Talent shortages, skilled migration and the bigger D&I picture

Stephen Smith Director - Sirius People and APSCo Australia Chair

It was great to see so many familiar faces in person at the APSCo Emerge conference held in Sydney in May. Not only were those people I spoke to pleased to attend what turned into a great APSCo event, but there was particular excitement to do so in person.

I would like to again thank the APSCo team for hosting such a relevant event for recruiting in 2021 and again I would like to thank those who participated in the day and for everyone who attended the event.

My key takeaways included; understanding that although there are major challenges for our businesses, no two businesses will look at these challenges the same way; and it is critical to work through legal, compliance, and operational issues, specific to your own business; certainly there is no one solution for all.

I find myself thinking back to some of the talent shortage issues highlighted during the day that we will all face in hiring into our own business as well as our customer, not just this year or next, but into the next decade until a point comes when skilled migration can come close to delivering talent in line with Australian economic requirements and then "catch up" on the shortfall.

This skills shortage without immigration really only leaves a small number of channels, young people training, retraining of people from other sectors and/or accessing individuals who have previously not been considered for roles in recruitment.

Another takeaway that I have started talking to my team about is Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) in 2021, how we must ensure we focus on the overall business reasons for D&I and make sure we are looking at the entire D&I picture, not just individual aspects; this is particularly challenging as communication must balance D&I purpose from an ethical but also a business and productivity perspective.

It is however positive to be tackling these challenges from what we are seeing as generally a good market for large parts of the recruitment industry.

Good Luck to everyone in finishing off the 2021 financial year and good luck for the beginning of 2022.