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Episode 17
374 Plays1 year ago
Recruitment News Australia with Ross Clennett and Adele Last
Listen to two industry experts as they update you on all the news from the week in the recruitment industry in Australia.
Question of the Week:
" Where have you worked that exhibited the best work culture?" Tune in.
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Transcript
Weekly News Overview
00:00:07
Speaker
This is the news for the week commencing 10th of July, 2023.
Leadership Changes at Finite Group
00:00:12
Speaker
Shortlist reports that tech recruiter Finite Group now has a new managing director with Tracy Thompson departing the business she founded 25 years ago. Finite Group was acquired by Randstad last year and Thompson and her brother Duncan Thompson have now left following the completion of their earn-out periods. The new Group MD is Sean Duffy, who has been with the company for 12 years.
00:00:34
Speaker
Duffy told Shortlist the next few months will be business as usual for himself and the group. I plan to steer the group for further success, albeit under close partnership with the global Randstad business, he said. Duffy notes that day to day the business hasn't changed under Randstad's ownership. It has acted independently while receiving Randstad's support and he expects that to continue.
NQ Powertrain's Legal Troubles
00:00:56
Speaker
The Fair Work Ombudsman has secured a $106,000 court penalty against labour hire company NQ Powertrain Proprietary Limited.
00:01:05
Speaker
After it underpaid 87 visa holders working on farms in Far North Queensland, a total of $49,933 between December 2018 and May 2020. The labour hire company made deductions from the workers' wages for accommodation or transport costs that exceeded the maximum lawfully allowable and also underpaid their entitlements under the country's Horticultural Award 2010, specifically their Sunday overtime rates,
00:01:32
Speaker
time off in lieu entitlements and minimum engagement pay. NQ Powertrain employed the workers under the then Pacific Labor Scheme and seasonal worker programs and supplied them on an on-high basis to farms at locations near Cairns. Individual underpayments ranged from $17 to $2,041. NQ Powertrain rectified the underpayments in full after the Fair Work Ombudsman investigated.
00:01:59
Speaker
The company ceased trading in 2022.
Migrant Worker Exploitation Concerns
00:02:03
Speaker
In a separate announcement, the Australian Border Force said it will visit more than 200 workplaces to detect, disrupt and deter migrant worker exploitation. The inspections will incorporate Operation Englenook, a 2022 program that targets criminals who exploit temporary visa holders, which has so far identified over 175 people suspected of exploiting the temporary visa program.
Bribery Scandal at TCS
00:02:29
Speaker
TCS, one of India's leading IT firms, has been thrown into turmoil as a bribery scandal involving senior personnel has come to light. According to Wyon, certain individuals within the company's resource management group, RMG, have been accepting bribes from staffing firms to secure jobs for their candidates over an extended period. Following a whistleblower complaint, an internal investigation concluded with TCS placing its head of recruitment on leave.
00:02:56
Speaker
terminating four officials in the RMG division and imposing a ban on three staffing firms. One of the accusers has been barred from entering the office and another from the RMG division has been dismissed. It is estimated that those involved in the scandal may have accumulated commissions totalling at least US$14 million over the last three years. TCS has added an average of 50,000 employees annually in recent years, including contractors, and currently has over 600,000 employees.
00:03:25
Speaker
The extent of the irregularities is yet to be determined, but the impact could be significant considering the sheer scale of TCS's recruitment efforts.
Robert Walters' Financial Impact
00:03:34
Speaker
Robert Walters reported group net fee income filled by 10% in constant currency for the second quarter ended 30 June 2023.
00:03:44
Speaker
Robert Walters said global market uncertainty continued to impact both candidate and client confidence. The group also cited tough comparatives against a record second quarter in 2022. Asia Pacific net fee income was down 8% to £43.8 million, with Robert Walters Australia recording a 17% decline compared to the June quarter last year.
Job Market Competitiveness in Doha
00:04:12
Speaker
The most competitive job market in the world according to LinkedIn has been revealed. With an average of nearly 400 applicants for every job ad after a week of posting, the city of Doha in Qatar emerges the most competitive job market in the world. The list was compiled by resume.io after analyzing LinkedIn data, revealing the average number of job applicants that an ad gets within a week of being posted.
00:04:36
Speaker
Sitting right at the top of that list is Doha, where job advertisements receive an average of 399 applications within a week of being posted on LinkedIn. Regime.io attributed this to the recent FIFA World Cup held in Qatar last year, which helped the local economy and industries there. No doubt, job hunters in Qatar are attracted by the prospect of earning one of the highest average salaries in the world, which won't be taxed under Qatar law either. Regime.io said in a blog post.
00:05:04
Speaker
Coming in second is Dubai, where an average of 283 applicants flocked to a job ad within a week of being posted.
Employment Growth Discrepancies
00:05:13
Speaker
The US labor market in June showed conflicting jobs data with payroll processing firm ADP reporting that private sector jobs surged by 497,000 for the month, the biggest monthly rise since July 2022. Yet the official Department of Labor data released the following day showed non-farm employment grew by only 209,000 jobs in June, below the consensus estimate of 240,000.
00:05:40
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making June the slowest month for job creation since December 2020. The unemployment rate declined by 0.1% to 3.6%. Wage data was slightly stronger than expected. Average hourly earnings increased by 0.4% for the month and 4.4% from a year ago, and the average workweek also increased up 0.1 of an hour to 34.4 hours, both signs of a strong
00:06:09
Speaker
underlying labour market.
LGBT+ Workplace Comfort
00:06:12
Speaker
Employees who identify as members of the LGBT plus community want to be out at work but many don't feel comfortable enough to do it according to a Deloitte global survey of over 5,000 respondents. While a large majority of respondents attached a high level of importance to being able to freely express their sexual orientation or gender identity in the workplace, only 42% of respondents feel comfortable about being out about their sexual orientation at work.
00:06:38
Speaker
The Deloitte Global 2023 LGBT plus inclusion at work report said, the report found that the level of comfort at coming out increases with seniority with slightly more than half of those in leadership most comfortable in expressing their sexual orientation or gender identity. The top three reasons employees nominated for not being comfortable about being out about their sexual orientation are, I would be worried I would be treated differently, said 39%.
00:07:04
Speaker
37% said, I prefer not to talk about any aspect of my private life at work. And 32% said, I worry I would face discrimination or harassment.
Reflecting on Workplace Cultures
00:07:21
Speaker
Question of the week. Question of the week this week is slightly different. It's a question we're going to ask each other. And the question is, what is the favourite culture that you've worked in?
00:07:32
Speaker
And why? So Adil, why don't you start? Yeah, I'm thinking back actually to one of the earlier recruitment agencies I worked in that comes to mind. It was when I was younger and it was a very kind of fast and energetic sort of environment.
00:07:52
Speaker
OK, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. So where, like, name the company of days? Do I have to? Of course you do. Come on. All right. It was actually Candle IT recruitment. One of the very early roles that I worked in, IT recruitment, was in my early days. And I was very young. And so that was, you know, showing my age, I suppose, because Candle's not around anymore. And it's in its brand, that form. But many of you will remember.
00:08:18
Speaker
And yeah, it stands out as being memorable to me. As I said, it was, it was just a really fast, energetic environment. It was tough. It was really tough in there. It was a learning curve every day. It moved really fast. The expectations were really high. And, you know, I always kind of likened it a bit to the kind of
00:08:35
Speaker
Wolf of Wall Street kind of environment. But, you know, as a young new recruiter, it really excited me. It really made me want to jump out of bed every day and get in there and push myself and see what I could achieve. That was really one that, when I think about workplace culture, probably helped me grow the most actually, as an individual. So it really stands out.
00:08:56
Speaker
And for newer listeners, the candle business morphed into Clarius, which morphed into Ignite. That's right. Which is a long way away from that culture that you describe Adele, given their recent performance. But anyway, let's not go there. What about you, Russ? Tell us about your most memorable cultural environment.
00:09:21
Speaker
Well, that's pretty easy for me. It was recruitment solutions. And similar to you, I was relatively young. I joined recruitment solutions when I was 24 and a half. I was recruited by Greg Savage and Greg's now wife Bronwyn. And I love that culture and the things that I loved about it. First and foremost, it was a meritocracy and
00:09:49
Speaker
high performance was rewarded and mediocre performance was performance managed and if the person did not improve they were out. So it was very fair in my view. There were no favourites and there was no lack of clarity and I love that about about that environment and in fact when that company went downhill after Greg left
00:10:19
Speaker
One of the reasons was in my view that it stopped being a meritocracy and favorites started to be played, but let's not go there.
Modern Influences on Workplace Culture
00:10:28
Speaker
All right. Second thing, which is really to do with that, I think, was that it was an exciting time in the industry. I was there between 91 and 98 and certainly the time that I'm referring to specifically was the early to mid nineties. So say 92 to 95, 96, the market was really growing and expanding.
00:10:48
Speaker
and hard work was being rewarded. And I just really enjoyed the growth aspect of the business. And I'm sure anyone listening to this, when they think about experiences and anyone who's been around a long time, they've had experiences in a high growth business versus a low growth business, almost always it's better and more exciting to be in a high growth business. And that business was definitely a high growth business at that point.
00:11:15
Speaker
Next, I'd say there was no gossip. I mean, not to say we didn't have a bit of a chat after work or over a drink or whatever, but it wasn't a gossipy environment. People were very focused on external communication, very much focused on external customers, so candidates and clients. And so it was not a very political environment. Again, every work environment has some degree of politics, but I would have
00:11:44
Speaker
assessed it as a very low politics environment. Everyone was very focused externally, and I really enjoyed that. And I think the other thing
00:11:55
Speaker
which I'd imagine is pretty common amongst strong cultures, is I felt an alignment with my colleagues. I felt that the people who I work with were people like me. They had similar values, and certainly some of them I was much closer to than others, and I'd socialise with out of work.
00:12:16
Speaker
But by and large, I just felt like I liked pretty much everyone in the company, like I'd be struggling to think of someone that I really didn't like. And that's not an environment that I'd had previously or subsequently. And so do you think those factors, I mean, both of ours, we both reference, you know, some older examples there. So, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago,
00:12:46
Speaker
Are they still relevant today? What do you think some of the current factors? That is a good question. Well, I'd imagine all of those things are still relevant, but I did see an article the other day and it said the three most significant factors around culture that fly under the radar were accommodation or buildings, as they described it.
00:13:16
Speaker
calendars and messaging. And I really had to stop. I did have to stop and think about buildings calendars messaging. So I suspect what they mean by buildings is probably easiest to use an example is the campus like nature of the big tech companies. Not that I've ever been to a big tech company to visit any of their premises, but you look at
00:13:44
Speaker
Google and the big campus like nature that they have in Mountain View.
00:13:52
Speaker
in Silicon Valley. And that's designed very specifically to create an almost non-work environment, that it's almost like an extension of student life. And absolutely, without doubt, that that has an impact. I mean, just when I think back and how different it was in my day, and I assume your day Adil, that in each of the work environments that I was in,
00:14:21
Speaker
there was never a breakout space. Like yes, there was a kitchen, but there was never a space at work to sit and have lunch. And in fact, it got slightly ridiculous because in the business support team at one point, there was some vacant desks and people would take their lunch and sit in the business support team, which would annoy the business support team because all the smells of hot lunches would be lingering around the business support team, which understandably they got a bit annoyed by.
00:14:50
Speaker
So yeah, certainly buildings, calendars, which I suppose means can you access everyone's calendar? How accepted is it to not have anything in your calendar compared to other cultures where whatever you're planning to do or whatever you're doing or have done, it's got to be in the calendar to signify what you've been up to.
00:15:17
Speaker
That's sort of like a management tool in that sense with calendars. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. A monitoring tool. Yes, exactly. Yeah, performance monitoring tool. And I can imagine absolutely that is going to impact on culture. And then the final one is messaging, which again, I'm speculating that I'd imagine
00:15:38
Speaker
When messages need to be sent out, are people going to talk to one another or do the leaders have a stand up or do they record a video and circulate it? Is there email etiquette? Are you trained in how to use email to communicate internally and externally? For example, I don't know, BCC, that's a classic, like how to appropriately use BCC.
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know that I'm just kind of speculating on each of those, but I can certainly see how each of those would impact culture and how they would be things that people don't necessarily think about straight away when it comes to culture. Yeah, totally agree. Really interesting sort of points there. So yeah, we'd love to hear perhaps from some of the people who are listening. What do you think are those important factors that build a culture or indeed destroy one too? That's a wrap.
00:16:34
Speaker
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