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Dealing with the Skills CrisisUnless you have been on a sabbatical leave to the Antarctic for the past two years, you would be aware that a skills crisis is looming in Australia and in some sectors it has actually arrived. It is largely academic whether you are currently experiencing pains of not being able to find the skills you require in adequate numbers for your company or you are about to experience the pain. Either way, you must take action or you will lose competitive advantage against your competitors.
While it is true that many factors causing the crisis are beyond your control, are these excuses acceptable to your shareholders to explain a drop in revenue. So what actions can you take to minimize the impact of the skills crisis?
No ‘silver bullet’ solution exists to fix the issues created by the skills shortage, but small changes can have a significant cumulative effect when delivered together.
Top Down Bottom Up
Seriously align the needs of workers with those of business.
Imposing the will of the company in times of skill shortages doesn’t make sense.
Valuing Diversity
Look at wider pools of talent.
The business case for looking at women, disabled and other groups becomes stronger each day that skills become less.
X’s and Y’s
Understand the motivators of these groups and structure your employment offerings accordingly.
Y’s are looking for long term career pathways.
Mature Age
Understand the motivators of this significant group and start offering them ways, agreeable to them, to stay on longer.
Retain them.
Value the skills and experience.
Immigration Balance
Overseas is pulling our talent away, we must make similar attractive offerings to talent overseas.
This is not to be at the exclusion of development of local skills, both will be needed.
Wooing Women
This group is still under represented in our workforce.
Look at ways you can be more flexible and accommodating to gain from the skills of this group.
Flexible Engagement
The employment engagements are much broader that just ‘permanent or casual’.
Explore the options and use them to the benefit of your workers and your company.
Skills Alignment
The recruitment process might need closer examination to ensure the better fit is achieved.
Very few companies can afford the cost of repeated recruitment through poor judgments.
Legacy Blockers
Attack prevailing policies that serve no logical purpose to what we need.
Poor child care support, early superannuation payouts (54/11) are such examples.
Embracing Innovation
The skills crisis in it’s current form is unique.
New solutions are required to a scenario not encountered before, think of solutions and try them.
You will not have enough time to follow the lead of others.
In particular, it is interesting to note how many of these solutions are interrelated. Immigration and Flexible Engagements is such an example. The need to bring in overseas talent to complement our workforce, raises the question how can they be engaged?
Companies that have a sophisticated flexible engagement employment model are able to make use of service providing organizations that will seamlessly integrate this solution into way they engage and manage their staff. Matters of who holds the visa and looking after specialist advice can all be handled by solution providers if these tasks are not desired to managed ‘in house’.
In summary, solutions are available to lessen the impact of the skills crisis, companies need to explore their options, understand who can assist them with these solutions and above all else, start to take actions.
-- Matthew Franceschini
(Matthew Franceschini is the CEO of Entity Solutions Group, a services organization offering a comprehensive suite of services to companies and individuals across three main areas including Contractor Management, Migration and Payroll Services. http://www.entitysolutions.com.au) |
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