Insight into the challenges that lay ahead

Anthony Whyte - General Manager, Talent

Beating possible Covid-19 border restrictions, I was lucky enough to join delegates at APSCo Australia’s inaugural conference, aptly titled ‘Emerge 2021’.

The day kicked off with a brilliant session on ‘how to win the race for clients and talent’ led by Martin Richardson and it quickly became evident that the entire audience were experiencing that exact issue. With the overseas talent pipeline severed, we are now fishing in the same pond, therefore the agencies that get creative and understand the demographics of their candidates, will have a massive advantage over the ones that will rely on job boards for their talent.

The next sessions were short but punchy with presentations on Managing IR & Risk (William Marshall); Work Health & Safety (Brianna Cattanach) and the Key to Winning Tenders (Ian Maas).

These sessions were all very topical and many great takeaways were well received.

After lunch, Mike Beeley had the audience captivated on his presentation on ‘Challenging the norms of talent attraction’. If you haven’t seen Mike present, you are missing out as he delivers his insights with no holes barred.

The afternoon session was based around Diversity & Inclusion and People and Culture in the Workplace. Rhonda Brighton-Hall delivered a great talk on workplace culture with several good do’s and don’ts to maximise your positive shift in cultural outcomes. All panel discussions entailed robust conversations and occasionally challenged our thinking, but the real value was listening to industry experts and how they and their businesses are dealing with the speed of change and the challenges that lay ahead.

My key takeaways were:

Job boards target 10% of candidates – what are you doing to attract the remaining 90%?

Social media is a tool to adopt, not shy away from.

Profiling is key – where do the candidates live, work etc.?

Diversity and Inclusion can be summarised as simply as ‘belonging’ .

Diversity of ‘thought’ can be one of the most important concepts to adopt.

Ensure that your client/contractor contracts are reviewed 6-monthly.

Compliance – train your staff in the ‘why’ and you will get better buy-in.

WH&S is a multibillion-dollar industry that continues to grow and affects us all.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to give the APSCo secretariat a massive shout-out for arranging one of the most interesting and insightful events I’ve attended – well-done team.