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Episode 60
203 Plays8 months ago
News for the week beginning 6 May 2024 and Question of the Week: "Professional development - is it worth the time away from your desk?
#rna #recruitmentnewsaustralia #recruitmentpodcast
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Transcript
Economic Indicators: Inflation and Retail Trade
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This is the news for the week beginning 6th May 2024. Australia's consumer price index rose 1% over the March quarter, taking the annual inflation rate down from 4.1% to 3.6%.
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according to the ABS. The result was higher than the consensus market expectation, although almost half of March 2023 CPI figure of 7%. The biggest drivers of inflation over the quarter were rents up 2.1%, secondary education up 6.1%, tertiary education up 6.5% and medical and hospital services up 2.3%.
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The March result affirms inflation is dropping just more slowly than the RBA would like. Retail trade fell 0.4% over March, indicating consumers were still keeping their cash rather than spending it. The inflation and retail figures as well as increased business insolvencies point to the RBA leaving interest rates where they are when they meet today.
Advocacy and Recognition in Employment
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Last week in Lisbon, the RCSA took out the World Employment Confederation Award for Excellence in Advocacy. The award recognised the effort of the RCSA and its members in advocating to support the industry against detrimental changes to commercial terms proposed to bidders of New Zealand's all of government 2023 recruitment procurement tender. Through its advocacy efforts, the RCSA was able to get the tender paused
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then removed, redesigned and reissued a highly uncommon sequence of events in government tenders. The process has strengthened our relationship with the New Zealand Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and with recruitment procurement teams across government. We now have a stronger industry and a voice to government, said the RCSA CEO Charles Cameron. What started as a challenging shift in pricing that threatened the viability and sustainability of staffing firms supplying government
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instead became an unrivalled opportunity to shift thinking around the way government and other clients view the value of their relationships with staffing firms.
Corporate Performance: LinkedIn and Pay Disparities
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LinkedIn's revenue for the fiscal third quarter ended 31 March 2024, climbed 9% in constant currency compared to the same quarter in 2023, parent company Microsoft Corporation reported last week.
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According to executive VP and CFO, Amy Hood, the result was ahead of expectations. In a conference call with analysts, Ms. Hood said the result was driven by slightly better than expected performance in the premium subscriptions and talent solutions businesses.
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ASX listed B2C talent platform Air Tasker reported Q3 2024 quarterly group revenue of $12.2 million, up 6% from a year ago. Group EBITDA was $600,000, an improvement of $1.5 million over the previous year's loss. The company also reported its second consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow. Air Tasker's current market capitalisation is $110 million.
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First quarter 2024 global revenue at Robert Half International fell by 13.4% year over year when adjusted for the impact of billing days and currency fluctuations. International contract revenue was down 7.5% on an adjusted basis and international perm placements dropped by 22.1% on an adjusted basis. Group net income was down 48% to 63.7 million US dollars.
00:03:47
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ASX listed talent platform HiMe reported revenue of $7.6 million for the third quarter, an increase of 48% from the previous year. Revenue was driven by organic growth in white-collar placements, the group stated. Quarterly gross profit of $670,000 represented a 47%
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year-over-year improvement while the EBITDA loss of $145,000 was a significant reduction on the Q3 2023 loss of $413,000. Workers in key feminised industries should get at least a 9% pay rise in the annual wage review according to the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
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The ACTU said the boost would be a critical step in achieving equal pay for workers in occupations historically undervalued based on gender, including care and degree qualified work in early childhood education, education and health support, veterinary care and disability home care. The ACTU submission filed with the Fair Work Commission say the 9% rise is based on the 5% increase it is advocating across all awards
00:04:59
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supplemented by at least an additional 4% in key low-paid feminized industries. Achieving equal pay for women requires systematic change and targeted pay rises in industries traditionally dominated by women and historically very low paid, the ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said.
Partnerships and Recruitment Strategies
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North Melbourne Football Club last week announced Robert Half will be its official recruiting partner for 2024. The new partnership will see Robert Half assist North Melbourne in attracting, retaining and developing staff across the club. North Melbourne President Dr. Sonia Hood and CEO Jennifer Watt will also be involved in Robert Half's global women's employee network program. North Melbourne are currently struggling on the field with no wins from their eight games to date, leaving them in last place on the AFL ladder.
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New Zealand's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 4% in the December 2023 quarter to 4.3% in the March 2024 quarter, according to the latest labour market release from Statistics New Zealand. In March 2023, the jobless rate stood at 3.4%. The labour force participation rate dropped 0.3% to 71.5%.
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Recently released research published in the Harvard Business Review has confirmed the persistence of the glass escalator in the US not-for-profit sector. Coined by sociologist Christine Williams, the term glass escalator refers to the finding that men in female dominated occupations often experience a faster and smoother rise to the upper levels of leadership compared to women.
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Research from Candid, a nonprofit data organization, discovered that women comprise 69% of the not-for-profit workforce, hold 67% of senior leadership roles, 62% of CEO roles, and only 52% of board roles.
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significantly larger organizations were much more likely to have a male CEO with on average male led organizations having approximately twice as much revenue as female CEO led organizations. Male CEOs also enjoy a compensation advantage getting paid on average 27% more than women.
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Male representation is also more prominent among the boards of larger nonprofits. The average board composition of very small organizations was 40% men. In contrast among nonprofits with revenue above $25 million, the average male board composition climbed to 60%. The glass escalator appears to benefit white men much more so than non-white men.
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An analysis of Candid's nonprofit data shows representation of white male CEOs in the data set increased with organisational revenue. From an average of 23% of white male CEOs among those not-for-profits with under $1 million annual revenue, jumping to 41%
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of white male CEOs among the largest organisations. In comparison, representation of men of colour in CEO positions remained relatively stable regardless of revenue size. Women CEOs, especially women of colour, diminished in number as organisation revenue increased.
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The reason for men's advantage was analysed by the researchers with the conclusion that female supervisors, co-workers and clients may facilitate men's free ride. Women co-workers are often pleased to see men enter their occupation as more men in an industry tend to raise the pay and prestige of the work. In fact, women may push men in their organisations forward and up in the hopes that having a senior male representative will be beneficial for the organisation as a whole.
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International Australian owned white collar recruiter People2People's 12th annual employment and salary survey of over 1,000 employers and 2,500 employees revealed a majority of candidates don't believe their salary aligns with their performance and a majority of employers are expecting growth this year. Key results from the JobSeeker survey were that 40% are satisfied with their salary while 22% feel it doesn't match market rates.
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51% believe their pay doesn't align with their performance and 71% are hesitant to seek new roles due to global economic uncertainty. Key results from the employers survey were 9% of organisations anticipate rapid growth. The majority comprising 54% predict steady growth with 24% anticipating undertaking no recruitment this year and 4% predict redundancies will occur.
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That's your news for the week commencing the 6th of May, 2024. I'm Adele Last.
Professional Development and Networking
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Question of the week this week is about professional development. The question is, is it worth time away from your desk? And we're talking about this topic because this week
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is Talent X for the RCSA on the 9th of May. And later in the month, Appsco have an event called Emerge on the 30th of May. And we are going to be at Talent X, doing a live podcast from Talent X. So listen out for that next week. But tell me, Ross, what do you think? Are these events worth the day away from your desk? Well, obviously I'm biased.
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Yes, very clearly. And the thing that I remember most from the first conference that I went to for the RCSA, or in fact, it was the forerunner of the RCSA was the NAPC, was how refreshed I felt by just not thinking about candidates and clients and jobs for two days.
00:11:07
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Just giving my brain a rest from the way it normally runs Monday to Friday, 8 till 5.30. So that's, that's the thing that I'd encourage people to think about. Your brain just needs a rest and going to a professional development event is a good rest because you're still working in the sense that you're gaining professional knowledge, but you're just having your brain operate in a different way.
00:11:37
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Yeah, we can sometimes get really insular and have your head down, isn't it? So you're right. It's getting out in a different environment. It feels different. It looks different. It sounds different. The stimulation your brain is getting is completely different. That's right. Different people. You're just surrounded by completely different people to state the obvious, because at those events, there's not candidates and clients there. Yes, you might have some colleagues, but your colleagues are there in a very different context to them sitting next to you.
00:12:07
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on a day-to-day basis. So that's the first thing that I would say. What would you say is a reason for that one where you're talking about your colleagues, you know, it's a great chance to connect with people overall. So whether that is your colleagues, whether that's people in the industry, new friends that you'll meet in these events as well. So I think the people connection is something that really stands out at these events as well, just getting to meet
00:12:36
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other people and talk about different facets of your role and your life and your industry and hear what else is going on.
00:12:46
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And that sort of segues in into the next point for me, which is just bench, benchmarking my own knowledge and skills performance. I found again, going right back to that first conference many years ago, that I came away feeling a lot more confident about how capable I was because I'd never been to an event like that before.
00:13:11
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And the only context I had was the environment that I was working in, the agency that I was working in. And although I thought I was reasonably good, excuse me, by the time I got to the end of those couple of days and it had conversations, I felt far more confident. It's like, well, I'm actually better than I think I was or thought I was.
00:13:34
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And I feel like the things that were working for me, I'd been able to more accurately identify. Yeah, I do agree with that one as well. And you will learn new things at these events. You know, you will hear from different perspectives and different people. There are always speakers that will challenge your way of thinking and the way you're doing things. And as you said, Ross, being able to kind of benchmark
00:14:02
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Uh, that's a positive, um, example where you sort of say, Oh, I'm better than I thought it was. But, you know, maybe you think you're really killing it and you need a bit of a reality check as well on the other side of that. You know, at both ends, um, the other kind of people you'll meet at these events will be the vendors or the sponsors, I suppose is a better way to put it. And some people avoid the, those people, some people walk through the sponsorship area with their head down and they don't want to talk to vendors and sponsors, but
00:14:31
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I want to challenge people on that as well and encourage people to talk to the vendors or sponsors and learn about their products, learn about what they do and what solution they're providing and why they came up with that. Sometimes it's actually the founder and the owner on those stands. So you get a really good understanding of how things came to be and again, what solution they're solving.
00:14:54
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They've got really good knowledge of the market. They understand what's going on across our market and they can share that information with you really readily.
00:15:03
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And often they will be promoting the other agencies that they're working with. So again, it's sort of useful to know to go, oh, well, this competitor agency uses this product and this is what this product does. So what difference might that be making and what competitive advantage might that be giving them over me or us? I think just that sort of market knowledge is certainly
00:15:33
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Very important, and inevitably, it's the more recent vendors. Well, it can be a mixture, but certainly those vendors that have got a new product, this is where you're likely to find them. So it is more likely the, let's call it the cutting edge tech is likely to be at a big conference because
00:15:54
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It's a pretty big investment to take a stand or to be a sponsor at these sorts of events. So you can be pretty sure they're serious about whatever it is this new product is that they really want it to work. And so they're going to put a lot of effort into it and you're likely to get a lot of good information about that product and draw your own conclusions about its potential useful usefulness for you or not. Hmm.
00:16:20
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What about some prep before these events? Between us, I think collectively, Ross, we've got years and years, maybe 50 years worth of event attendance, whether that's at conferences or these one-day type events. What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's going either for the first time or hasn't been for a while, or just kind of buys a ticket and doesn't think too much else more about it? What sort of advice can we give?
00:16:43
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My advice is plan to be there for the whole day, unless you absolutely can't be. I wouldn't encourage you to look at the agenda and cherry pick particular sessions to go, I'll just get there at 11 o'clock to do this session. And then I'll be on a call and I'll attend a session at one o'clock. It's like, you know, all in.
00:17:04
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is basically my encouragement. Go all in that if you're going to a 1-day event, then go there for the whole day. If you're going to a conference for 2 days and a couple of nights, then be there for all of that because you just never know what you're going to get at what part of the conference or take
00:17:22
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from what part of the conference. So that's the first thing. And well, actually, before I go on, what do I ask you? What would you suggest? Yeah, there's one thing I used to always do, and I still do make lots of notes. Everybody's always frantically making notes, but sometimes you go back and you look at your notes and it doesn't always kind of
00:17:44
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you know, make sense in some ways, you know, sometimes you've got little, you know, broad statements and things that just jumped out at you. But what I like to do is actually start an email at the top of the day. So I start an email to myself. I create an email that I leave open for the whole day, and that email has details of actions. So whilst I'm making notes about the interesting conversations and topics and things that speakers are saying, I'm actually then thinking, ah, this is how I can actually apply this on my desk, or this is what I want to take back to the business.
00:18:12
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And I send those very pointed instructions almost to myself in an email, which I then send at the end of the day and know that I've captured, you know, those action points. And I don't have to think, Oh, I've forgotten that, or what was I going to do with that? Or what did that note mean? So I like to do that through the day myself.
00:18:30
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Yeah, I mean, I'm a bit old school, because I'll take a notebook and I'll write things out. And what I will write out is every single person I had a conversation with, I'll write their name. Because it's not that necessarily I need to follow up with that person, or it's obvious why I need to follow up with that person. But often, having taken 48 hours to then
00:18:59
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review the list, something might come up as to why I might get back in contact with that person. Maybe something in our conversation has prompted something in my mind. And after the event, I'll send them a LinkedIn message or send them an email.
00:19:17
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or something like that. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is going to be an action point, but I still, and I look at my event notebooks and I list the name of every single person that I meet. And I'd encourage people to do something similar. It's just a good discipline. Write down every session that you attend. I take notes from every session because I just don't trust myself to remember things. I know,
00:19:46
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It's just very difficult to remember a lot of new information and notes are the best way for me and a handwritten note with a pen and in a notebook work for me. Okay, I think you can practice your networking skills. I think that's a really good opportunity as well. This is a really safe environment in which to do that recruiters and recruitment suppliers are all very friendly and outgoing people. So you're not going to be kind of
00:20:11
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stuck like a wallflower off to the side, you're going to be able to connect with people. People will make eye contact. They'll come up to you if you're alone. So don't be afraid of that if you're thinking, you know, I'm on my own at these events. It's definitely very easy to do that. And I think in order to make sure you have a really successful day is to just make sure you kind of got your desk covered. If you really are worried about your desk, if you're worried about your business, you know, get some coverage in there. Put an out of office message and tell people that you're not going to get back to them, just so that you're not having to feel that pressure.
00:20:41
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of responding to people while you're in a session or things that are gonna bank up and you're gonna have to do 10 o'clock that night. Make most of the fact that you've invested in the day, you spent money to be there, like you said, all in, make it worthwhile and have a great day. Yeah, no, I'd endorse that.
00:21:00
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The further out you book something into your schedule, the more likely it is you'll organize effectively for your time out of the office and the less likely you'll be tempted to not go. And I really encourage you that unless it's an absolute emergency that resists the temptation to think, I'm too busy, I've got too much on.
00:21:24
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It really does take something to attend an event and you will always get more out of it. Yes, of course, there's always things that you can do during any given day, but just giving your brain that break and just cutting yourself some slack. And if you manage expectations with your colleagues, your candidates and clients, it's going to be fine 98.5% of the time.
Live Podcast Highlights and Engagement
00:21:46
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And you get to see us. We'll sign autographs if you want.
00:21:51
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Well, certainly come up and say hi if you see us on Thursday at Talent X and listen to next week's episode where we'll provide a rundown of our thoughts about everything that goes on from nine until four at Talent X, at Jeff's Shed in Melbourne. See you there. Hey, are you liking listening to our podcast Recruitment News Australia?
00:22:15
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.