Recruitment

BARRY WHELAN

managing director of Excel Recruitment

T h e s t a f f c r i s i s : A m i s m a t c h o f j o b s a n d c a n d i d a t e s

While job postings are higher than ever, those on the hunt for a new role report they are frustrated with what’s on offer. Excel Recruitment’s Barry Whelan investigates the factors driving this mismatch and what can be done to resolve the dilemma

www.excelrecruitment.com

Alot has been written recently in the press regarding the staff crisis in the retail and in particular the hospitality industry.

The main narrative seems to be: • Thousands unemployed. • 195,000 employees on the

Pandemic Unemployment Payment

But… • Employers struggle to find workers

It would seem there are plenty of jobs available, however, perhaps they are the wrong jobs for the workers available to fill the positions.

Mismatch

We are in the grip of a staffing crisis like none we have experienced before. We have a unique situation; plenty of jobs, with plenty of people to fill them, yet the workers available for the jobs on hand aren’t interested. The jobs mismatch their skills, quality of life expectations and crucially how they value themselves as employees, both from a skills and experience perspective and their expectation around compensation.

As a business whose only business is staffing, we wanted to get to the bottom of the crisis to find a solution.

Unemployed job seekers just don’t like the jobs available and there are just too many jobs that do not meet these three requirements: pay, worklife balance and skill requirement.

At the beginning of the pandemic as workers across the retail and hospitality sectors were put on the PUP scheme en masse and effectively laid off from their jobs, new employment opportunities continued to grow. This has recently reached a crescendo, with more job postings than ever. In our own business, we have over 200 managerial roles in our grocery division alone. This is the highest volume of jobs we have had in our near 20-year history.

On the other hand, our candidates are telling us they are frustrated with the jobs on offer. There is a workforce/job mismatch like never before!

Jobs not good enough

Thousands of Irish workers are unemployed, and employers are struggling to find workers, as the labour market poses a mismatch between open positions and what workers want. Our data suggests it’s worse than a mismatch: the jobs on offer just aren’t good enough.

This isn’t just an Irish phenomenon. A US survey of 2,000 workers found that workers are still dissatisfied with the jobs on offer, even amidst what should be a hot job market as openings skyrocket, alongside workers leaving roles. But of those workers surveyed, 48% said they’re “frustrated with their job search”, because they’re not finding the right positions.

And 41% said there “aren’t enough openings in their preferred professions”. It could be due to a proliferation of low-wage jobs, since 46% said they were only finding openings for low-wage roles.

“Too many jobs do not meet job seekers’ three requirements of pay, work-life balance and skill requirement,” writes Barry Whelan

Driving labour shortage

Mismatches are a major driver of the labour shortage. The US Chamber of Commerce has said that labour shortages are being fuelled, in part, by a mismatch between open roles and workers’ skills. At the same time, job openings have been high in traditionally low-paying industries like leisure and hospitality, where workers have been quitting en masse and demanding higher wages.

We carried out a small survey of our hospitality clients, asking them as indoor dining returned, if their staff had also. The findings were frightening as clients reported that two-thirds of staff had not returned to work. What is happening in the US is happening here in Ireland.

The disjointedness between what unemployed workers are looking for and what’s available could also potentially put some pressure on wages. While 85% of the workers in the US survey said they’d take a pay cut if it meant getting a job, only 12% of those workers would take a “serious pay cut” - which is defined as over 20%.

The question is, will workers on the PUP, which is supposed to be shelved in October, return to work in these sectors at all? Will the wages of the open positions be enough to entice them back to the long and unsocial hours, particularly in hospitality?

In fact, will the imminent end of the PUP benefit in October, only exacerbate the mismatch issues?

It is quite possible that this may create an even more difficult situation for unemployed workers and companies alike, as the vast majority of unemployed people are actively and consistently searching for a new job. However, while they are trying to navigate an unprecedented labour market with a lot of uncertainty, they are also trying to navigate their way to opportunities outside of those available. ■