150W Austin TX 78759
Right, so I’m back after almost 6 weeks. What did I miss? Other than a new PM in Australia, more gun violence in the US…and the fact that, according to the OECD, Australia has the second tightest skills market in the world.
You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much over the last 5 – 6 weeks because I’ve been in the US speaking at the annual Association for Talent Development (ATD) conference (funnily enough about employee retention).
Following that, I was on a dive holiday in Far North Queensland (stay tuned for Friday’s post, which will include sharks, turtles, barracuda and an assortment of more of my fishy friends.)
Now down to business. It won’t come as a shock to anyone in Australia reading this post that we are in a very skills-short market. According to both The Australian Financial Review (AFR)and SmartCompany, the OECD’s Economic Outlook for June pegged our skills shortage as second only to Canada’s in the developed world.
Specifically, last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed 420,000 vacant jobs. According to Smart Company, this translates into 2.8% of the labour market — or one in 35 jobs — being empty.
I’m currently fielding 2 questions from clients in Australia and the US about the skills shortage.
🙋♂️ “Now that the borders are open in Australia how long will it be before our skills shortage abates?” and
🙋♂️ “The upcoming US recession will surely help the skills shortage (and put realign candidates’ expectations), right?”
I will answer the first question today and the second tomorrow.
The border closures certainly have not helped the Australian skills shortage – nor have they been the main reason behind it. This is a structural skills shortage that we’ve seen coming for a while now, and it primarily has to do with the ageing population in Australia. The Commonwealth’s Intergenerational Report said that over the next 40 years Australia’s participation rate will go down by almost 25% due to our ageing population.
9600 Great Hills Trail, Suite 150W Austin, TX 78759, UNITED STATES
About
In 2009 CEO and founder Kim Seeling Smith started Ignite Global after deciding that instead of being paid to put bums in seats (working as a recruiter for the 15 years prior to that) she wanted to help More
My Facebook memories told me that 1 year ago today was my first appearance on Nine’s Today Show. Georgie and I had a spirited discussion about the older workforce. I was optimistic back then. I was FINALLY seeing some cracks in our decades old discrimination against older workers.
Not so much anymore. I’ve read recent stories that Ageism is still alive and well and increasing in our new COVID environment.
I’d love your thoughts. What do you see?
If you’re over 50, what do you find? What are your plans for the future? Remain in full time work, do contract work, side hustle? Start your own business?
I had a great time speaking to Ben O’Shea on The West Australian‘s The West Live show about what really drives people to change jobs.
Like in all booms, companies within WA are losing great people for the allure of a high pay packet working in a FIFO environment. Can leaders do anything to stop this from happening (spoiler alert – yes!).
Why do people look for other roles (spoiler alert – despite what most leaders think, it’s rarely about money)?
What do you do if you lose someone that you don’t want to lose? Can you entice them back (spoiler alert – statistically, yes, 20% of the time).
Did you know that 65% of candidates who turn down jobs or decline to go through the entire interview process do so because of poor candidate experience, according to LinkedIn? And that only 25% of candidates are satisfied with candidate experience according to Sapia.ai?
Candidate experience is key. But what is candidate experience exactly?
My definition is an experience where every interaction leaves the candidate feeling good about:
✅ Themselves (first and foremost – even if they don’t get the job)
✅ The process itself (again, even if they don’t get the job)
✅ The company/brand (turn all candidates (successful or not) into raving fans
We change the oil and rotate the tires on our car to keep it from breaking. We call this preventative maintenance. And research shows that regular, meaningful conversations do the same thing for our teams.
Yet so many managers complain they don’t have enough time to do this.
How much time would they save by avoiding problems by having proactive conversations to correct performance or behaviour and to find out what their team needs to be fully motivated, engaged and productive?
Thank you Sparks+Partners Consulting Engineers for inviting me to run one of my favorite workshops, “Soar with Your Strengths” for your end of year offsite last week. The main reason I love this workshop is that it gives you permission to stop beating yourself up about things that you aren’t good at and will never be good at by developing strategies to reach the same outcomes using strengths you do have.
Read More: https://www.igniteglobal.com/2019/07/soar-with-your-strengths-workshop-in-action/
