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Episode 34
357 Plays1 year ago
News for the week beginning 23 October 2023 and Question of the Week: "Is it okay to date someone from work?"
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Transcript
Weekly News Update
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Speaker
This is the news for the week beginning the 23rd of October, 2023.
Unemployment Rate Drop
00:00:12
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The unemployment rate for September dropped 0.1 percentage point to 3.6 percent on the back. The number of unemployed workers actively looking for work declining to 520,500, according to the ABS's labor force data released last Thursday.
00:00:29
Speaker
The participation rate rose from 66% to 66.7% month on month. Recruitment difficulty edged down slightly in September, decreasing by 2 percentage points to 59% of recruiting employers, according to Jobs and Skills Australia's National Survey of 1000 Employers. Although recruitment difficulty is now 9
Recruitment Challenges Easing
00:00:50
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percentage points lower than a year ago.
00:00:53
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In September the number of employers recruiting rose three percentage points from August to reach 49 percent. Last year 58 percent of employers were recruiting in September. The proportion of employers who expect to increase staffing over the October to December period rose by one percentage point to 25 percent.
00:01:14
Speaker
Internet Vacancy Index revealed online job advertisements decreased 2% month on month in September 2023 to stand at 272,900. Over the year to September, online job ads decreased by 4.1%.
Women Leaders' Corporate Exit
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A glimpse into some of the reasons why women leaders are departing corporate life at such an unprecedented rate.
00:01:38
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was revealed this week in the details of executive recruiter Anna Whitlam's claim against Tenio Global, as reported by industry news service Shortlist. In August 2021, Whitlam sold her search and advisory business, Anna Whitlam People, to global consulting firm Tenio, and as part of the sale, was appointed to the position of head of backpack talent advisory based in Australia with responsibility across the Asia Pacific region. In July this year, Whitlam was summarily dismissed by Tenio,
00:02:09
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for alleged misconduct and is now suing the firm in the Federal Court for unlawful adverse action and contract breaches. Among the claims outlined in the shortlist article, Whitlam alleges she often started work as early as 6am and would finish anywhere between 11pm and 3am and that she was regularly required to work weekends and to attend late night online meetings. She was told she was no longer part of the Global Management Committee, GMC,
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after having emailed the chair of Tennio International two months into her tenure seeking a more inclusive approach to GMC meetings to cater to different time zones. She raised concerns with the chair about his lack of communication on matters such as budget targets and when she claimed the workplace culture was male-dominated and not inclusive of women, she was blamed for the high turnover of staff. According to the Tennio
00:03:00
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global website, their current Global Management Committee comprises 10 men and 2 women. Labor High and Licensing Queensland has fined 3 companies for operating Labor High services without licenses. North Farming Proproter Limited and Ranjit Singh were fined $300,000 and $60,000 respectively after being convicted in a local magistrate's court.
00:03:25
Speaker
The prosecution showed neither North Farming nor Rangit Singh held a licence when they supplied fruit pickers and labourers to fruit farms in North Queensland, according to Labor High Licensing Queensland. Further, they provided Labor High services without having a workers' compensation policy in place.
00:03:41
Speaker
In the third instance, Agile Group Global Proprietary Limited and its chief operating officer were prosecuted for supplying security guards without being licensed to do so. The chief operating officer was fined $50,000 while the company was fined $150,000. New South Wales has hiked the maximum fine and doubled the prison time for employers under recently passed amendments to the state's Work Health and Safety Act 2011.
00:04:09
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Under the amendments, employers who commit category one offenses under the law will be fined just over $2.1 million up from the previous 800,000. They may also receive maximum imprisonment of up to 10 years doubling the five that was originally stipulated in the law. The amendment also increases every court penalty imposed in New South Wales relating to unsafe work practices according to safe work. It also prohibits employers from using their insurance to pay for work health and safety fines
00:04:39
Speaker
as a cost of doing business. Employment and labour force participation rates reached record highs in the second quarter of this year in the 38 countries tracked by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to data released earlier in the month.
00:04:55
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The employment rate in the OECD rose to 70.1% in the second quarter, the highest level since 2005. The OECD labour force participation rate rose to 73.7%, the highest since 2008. Record highs in both the employment rate and labour force participation rate were reported in 19 countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
00:05:22
Speaker
The unemployment rate in the 38 country OECD area remained at a record low of 4.8%. Countries with the lowest unemployment rate in August were Korea 2.4%, the Czech Republic 2.5% and Japan at 2.7%. The highest unemployment rates in August were in Spain 11.5%, Greece 10.9% and Colombia 9.5%.
Glencore's Mining Closure
00:05:50
Speaker
Glencore has announced it will close all copper mining operations at its Mount Isa location, one of the biggest copper mines in the country. The multinational broke the news to employees last Wednesday morning that all copper mining at the site will cease in 2025. At least 1,200 employees will be affected, including contractors, suppliers and businesses that rely on the largest copper mining operation in north-west Queensland.
00:06:16
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In a statement, Glencore cited low-quality ore as the reason for the major closure. Chief Operating Officer of Glencore Zinc Assets in Australia, Sam Stomaya, said the company would look to retain, redeploy and retrain as many employees as possible while others would be offered redundancies as a last resort.
00:06:39
Speaker
Manpower Group reported revenue fell 5.4% year over year in constant currency for the September 2023 quarter, although revenue in Asia Pacific Middle East increased by 3.4%. The United States was the company's
00:06:57
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year on year decline. The company announced $38 million worth of restructuring costs have been incurred during the quarter causing net earnings to decline 73% in the quarter to $30 million. Ignite announced revenue for September 2023 quarter was $26.3 million and Gross Profit was $3 million down 11% year on year.
00:07:20
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At the end of September, Ignite's active contractor headcount was 579, down 12% in the quarter and 21% year on year. The largest red flag about an employer's behaviour during the hiring process was the lack of communication, cited by 70% of respondents, followed by a negative interview experience 57%, then avoiding questions about pay 55% and vague job descriptions 55%.
00:07:49
Speaker
These results came from the 2023 Greenhouse Candidate Interview Experience report based on the responses of 1,200 US-based candidates to questions about the behavior of employers during the hiring process. Over one-third of candidates, 34%, have experienced discriminatory interview questions with the most common questions focused on age, race and gender. Just over one-third, 36% of respondents admitted to ghosting an employer with poor interview experience
00:08:18
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and the organisation was different from what I expected it to be, equal top as the most cited reason. Close to one fifth, 19% of candidates have changed their names on their resume to sound less ethnic and to sound younger, the top two reasons for doing so. To sound like the opposite gender was the fifth most nominated response at 22%.
00:08:42
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The latest figures from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications shows that one out of every seven workers in Japan is 65 or older. In 2022, there were 9.1 million workers age 65 or older in Japan, exceeding the previous year's total for the 19th consecutive year. The employment rate among those 65 or older in Japan was 25.2%.
00:09:05
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a 0.1 percentage point increase over the previous year. Only South Korea has a higher workforce participation rate amongst over 65s at 37 percent. Australia's workforce participation rate for people aged 65 and over is 15 percent. A supervisor at a Pennsylvania food services company and co-conspirators allegedly steered 13 million dollars in business
00:09:32
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at his company to staffing firms in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from those firms, the US Attorney's Office announced. The incidents happened between 2014 and 2019 when the accused allegedly accepted payments from global staffing services and PEN's independent staffing. The supervisor has entered a not guilty plea to the charges and the maximum penalty for the commercial bribery offence is 20 years in prison.
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And now you're up to date with your recruitment news for the week beginning the 23rd of October, 2023.
Complexities of Office Romance
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Question of the week. Question of the week this week has been prompted by an article I read recently about the good old office romance. It said about 40% of US workers have said they've flirted with someone from their workplace and nearly a quarter have gone on a date with someone from work, according to an annual survey from the Society for Human Resource Management conducted in January this year.
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which included over 600 respondents, 17%. And they've been in an official relationship with someone in their workplace. So Adele, question of the week this week, is it okay to date someone from work? This is a really interesting one, Ross. And I have to say that it's filled with lots of issues, of course, as everybody knows. It makes me very nervous to think about the situations of people dating at work.
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my own experience. I'm thankful to say I have had the experience of dating somebody that I worked with, but not in the recruitment industry. So I'm sorry, no spilling of the tea going on. Oh really? Really? You've never dated someone?
00:11:50
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No, I'm very pleased to say. From a recruitment agency when you're working in recruitment. Oh, come on. Are you telling me the truth? I am, I am. And I learnt my lesson early, thankfully. I worked for a very brief time just before joining recruitment in a customer service based role. And I did go on a date with somebody, not just that I worked with, but that was kind of a two up manager.
00:12:13
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So not my immediate manager, but the manager above that person. And it was a disaster. It was great fun at the time and it ended in a very uncomfortable situation of which I had to ask to be relocated. I actually had to be moved. Thankfully I had told my boss and she was empathetic and said, yeah, I can see he's giving you a hard time and I will try and get you a transfer. So I had to be transferred to another office.
00:12:40
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subsequently left and so kind of learnt my lesson I guess and so haven't done it in the recruitment industry thankfully but yeah that's my share I think you've got a different story though Ross. Yes yes I've had well my first marriage started off as an office romance that became official and there's been a few other let's call them
00:13:11
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dally answers that yes I think that's probably about as much as I'm happy to share yes there were a few other dally answers and some of those may have been known by my colleagues one or two of them may not I'm not really sure but that's probably about as much as I'll say is it about is it about telling people then is it about being open about this sort of thing
00:13:41
Speaker
Well, firstly, well, okay. So, so, so let's just face the inevitable truth that the recruitment industry is one where there's a lot of people in their twenties and a lot of people in their twenties who are single, who have got time on their hands, who don't have kids to go home to on a Friday night. So, you know, there's quite a, quite a few socializing opportunities.
00:14:09
Speaker
And certainly, I mean, I'd be interested to know in your experience, but certainly when I was in recruitment and certainly in my twenties, there was always Friday night drinks and almost always you'd go out to the pub afterwards. And actually there were quite a few times where candidates, cause I was in the temp team, so our temps sort of meet up with some temps and
00:14:38
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There were, let's say, occasions when a bit too much alcohol was consumed and one thing led to another. So, you know, my heart beat fast here. Being at the pub with candidates as well. And oh, my God, yes, that's fraught with all sorts of danger, danger, warning warning.
00:15:01
Speaker
Well, one tell that I'm prepared to own up to was that I did date one of my temps for a period of time. We actually had a relationship for a couple of years, which my boss knew about, although she wasn't thrilled the fact that I'd asked one of my temps out and we were in a relationship. But it was a proper relationship. It went for a couple of years.
00:15:30
Speaker
So I, yeah, look, I've certainly got some form here and I look back now and I probably, yeah, feel a little bit of a cringe about some of the things, but it's, it's tricky in the sense that it's almost inevitable because the industry being what it is, it's just navigating it in a way where you're not
00:15:56
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deceiving people. Um, and there's not a perception of, um, people being favored. Uh, cause I, you know, I did work in an environment where there were other relationships that were going on that were officially not happening. And it just made it a little bit awkward.
00:16:23
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for people because of the power imbalance in those relationships. So it's tricky. I remember of a girl who worked with me, so it wasn't me specifically, but she did also date a temp of ours and I was very nervous. She reported to me and I was very nervous about the situation. She was very upfront. We discussed it openly. We discussed different scenarios and what might happen and what the impact to the business might be and to her.
00:16:51
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And I'm thankful to say actually ended in a really happy ending. She ended up marrying him and having children and they're still married today. And so, you know, it was a great story in a great way that they met, but I think it was handled really maturely and openly. So maybe that's the bit of advice we're giving around this. It's not necessarily wrong to date someone at work, but you need to manage it really well in order for it to not be an issue at work.
00:17:16
Speaker
Well, I did notice in that same SHRM article that 77% of US workers said their employer doesn't require them to disclose a workplace romance. So do you think in the recruitment industry, companies should have that as a policy that people need to disclose a relationship or do you think that's better left to the people involved to decide whether they want to disclose it or not?
00:17:45
Speaker
It's a really interesting one. I'm not sure where the policy is necessarily the way to go, but I guess there's probably that general rule that you think nobody knows about it, but most of the time people do. It's not an easy thing in a workplace to manage. Most recruitment agencies are small to medium firms in this country, even if you're in a large company, you're in a small team, perhaps. People find out. And so I think it's always better to be on the front foot. I think if I was involved
00:18:12
Speaker
Today I would be you know trying to be as Open about it at the right time as well though because that's the hard thing You know when is the right time to declare it but to try and be open and upfront with it so that anything Any any issues could be managed or if anyone's got concerns it can be managed easily Well, I think the concerns and issues are more likely to occur if and when the relationship Finishes if it's finished on bad terms then there's the potential for that to spill over and
00:18:42
Speaker
into something potentially negative in the work environments similar to what you were describing that happened to you. So I think that's probably where there needs to be some, I don't know whether it's policy or unofficial rules about how those sorts of things might be handled because particularly in a small team it could be very tricky and potentially very awkward.
00:19:06
Speaker
All right. Well, you heard it here. Ross has got some advice, if any of you are listening and you want some ideas. Do not take workplace romance advice from me, but we are very interested to hear.
00:19:25
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what you think or what your own experience is. So when we post this on LinkedIn, we'd love to see in the comments some of your own experiences where it's been good and where it's not been good, because for as long as human beings are around and working together, it's going to be happening. We can be sure of that. No names though, please keep it anonymous. And now you're up to date with your recruitment news.
00:19:56
Speaker
And for all previous episodes, visit our website at recruitmentnewsaustralia.com.au And connect with us on LinkedIn, Ross Clannett and Adele Last.