Employ Now While You Can

Employ Now While You Can…

Author: Simon Oldham, QJumpers

The recession has really helped us to get our businesses into shape.   We have trimmed down, cut out the excesses of the past and are ready to take on the upturn, whenever that should happen…

We have been enjoying the power shift from job seekers to us, the employer.  Particularly many businesses have enjoyed how much easier it has been to get great staff as well as having a lower staff turnover.

The businesses that I have talked to mention a dramatic reduction in staff turnover from around 20% p.a. to below 10%.  They admit that this is in no way due to anything they have done.  No, they have not implemented fantastic retention strategies to keep the good staff.  The recession has increased job insecurity and the reduction of job opportunities has increased job seeker competition for the smaller number of jobs that are out there.

Both SEEK and Trademe's job listings have halved during the recession and the number of job applicants doubled.  No wonder the turnover rates have decreased - everybody is too scared to even think about trying their luck in the employment market.

But this is all changing.  Job numbers are slowly rising and people are starting to feel that we are out of the recession as spring brings out the sunshine to warm our spirits.  All of those good employees who are sick of the extra workload that redundancies have brought are starting to get restless.  They are tired of being taken for granted and unchallenged in their jobs.  They are now starting to surf those job sites for opportunities - so look out.

There are indications that jobseekers are very soon going to find it much easier find another job.  Trade Me Jobs have seen their job ad numbers increase from around 5,500 in May to around 6,500 in September.  Seek has seen job numbers go from below 9,000 to over 10,000 in the same period.

A Chamber of Commerce Auckland survey in September shows that 28% of businesses in the region find it easy to employ the right skills as opposed to 40% in June 2009.  And 19% of businesses intend to increase staffing numbers compared to 14% in June.

The tides have already started turning in Australia.  The demand for their commodities such as in the mining sector have rebounded faster than expected thanks in particular to China.  With the unemployment rate relatively low at 5.8% and $84bn promised by the government to spend on infrastructure, the skill shortages in these sectors are already back.  That means that Australian recruiters will already be hunting for good talent in our fair shores.

If you don't have a good retention strategy in place, then get it sorted now.  If you don't have good people on board, then start looking now because I predict that in the first quarter of 2010, the balance of power will slip back to the job seeker.  The dark days of searching high and low for quality applicants will be upon us once again.