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What is the major reason recruiters leave their job?
85 Plays3 days ago
Episode 84: News for 14 October 2024 and Question of the Week "What is the major reason recruiters leave their job?"
#RNA #RecruitmentPodcast #RecruitmentNewsAustralia
Transcript
00:00:07
Speaker
Ross and I are pleased to have Bullhorn as a sponsor of Recruitment News Australia. In today's world, your agency's database must be in the cloud, secured and accessible wherever you are in an office at home or on the move. Bullhorn's recruitment software is a home base for your team. Not only does it help you manage your entire recruitment process, but it also acts as a central hub for the rest of your stack. Go to bullhorn dot.com for more information.
00:00:34
Speaker
This is the news for the week beginning 14th October 2024. I'm Ross Clennett. Aqua Metro Services has entered into an enforceable undertaking with WorkSafe Victoria after a labour hire worker's hand was amputated due to a workplace accident. The civil engineering company will spend $561,000 on the enforceable undertaking.
00:00:57
Speaker
The incident happened in February 2022 when the labour hire worker was cleaning residue from a concrete pump mixer during drain rehabilitation work in Moonee Ponds, according to WorkSafe Victoria. The worker's hand became entangled in the mixing hopper, which resulted in amputation. WorkSafe Victoria said the mixer had guarding fitted, but it was removed to clean the hopper. No interlocks were installed in case of an unexpected start-up while the guarding was detached.
00:01:26
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Unfortunately, when machinery is not properly guarded, it's often a matter of when not if a serious and potentially life changing incident will occur. WorkSafe executive director of health and safety, Sam Jenkin said in a press release. The only upside to this terrible incident is that significant safety improvements will now be made within this company and the wider industry, including better support for students and vulnerable workers, Jenkin said.
00:01:54
Speaker
The Victorian Department of Education has launched a refreshed campaign via Creative Agency Assemble as part of a statewide recruitment effort to boost the number of teachers working in Victorian government schools. Featuring Victorian primary and secondary school students as the voices of the recruitment drive, the Teach the Future campaign aims to encourage more people to consider teaching as a rewarding career that makes a difference. The campaign will be supported by anecdotes from past and present students, sharing experiences about teachers who have impacted their lives as well as student-teacher Q&As about what teaching is like. Featuring a 30-second TV commercial and social cut downs, the campaign will run across TV, online platforms, print and radio. Sarah Munday, the managing director of Assemble Agency, said the lord said at the launch, we all know how important a good teacher can be in our lives. In this campaign, students are front and center calling for good teachers.
00:02:50
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It's a fresh, unexpected and memorable way to list the benefits of teaching and highlight how meaningful a teaching career can be. New research from the Monash Business School has found that throughout the job recruitment process, women believe artificial intelligence assessments reduce bias while men fear it removes an advantage. Professor Andreas Liebrandt from the Department of Economics investigated how artificial intelligence intelligence recruitment tools affect existing biases in recruitment. To uncover recruitment barriers, the first of its kind study focused on two key areas, applicant behaviour and recruiter bias. In one field experiment, more than 700 applicants for a web designer position were informed whether their application would be assessed by AI or assessed by a human.
00:03:42
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Women were significantly more likely to complete their applications when they knew AI would be involved, while men were less likely to apply, he said. A second experiment focused on the behavior of 500 tech recruiters. We found that when recruiters knew the applicant's gender, they consistently scored women lower than men. However, this bias completely disappeared when the applicant's gender was hidden, he said.
00:04:06
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When recruiters had access to both the AI score and the applicant's gender, there was also no gender difference in scoring. This finding shows us they use AI as an aid and anchor. It helps remove the gender bias in assessment, Professor Leibran said. The All England Lawn Tennis Club's annual recruitment of 300 line judges who officiate the 650 matches at Wimbledon each year has ended.
00:04:33
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The club has announced that all line judges will be replaced with artificial intelligence and an electronic system in 2025. It's the first time human officials have been removed in the championship's 147-year history. The All England club has confirmed that all 18 match courts will be installed with automated electronic line calling, the same system as the one used at the US Open since 2020, where automated voice calls are played out within a tenth of a second of the ball landing.
00:05:01
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As a result of the changes, expected that Wimbledon's Hawk Eye Challenge system brought in to use in 2007, where players could review calls made by the line judges will be removed. We take our responsibility to balance tradition and innovation at Wimbledon very seriously. Line umpires have played a central role in our officiating setup at the championships for many decades and we recognise their valuable contribution and thank them for their commitment and service, said Sally Bolton, Chief Executive at the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
00:05:30
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One third of new hires have experienced poor onboarding with remote and hybrid teams struggling more than their in-office colleagues when starting a new job, according to a survey by onboarding and engagement platform, Inboarder. The survey, which polled more than 1,000 employees in the US, UK and Australia, found that one in three respondents started looking for another job based on their sub-par onboarding experience with a quarter of respondents subsequently leaving their new position.
00:05:59
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Asked to assess their onboarding experience, 34 per cent of respondents said they felt disengaged, 33 per cent regretted accepting the role and 30 per cent had a negative outlook on their new employer. As companies continue to grapple with maintaining employee morale and engagement, only 26 per cent of employees said they felt fully informed, engaged and confident during their most recent onboarding.
00:06:25
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New hires working remotely are nearly 50% more likely to say company culture was demonstrated poorly or not at all compared to their on-site peers and field workers are more than twice as likely to feel they were not fully informed, engaged and confident during their onboarding process compared to their office-based colleagues. Amid rising concerns over AI's impact on employment, three in 10 companies report they replace workers with AI this year according to a survey released last month by resumetemplates.com. The poll of 978 business leaders based in the United States found that 90% of their companies currently use AI with the top applications being data analysis, research, and content creation. Among those using AI, 53% say it makes their work much more productive, with 37% say it slightly increases productivity. The study also found that 38% of companies expect to replace workers with AI in 2025.
00:07:25
Speaker
While a high number of countries either ban or regulate recruitment fees required to be paid by candidates, more needs to be done according to a new report by the International Labor Organization. In the report, the ILO noted, Apple requires suppliers or staffing agencies to repay recruitment fees to employees when it finds them.
00:07:45
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The company said $263,000 in recruitment fees was repaid to 53 workers in 2023. And it said just over $34.5 million dollars in recruitment fees have been repaid to more than 37,000 workers since 2008. Amazon in February of this year said it took steps after a staffing firm was found to require recruitment fees, among other supply chain standard violations. The Institute for Human Rights and Business reported in September that 31% of seafarers were asked to pay a recruitment fee to work on a ship.
00:08:19
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Almost half were asked to pay between $500 and $5,000, with some reporting charges of more than $10,000. Such fees are illegal under the Maritime Labor Convention. The report noted that more can be done by governments and businesses.
00:08:36
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While efforts have been made to regulate recruitment practices and prevent the exploitation of workers, there is a need for more comprehensive and specific regulations or updates of the existing ones to ensure the prohibition of all recruitment related fees and expenses and to close the existing loopholes that could potentially be exploited, the report recommended in its discussion of the Americas region. A Thai employee at a plant owned by Delta Electronics Thailand collapsed and later died the day after her manager allegedly refused to allow her another day's sick leave unless she first submitted a new medical certificate. According to a friend of the employee, a 30-year-old woman, she had taken five sick days leave with a medical certificate after she was diagnosed with an inflamed large intestine and spent four days in hospital. After she left hospital, she took two more days off as her condition had not improved.
00:09:29
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On the evening of the 12th of September, the employee asked her manager for sick leave the next day, saying her condition had deteriorated even further. The manager said she had to attend work and submit another medical certificate since she had already taken many sick days off. Fearing the loss of her job, the employee went to work the next day despite still feeling very ill. The employee collapsed at work, was taken to hospital and sent immediately for emergency surgery, but was subsequently pronounced dead.
00:09:56
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Delta Electronics Thailand said in an announcement, at this moment we are still in the process of establishing the facts surrounding her passing and have initiated a thorough investigation. Our goal is to create a better understanding of the situation while ensuring we provide the necessary support to her family.
00:10:12
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The RCSA VIC TAS Council and Next Gen reps are holding a VIC Recruiter Connect Next Gen Meetup this Thursday 17th October at 5pm at the Hub, 180 Flinders Street in Melbourne. Addressing the topic, building consultative partnerships with hiring managers is an expert panel featuring Joanna Thornton from Manpower Group, Smart Recruitments, Will McPhee, Jessica Hickey from Six Degrees Executive and Eden Haddock.
00:10:42
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from REA Group. The registration fee of $20 for members and $40 for non-members covers snacks and beverages. For more information, visit the events tab at rcsa.com.au. And that's the news for the week beginning the 14th of October 2024. I'm Adele Last.
00:11:08
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the
00:11:12
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Question of the week. What's the major reason recruiters leave their job? I know you wrote an article similar to this, Ross, about a year ago. I think your article was, Why do good recruiters leave good agencies? I did. And is it relevant to this question? What is the major reason? Well, I think so.
00:11:32
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I mean, just to be clear, I wrote that directed at the specific case of recruiters leaving to join another recruitment agency, not to leave the industry or not to set up their own business. So the five things that I listed, firstly, money, so better base salary, better commission structure. Second, culture slash leadership.
00:11:54
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that they're underwhelmed or disillusioned by the leadership they're experiencing or the culture is not working for them. And they believe that the offer that they've got is with a company that has a better culture or maybe a more high profile leader. Third, career development.
00:12:13
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The recruiters in an agency that's not growing, they want to move into a different niche. They may want leadership responsibility, um but those things are not available. So need to move to another agency to get that opportunity. Fourth, ego. Person not feeling particularly loved, ah feeling a bit taken for granted.
00:12:36
Speaker
Rec2Rec calls them, maybe they weren't actively looking, but they're interested, what's available, what am I worth, or the owner of another recruitment agency calls. So, you know, that's not uncommon. And then the fifth thing, working arrangements, that whatever arrangements are in place in terms of flexibility, or maybe there's no flexibility, that those are not suiting the employee.
00:13:05
Speaker
and they want something different and maybe they've attempted to negotiate with their current employer, hasn't worked, and so therefore they want better arrangements, more suitable arrangements that a alternative employer is willing to offer. And did you intend those to be in a rank order? You numbered them then as you described them. Is is it money, culture, leadership, career development in that order?
00:13:31
Speaker
Not consciously, but I would probably say broadly. Yes. I mean, I'd say probably culture and leadership would be the main thing very closely followed by money. That's probably my assessment at the moment. Okay. I disagree in the current market. And I know you wrote this article over a year ago, but I think the current market has had a shift around the order of these. I think I do certainly think At you know mid-2023, coming out of you know the COVID boom of 21, 22, people were really chasing money. A year ago, it was very much about ah you know how much people could get in terms of salary. And I think that was definitely one of the major reasons. And you know culture and leadership is always up there in terms of the reasons that people leave. you know they They join a company, they leave a leader.
00:14:23
Speaker
But I think now, you know, mid to late 2024, I'm seeing a real shift. I think that the working from home arrangements, the flexible working arrangements factor is a really big one. I would actually rank this one as number one. Really? Yeah, as a major focus because I'm seeing a really strange, you know, change in the industry around, you know, using as leaders using it, I guess, as ah as a means of, you know,
00:14:52
Speaker
rewarding or not rewarding somebody in their role. I see people panicking in fact. I am seeing agency owners really struggling with the current market. We know it's a soft market out there. It still hasn't kind of recovered. It is tough. It's hard to get client visits at the moment. It's hard to get job orders on. It's hard to keep your job flow active. We know all of these things.
00:15:13
Speaker
And I think a lot of leaders are panicking and they're using the working from home model, hybrid model as a reason to kind of blame the issues and they're calling people back into the office. I'm seeing a lot of agencies, you know, making, reversing the whole model and saying everyone back in, whether that's, you know, temporarily or permanently. I'm seeing a lot of people being um questioned around what they're actually doing at home. you know I want to question the quality of the working from home structure because I'm hearing examples of recruiters who are allowed to work from home, but they are checked in and checked on so regularly. you know They start to feel like they're a criminal. you know They're having meetings first thing in the morning and every last thing at night and they're asked where they were and if they didn't answer.
00:16:03
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you know, a call, you know, or jump on a meeting straight away, you know, what were they doing? And so I really think this is a big factor. or I think people have had enough and it's something that would drive people to say, I don't want to stay here anymore, because this is an environment that, you know, isn't offering me flexible work. I don't think it's it's good quality or it's happening at all in the recruitment sector.
00:16:23
Speaker
Well, the RCSA remuneration survey would suggest, well, certainly if I take the results as indicative of the broader industry, you've got about 80% of companies saying they provide some form of remote work for their employees. So are you, so I mean, I know that survey was taken in, I think June. So are you saying the last three months there's been a significant shift?
00:16:50
Speaker
I do think it's pretty recent. I do think it could be post-June that these changes has occurred. ah I'm surprised to hear that number, 80% being it is significant. And as I said, I do still think people are reluctant to change the working from home arrangement because they kind of know, well, it makes us less attractive as an employer. So we're going to say it's flexible. We're going to say there's working from home opportunity. But the reality is that when you know when the chips are down,
00:17:19
Speaker
ah they're calling it back, you know, they're repealing the offer or or changing the structure or, as I said, just kind of micromanaging from across the airwaves because they can't control, you know, their employees or they can't control what's going on. So seriously, you're saying this is a factor that's greater than cultural leadership or greater than money in terms of recruiters leaving their jobs at the moment. I think it ties into culture and leadership.
00:17:47
Speaker
i think I think it definitely outranks money now, but I do think it ties into culture and leadership because, as I said, you know it's really a poor leader who uses this as a tool, uses flexible working arrangements as their only tool, one of few tools to to gain control of the current situation. you know You're not going to inspire anyone to work any harder or more productively by calling them back into the office. It's only going to make you feel more comfortable. um It's certainly not going to make your employees feel more comfortable.
00:18:17
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And then that kind of impacts your culture as well then. you know You're going to have a situation where people are resenting that and and not enjoying the job anymore and you know being bitter and you know causing being toxic and causing issues. So I think it feeds into the culture leadership one. So my take on that would be that, okay, you've probably got people who not overly through it with their money, but it's not like a factor that would cause them to leave.
00:18:47
Speaker
Maybe they're not overly thrilled with the cultural leadership, but it's not bad. They've heard of worse. Maybe they've experienced worse. It's not enough to cause them to leave. But with their working arrangements, they were suitable and flexible, and that was important. And then.
00:19:06
Speaker
that was changed. And then because of that, the money or culture issues loom much larger, like the employee was probably prepared to overlook or minimize the money and cultural issues because they got the flexibility. But the moment the flexibilities change, that becomes the trigger. And then that does become the reason that they say that they want to leave. Whereas maybe those pay and cultural issues were sort of bubbling under
00:19:39
Speaker
anyway, and were sort of significant push factors once that sort of straw that broke the camel's back occurred with the flexible working. So what do you think of that? Yeah, I think you're probably right there. I think the flexible working arrangement is kind of like a magnifier for the other issues. You know, like you said, if the other issues are, you know, somewhat of an issue, but not significant, a retracted working from home or or flexible working arrangements going to magnify them.
00:20:09
Speaker
So what was bubbling will suddenly bubble over. And so I do agree with that. And I think ah we should probably, you know, tell any agency owners listening to kind of take heed to what we're saying here in being aware of, you know, what are the major factors and how are they impacting it with decisions like this in terms of changing um working from home arrangements? Because it's one that they wield really easily and quickly, you know, you don't You don't change somebody's salary that quickly. you know You don't wake up one day and say, well, let's just reduce somebody's salary to reduce costs. They're not doing that. They're leaving salary alone because we know that that's not you know a way to manage people. But for this reason for some reason with this one, they're just pulling it back in. And I ah i put a caution out there, be very, very careful.
00:20:56
Speaker
Well, I think it probably points to a factor about leaving jobs generally is that workers don't like unexpected surprises, unexpected surprises that they perceive as negative ones because it just makes them feel disoriented. And well, if that happened without notice or if that happened because And that's contrary to what the leader or owner said six months ago, the what else might happen in the future of a similar nature that's going to piss me off as well? And I think to your point, it's it's that um reflexive, oh, my God, we've got no jobs, bring everyone back into the office, that kind of panic.
00:21:43
Speaker
response is what has people feel like I'm not in an environment I can trust because there were certain things said in the first half of the year and they appear to have gone out the window and now something different's happening. What else might happen? I just don't trust my boss. I don't trust the environment and time to leave. You hit the nail on the head. it's It is definitely about trust. Hey, are you liking listening to our podcast, Recruitment News Australia?
00:22:11
Speaker
If you are, it would really help if you could give Ross Kleiner and I a five-star review. On whatever podcast app you listen to it on, please hop onto the review section and give us a review next time you're listening on your favorite episode. And thanks for listening.