20 ways to beat the skills shortage

Australian SMEs offer their tips on how to keep up your supply of the best and brightest, lower staff turnover and curb rising wage costs. By EMILY ROSS.

Want some ideas on how to find and retain the right people amid a skills shortage. Some of Australia’s smartest operators give their tips.

1: Make all your staff recruiters

Simon Trewin, manager of Hobart-based catering firm 4 Lunch, offers a day off on full pay to any employee who can recommend a person to fill a vacant position in the company. Staff who recommended an unsuccessful applicant receive free movie tickets. Many staff use SMS to let friends and family know of the job vacancies.

2: Think laterally about advertising for staff

Get your message out on SMS, local noticeboards, in stores, through your website, through friends and networks, major web recruitment sites and niche online job recruiters, universities, training colleges, clubs, job expos, anywhere and everywhere.

3: Remember, if you pay peanuts you’ll get monkeys

Employment is a supply and demand business. Sue Bourke, a senior consultant with the Talon Group, says: “As a skilled workforce contracts, salaries go up and demands of the employee have to be met otherwise you will lose them.” At Brookfarm in St Helena, in northern NSW, Pam Brook grows macadamia nuts for export around the world. Despite regional wages being traditionally lower than city rates, Brook says her business is shifting to a higher wage base. “We have to compete with city-type wages,” she says.

4: Ramp up that training budget, even in micro-businesses

Plumber Ben Whitehair founded Tanks for Rain in Sydney in 2004. He provides paid on-the-job training for all his five plumbers to make sure they are up with developments in environmental plumbing. Whitehair pays for the courses (typically more than $500 a day) for his staff as well as their $45-plus per hour wages.

5: Be aware that direct recruitment at universities and trade colleges doesn’t always pay off

Hotelier John Parché runs the award-winning Byron at Byron five-star resort in Byron Bay. He recently spoke with 140 students at a local hospitality training college (he goes to several in the region looking for recruits). “I was hoping to get five recruits to start this September.” Five potentials whittled down to one as the start date approached. “They just decide to do other things.”

6: Grow your own talent

Look for raw talent and work from there. Talon’s Sue Bourke says providing mentorship, encouragement and new work opportunities are critical. “Otherwise headhunters like me will tap them on the shoulder and they will leave because you didn’t offer them what the market defined.”

7: Get wise to the value of part-time workers

More than 2.2 million Australian women have children aged under 15, and man are looking for part-time work. Canberra-based Kate Sykes has set up a website called CareerMum (www.careermum.com.au) to link employers with skilled mums wanting part-time flexible work. “I have thousands of women looking for work, yet not enough flexible jobs to satisfy them all,” says Sykes. What are you waiting for?

8: Get obsessed with your employment brand

Stationery retailer kikki.K has a young, stylish employment brand. Its gleaming retail stores and pristine displays regularly have shoppers handing in their resumes on the spot. Founder Kristina Karlsson says: “We have a great brand and real growth story. We pay well but more importantly there is so much potential for people starting on a junior level. We have new roles happening all the time.” For example, kikki.K’s communications manager used to be a sales assistant while he completed a degree. “We created the role for him,” says Karlsson.

9: Be a resume fisherman

If your company has a great reputation, it’s likely you will be given resumes regularly. Make sure these are carefully filed for future use. If they arrive at the front desk, in store, via email, assign someone to keep them all in one place so that they can be mined. Corina Baldwin, the founder of Melbourne events company Bigger Than Ten Bears, often refers back to these resumes when planning major projects.

10: Create a kids’ room

At the headquarters of Carman’s Fine Foods in Cheltenham, Melbourne, founder Carolyn Creswell has a kid’s room set up so that if employees’ children are unwell they can come in and rest properly while their parents keep working. Good for productivity, good for families.

11: Hire on attitude

Bigger Than Ten Bears’ Corina Baldwin says she knows how committed a potential recruit will be just by looking in their eyes. “It’s about how much they want the job,” she says.

12: In this market, be prepared to hire someone with less experience

Bernadette Sturley, the managing director of creative recruitment specialist Creative People, has been doing a roaring trade in senior web designers who can command up to $120,000 for less than five year’s experience. Many of her clients are opting to hire web designers with less experience and upskilling them on the job.

13: Sponsor an international student

kikki.K has sponsored three Scandinavian students who were studying in Melbourne. They now have permanent design roles at kikki.K. An added bonus for Karlsson is that the trio have an innate understanding of the Scandinavian design aesthetic that is fundamental to the brand and its suite of products.

14: Become a flexible work champion

Offer working-from-home opportunities, leave without pay, flexible start and finish times, sabbaticals and even reduced hours in school holidays. Staff love it.

15: Move staff around so they don’t get bored

4 Lunch’s Trewin recently moved his kitchen manager at head office into the role as manager of one of the Hobart stores. “A lot of our employees are Gen-Y,” says Trewin. “They get bored easily you need to keep things changing.”

16: Find every possible way to reward staff; pay is only part of the package

Simple ways to say thanks include offering flexible days off, generous time in lieu, long lunches and opportunities for school picks ups, long weekends and other perks.

17: Show genuine support for the community

A commitment to non-profit organisations is a genuine incentive. Carman’s Fine Foods sponsors the Cancer & Bowel Research Trust. “It can’t just be for image; it has to have depth,” says Creswell. More than just lip service, Creswell says her staff were surprised when she recently asked them all to take a bowel cancer test.

18: Redefine retirement

Hang on to mature age workers. Baby boomers are set to retire at the end of the decade, adding to current labour shortages. Offer flexible work and gradual retirement to keep their knowledge in your business.

19: Think “career lattice” rather than a career ladder

The lattice career plan, piloted in accounting firm Deloitte, involves the employer working closely with the employee to develop a customised career path that takes into account different levels of employee engagement throughout a career. There is flexibility in terms of workplace, workload, schedule and responsibility, depending on life circumstances. The model has shown increased employee productivity, loyalty and retention. A new book was released last month by Deloitte Consulting HR gurus Cathy Benko and Anne Weisberg, Mass Career Customisation: Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce.

20: Get your head out of the sand

There were 212, 831 jobs advertised online at Seek yesterday. There are not 212,831 people looking for work, so start competing for the talent you need.

For more stories on managing people and recruiting click through to Growth Resources.