As the world economy recovers from the recession of recent years, many organisations in Australia are realising the benefits of recruitment agencies for short term labour requirements while planning a strategic long term labour workforce.
Technological changes, ageing population as well as
shifts, growth and decline in certain industries are all contributing to labour
shortages on a massive scale.
Here are top five strategies to implement when managing
potential labour shortages:
1. Outsource your labour hire requirements
By outsourcing your labour hire
requirements this alleviates the unnecessary strain on your current workforce
while seeking those hard-to-find employees.
Recruitment agencies have skilled and qualified staff on hand year-round
to suit most types of businesses, and can be engaged at short notice. There is also the added benefit of the
candidate ending up being very suited to the role, and therefore either engaged
on a longer-term capacity, or even offered a full-time role by the
company. This scenario usually incurs a
finder’s fee, yet this far outweighs the extensive resources that are inevitably
expended in searching for suitable long-term employees.
2. Develop comprehensive in-house training programs to build long term
knowledge pipelines
Recent expansion as well as retirement
of baby boomers is placing a strain on the already overstretched construction
and energy industry. Successful companies are already known to develop
strategic knowledge transfer programs which enable senior employees to shift
their expertise and knowledge to the future generation of workers.
This helps organisations leverage their
expertise as well as best practices across the business.
Companies can also take skilled workers
and turn them into supervisors and foremen by giving them leadership or
mentoring roles. In any fast-paced industry, such forms of knowledge and
training can significantly enhance skill sets of junior employees and can also
help attract new talent.
3. Engage employees by providing a safe and healthy environment
This is especially true in case in
industries that are subject to extreme working conditions. When we talk about
retention, two things are crucial: employees should like what they do and also
like the people they are working with/for.
Organisations will not only do well
by implementing motivational, reward and performance appraisals; they will take
things to a whole new level by using techniques like e-learning to retain
current employees and attract new talent. And in either of these cases, (retention
and recruitment), fundamentals like safety, security, favourable working
conditions, organisational policies and interpersonal relationships play a
crucial role.
4. Re-evaluate whether different departments are working synergistically
More and more construction industries
are looking to find synergies in different functional areas including IT, HR
and Finance. Stand-alone systems tend to counter each other leading to
inefficient processes. For example, you might have a fantastic HR department
and might hire great labour employees, but if you do not have, say, a fantastic incentive-based compensation program then your competitors will soon snatch your
workforce from you.
By aligning different business functions from the board
level to individual company operating level, you can increase efficient communication
across the organisation and also push employees to work towards common
strategic goals.
5. Assess your risk factors
Often companies hire in frenzy and end
up with semi-skilled or even unskilled labour. For example, a broker or a less reputable labour hire firm might recruit a fisherman saying he can weld. Sometimes these
labourers do not have experience working safely under stringent working
conditions. This is a huge risk to companies. So owners and end users must both
rethink their collaborative efforts and even establish relationships with
entities years before a project is to commence. A competent workforce with
skilled supervision is of utmost importance to build work in a risk-averse
environment.
6. Develop your project management capacity
As complexities and scope of projects increases, companies should explore non-traditional ways to manage them and also explore different avenues. Energy and construction industries must try and innovate in areas like technology, knowledge management, communication and prefabrication. The focus should be on optimising labour, reducing rework, using smart equipment with strategic material scheduling among other things.
These five factors can considerably improve
productivity and help you manage costs in a tight labour market.