Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 81
142 Plays2 months ago
News for the week of 23 September 2024 and Question of the Week, "Does the recruitment sector have a 'baby, maybe?' bias?"
#RNA #RecruitmentPodcas #RecruitmentNewsAustralia
Recommended
Transcript
Bullhorn's Engage 2024 Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
Did you attend Bullhorn's Engage this year, Ross? I did, Adele, and I had a great day. Would you recommend it to our listeners if they wanted to go next year when it's on? You bet. A full day of recruitment-specific speakers plus networking, food and drinks. It's hard to beat. Well, I'm solved. So when is it actually being held next year? Thursday, the 6th of March at the Winkstand Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney.
00:00:38
Speaker
And for such a great day, I'm guessing it must be at least $1,000 a ticket. Would you believe Adele, early bird tickets are just $249 each. How's that for value? Discover how to more effectively engage talent and learn about the future of recruitment at Engage. For more information, visit engage dot.bullhorn dot.com.
Positive Labor Market Trends
00:01:01
Speaker
The news for we commencing the 23rd of September, 2024, I'm Adele Last.
00:01:08
Speaker
The past week's flood of labor market releases all signify good news for the recruitment industry. Last Thursday's employment data from the ABS showed strong jobs growth with 47,500 jobs added in the month on a seasonally adjusted basis, a growth rate almost 50% higher than the monthly average across the last 12 months. All the gains were in part time positions, which grew by just over 50,000 last month, with full time positions declining by 3,100.
00:01:37
Speaker
This was against the trend of the past 12 months with 77% of jobs added since September 2023 being full-time positions. The August update of the recruitment experience as an Outlook survey of 1,000 Australian employers conducted by JSA showed optimism among Australian employers jump significantly last month with 22% forecasting they would increase headcount in the next three months. This is a 4 percentage point jump compared to July and the highest figure for five months.
00:02:05
Speaker
The results broadly align with the return to growth in job ads with the latest Internet Vacancy Index release showing a spike in online job advertisements during August of 4.8%, the most substantial monthly increase in almost three years. This result bucks the pattern of consistent declines recorded over the last 12 months. The 6 August employment report released two days after the IVI data shows that national job ad volumes grew by 0.3%, the second consecutive month of job ad growth,
00:02:34
Speaker
after three previous months declines.
Collar Company Developments
00:02:38
Speaker
Collar Group founder and CEO Ephraim Stevenson has made his first public comment since he regained control of Collar in July after the company went into voluntary administration in May. Last Thursday on LinkedIn, in his first post for four months, Stevenson posted a 250-word message in which he addressed the past and future of Collar.
00:02:59
Speaker
The message started, this is hard to write and included. The decision to place the business into voluntary administration was the right one. Three years of unprecedented growth saw Collars underlying cost space reach an unsustainable level. And the decision of our creditors to place the business back into the hands of the management team was also the right one. We are now busy streamlining the business, reshaping and focusing on what is most important.
00:03:25
Speaker
getting fantastic candidates placed into fulfilling roles. We have a plan and we are delivering to it. We have signed six new clients in September and have a line of sight for more. We are reaching deep into Collar's can-do culture and serving our people, our candidates and our clients. Watch this space, Stevenson's post concluded. The blog had had over 30 comments by the beginning of this week, with former Collar employee Blake Alexander the most aggrieved, commenting in part,
00:03:55
Speaker
It feels so demoralizing to find this message coming out now, particularly after months of total silence. On one hand, it's nice to see things like naming the challenges, but on the other hand, it is quite disconcerting that there is still a lack of accountability or a genuine apology to those who suffered.
Hybrid Work Adoption in Australia
00:04:14
Speaker
New research from workplace design consultancy UniSpace found Australia is a world leader in acceptance of hybrid working.
00:04:22
Speaker
Citing a survey of 8,000 employees and 2,700 employers across 13 countries, Unispace's latest global study says 32% of Australian employees can choose where they work compared to 23% worldwide. Australian employees are also marginally less likely to view remote work as an impediment to career progression, 23%, than the global average of 25%. In a statement accompanying the data, Emma Davenport, Senior Principal at Unispace said,
00:04:51
Speaker
This flexibility not only boosts our overall wellbeing by optimising life balances, but also provides a clear competitive edge in attracting and retaining top talent, particularly when measured against other countries, she said. Unispace data shows Australian employers are largely on the same page as their workforce. 94% of Australian employers are satisfied with their current working arrangements compared to 86% of Australian employees.
00:05:17
Speaker
Part-time work in the Australian workplace is slowly being superseded by flexible full-time arrangements, a new report has found. The 9th Gender Equity Insight Report, released on 9 September, found that this was being driven by women's transition from part-time work to more flexible arrangements.
00:05:35
Speaker
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency and Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre collected data from 5,377 organisations employing about 5 million Australians representing a third of Australia's workforce. The proportion of women working part-time dropped from 32.9% in 2017 to 29.7% in 2023. Over that period, the share of women in full-time jobs increased from 40.2% to 42.5%. The number of men in full-time roles remained steady at around 67%. But for all genders, full-time roles that offered flexible arrangements, such as remote and hybrid work, rose by a factor of nearly 20, from 2.3% in 2017 to 42.5% in 2023.
00:06:26
Speaker
The report called on employers to normalise flexible and part-time work without penalties such as the promotion cliff, which the report identified as the promotion rates for both men and women working part-time being half those of their full-time counterparts. Agency director Mary Waldridge said enabling more management roles to be undertaken part-time or flexibly would increase the talent pool available to employers and help reduce the gender pay gap.
Amazon's Office Return Policy
00:06:54
Speaker
Online retail giant Amazon is ending its hybrid work policy and ordering staff back into the office five days a week. CEO Andy Jassy announced the new rule in a memo to staff last Monday, and it will go into effect in January next year. Jassy has long been known as a sceptic of remote work, but Amazon staff were previously allowed to work from home two days a week. He said he believed the move would help staff to be better set up to invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other.
00:07:23
Speaker
The company's push to get its corporate staff back into the office has been a source of tension within the company, which employs more than 1.5 million people globally. In his email, Jassy said he was worried that Amazon, which has long prided itself on preserving the intensity of a startup while growing to become a tech giant, was seeing its corporate culture diluted by flexible work and too many bureaucratic layers. Remote work researcher Professor Nick Bloom estimates that 30% of Amazon staff will quit over the changes.
00:07:51
Speaker
He states that generally hybrid working is seen to be worth the equivalent of an 8% pay increase, so the return to office mandate will be seen as a pay cut by most Amazon employees. Overall, Bloom predicts Amazon will skew younger and more male with less diversity and disability as a result of the RTO mandate.
Australia's Population Growth and Training Initiatives
00:08:10
Speaker
Last Thursday's latest population data release shows Australia's population was 27.1 million people as at the 31st of March this year. The national population grew by 615,300 people in the prior 12 months, of which net overseas migration contributed 83%. The natural population increase live births minus deaths was 105,500 people, close to its lowest level on record.
00:08:39
Speaker
The overall population growth rate for the year to the 31st of March, 2024 was historically high at 2.3%, with Western Australia at 3.1% and Victoria at 2.7%, the two fastest growing states or territories. Tasmania recorded the lowest rate of growth at just 0.4%. Australia's working age population is nearly 1.2 million more people than the pre-pandemic level.
00:09:08
Speaker
The Victorian Government has developed a program to encourage more women to join the state's public transport network, hoping to boost the number of female bus drivers in a traditionally male-dominated profession. With an investment of just over half a million dollars, the Bus Driver Training Program will support the training and licensing of more than 300 new female drivers over the next three years. The program will be delivered through three of Victoria's largest bus operators, Kinetic, Ventura and CDC Victoria.
00:09:37
Speaker
Victorian Public Transport Minister Gabrielle Williams agrees women are underrepresented in the transport industry and said the government is acting to change the culture in the sector. We're hoping to overcome barriers and encourage more women to embark on a career in transport.
Fraud Case: Mickey Lee Wagner
00:09:51
Speaker
A staffing firm owner in the United States was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in prison and must also pay restitution after he was found guilty of defrauding funding companies of $5 million. dollars Mickey Lee Wagner, 57, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, having been arrested in July last year after a year on the run from authorities. Wagner used the money to buy real estate, a cafe, multiple luxury vehicles, plastic surgery, and a Royal Caribbean cruise. Wagner was the owner and CEO of Right Step Staffing in Atlanta, and he used stolen identities to create a false impression that he had workers.
00:10:32
Speaker
According to the US Attorney's Office, Wagner provided factoring companies with fraudulent customer contacts to obtain money. He also gave them email addresses that appeared similar to the real businesses' email addresses, but were created by Wagner to deceive the factoring firms. Wagner had a 2001 federal fraud conviction and was still on supervised release for that conviction when he committed the recent crimes.
Staffing Industry Revenue Predictions
00:10:57
Speaker
According to a new report by staffing industry analysts, US staffing industry revenue is projected to decline 10% this year to $189 billion. dollars That's a steeper decline than the 3% forecast in March. According to SIA's US staffing industry forecast, September 2024 update report, several factors contributed to this year's forecast revenue fall. The decline has been driven by widespread client caution and project delays, a depressed manufacturing sector,
00:11:27
Speaker
falling bill rates in sectors such as healthcare and employer and worker height and preferences for permanent positions over temporary positions, according to the report. Travel nurse staffing is foreose forecast to post the largest decline this year with revenue far falling 30%. IT staffing revenue is forecast to fall 7% this year and office clerical will see revenue dip by 9%. Segments projected to grow this year include education staffing up 10% and engineering up 3%.
00:11:57
Speaker
Next year, however, the report forecasts a return to growth in all segments.
Addressing 'Baby Maybe' Bias
00:12:02
Speaker
And that's the news for the week beginning the 23rd of September, 2024. I'm Ross Clannett.
00:12:19
Speaker
Question of the week, does the recruitment sector have a baby, maybe bias? Adele, what do you think? What is a baby, maybe bias for us? Well, it's a phrase that I hadn't heard before, but I read about it in a Harvard Business Review article from two weeks ago, and it's entitled, How Biases About Motherhood Impact All Women at Work.
00:12:49
Speaker
And this is what in part the article says, maybe baby discrimination. Hiring managers assumptions that an applicant will have a baby increases their perceptions of risk associated with employing child free, child bearing age women, but not men.
00:13:11
Speaker
Even just changing one's last name at marriage is enough to trigger maybe baby bias against women. And unfortunately, women themselves can hold this bias. Hmm. I find this interesting to think about both within our sector, within the recruitment agency sector, but also obviously within our recruitment processes and referrals to clients.
00:13:38
Speaker
that this sort of bias could occur? I think it does. I think it does occur and I'm thinking potentially about my own experience. ah I have two children and I think I felt a very different um experience with each of them. I think the first time around I felt more of the bias and the discrimination and maybe just kind of um you know, being treated a little bit differently or expectations being different to the second time I had a child where I guess I probably had, I guess, somewhat proved that I could do it. I had, um you know, shown that I could be a working parent and and balance both um my job and my family responsibilities. So from a personal experience, i I say that this does exist and that's within our sector. But what do you think, Russ? Well,
00:14:34
Speaker
I mean, my well let's start with my experience working as a hiring manager in a recruitment agency was quite a few years before yours. And I'd like to think that my experience was I hired the best person for the job. I'd like to think that our industry as a whole, because we are female dominated in terms of the consulting workforce,
00:15:03
Speaker
we've become well used to the fact that most people start their recruitment career in their 20s. And that means if we're hiring women in their 20s, that they're moving into the peak childbearing age. And I'd You know, I certainly like to think that the best person for the job was hired and that if the best person was a woman of a childbearing age, she wasn't overlooked because of that fact. I certainly know that I did never do that. And she, I don't know, across the industry, I'd really like to think that we're past that and that given how difficult it is to find
00:15:49
Speaker
really good recruiters and keep really good recruiters that if it's a woman and she is really good and she does choose to have a family that we want to do everything in our power to have a comeback into the business to accommodate her and to have her experience that the recruitment industry is welcoming and accepting of parents and that we can be flexible around part time work and work for home.
Impact of Parenthood on Professional Life
00:16:23
Speaker
So I don't know, maybe I'm naive. I'll call you optimistic at this point. Look, I think it has improved. I think you're right. I think there's definite inroads in this space. But the funny thing about this bias, and it's mentioning that in the article specifically, um that it's happening to women and sometimes by women to women, is that we're talking about a much broader
00:16:46
Speaker
um group of people, I suppose, because, you know, you use the word actually then childbearing. And I was thinking about, well, there's also parents who adopt and foster and care. And, you know, it's greater than just, am I going to stop work to have a pregnancy and a child, because that might not be the case. And it could also be um parents and um of, you know, both both all genders and, um you know, mixes of people and families and that sort of thing. So you can't assume any of that.
00:17:13
Speaker
And that's what's interesting about the bias. You know, somebody might hire somebody who's a male in their 20s and assume that they're not having children, um maybe because they're gay, let's say, and they make that assumption and they could very well, um in this day and age, as we know, um adopt a child or surrogate or whatever else might be the case. So the bias is an interesting one because it doesn't fit the normal stereotype mold that it used to. And I do think, as I said, it has evolved. I think it's definitely gotten better.
00:17:43
Speaker
um Again, from personal experience, I can talk about hiring um return to work parents in general, male or female, um in my own career, as having a really great experience in doing that. I think um I felt like they, you know, they kind of worked harder, they worked part time, they job share, they had more to prove in a way. And I found them really, you know, excellent at their job and really committed and and accountable. So I had a good experience. And I think That's what all of these biases are about. It's about your own experience with a person or or somebody of a particular skill and and not putting that across everybody in that group, of course. So looking at individuals, like you said, based on how good they are at the job and not saying, well, because one was good or one was bad, I'm not going to hire that person again. But I think we also need to remind recruiters that we have to be careful not to extend these biases to our clients. I hear a lot of recruiters saying, oh, the client won't accept someone like that.
00:18:41
Speaker
But are they saying that? Or are we assuming that? Are they actually explicitly saying, Don't send me any young girls, because they might go off and have a baby? Or are they actually, are we just saying, Oh, I think the client won't like that, I won't put someone like that in front of them. So I think we need to, we need to in as that, you know, ah middle ground person in the process, really start challenging those biases and making sure that we are keeping our clients focused on what the requirements are for the job and not assuming They won't accept people of childbearing age, as you said. Yes. And let's be very clear, it is against the law to discriminate against somebody because of their family status or prospective or assumed future family status. And it's not okay.
00:19:34
Speaker
to discriminate because the client says so. Because the client says, I don't, let's say, I don't want women who are between the ages of 28 and 38, let's that that is discrimination. And if you act and source candidates based on that you are also guilty of breaking the law and you should not do that and certainly all recruitment agency owners and leaders should train their consultants in how to deal with that if and when it comes up and i and i think it probably.
00:20:16
Speaker
Well, I'd like to think it comes up a lot less than it used to, but I've got no doubt it still comes up. It's kind of almost a nod and a wink type of thing that a hiring manager may do to a recruiter. And certainly it's best person for the job and not asking any candidates anything about their family status or their intentions for the future.
00:20:43
Speaker
oh And they're not making any assumptions yourself as well, of course, you know not assuming because they seem of that age. So yes, not asking the questions, obviously from, as you said, a legal perspective, but don't make the assumptions or don't extend the bias yourself by discriminating against somebody because you you assume or you think that might be the case. And this is even more important.
00:21:08
Speaker
in a market where unemployment is 4.2, 4.3%. I mean, we have a shortage of skilled workers. So I think it's economically crazy that any employer would just automatically discriminate against someone because of their family status or potential ah parent status. Um, they're just putting themselves at a commercial didt disadvantage. It's not just, um,
00:21:40
Speaker
thinking and acting that's likely to get you into trouble with the law, but surely it's something that's going to cause your business or organization to lag its competitors. The key to this, it's called baby maybe. It's a maybe, not a definite, don't assume it. That's right. And certainly my experience is I think being a parent has made me a better human being and I'd like to think better at my job. And I mean, I can only speak on behalf of myself, but I'd like to think that's made me a better rounded person for any work that I do.