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Episode 20
382 Plays1 year ago
Join Ross Clennett and Adele Last as they update you on all the news and events in the world of recruitment in Australia. The only podcast that focuses on the Australian Recruitment Industry.
Question of the week: "Can recruitment in an agency be a 38-hour week job?"
Tune in to see if they agree or disagree and share their years of experience and insight.
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Transcript
Weekly News Overview
00:00:07
Speaker
This is the news for week commencing 31st of July, 2023.
EY Oceana Review: Issues Uncovered
00:00:12
Speaker
A long awaited review by the former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick has found hundreds of staff at consultancy giant EY's Oceana operations have endured bullying, racism and sexual harassment. The survey of four and a half thousand current and former staff found 15% had experienced some form of bullying in the past five years
00:00:34
Speaker
and 10% of staff had experienced sexual harassment over the same period. About 8% of staff reported racism during the same period with people identifying as Indian, Chinese and Maori most targeted. Those with religious beliefs, particularly Hinduism and Islam, were also more likely to have experienced racism. Broderick's report also confirmed a lack of trust in EY reporting mechanisms with many staff choosing to remain silent.
00:01:01
Speaker
Only one third of people who were subject to bullying reported the behaviour at HR and the figure was only one in 20 people for instances of racism. The report was triggered by the death of a 33-year-old EY employee at the Sydney office last year.
EY's Response and Recommendations
00:01:16
Speaker
EY Oceana's regional managing partner, David Larocca, said the report's findings were distressing and completely unacceptable. Long working days were highlighted by many EY staff. Almost half of respondents said their working hours had negatively affected their health.
00:01:32
Speaker
Around one third of EY staff were working more than 51 hours a week, with 11% working more than 61 hours. The Broderick report made 27 recommendations for change, including training to improve awareness of the impact of harmful behaviours and measures to reduce excessive work hours. Broderick said the independent report exposes the hard truths about less positive aspects of culture.
Australian Employment Trends
00:01:57
Speaker
The June labour market data shows that employment in Australia remains rock solid despite many recent headlines about job losses. In seasonally adjusted terms, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that total national employment rose by 32,600 people, with full-time employment up by 39,300 and part-time employment down by 6,700. Total unemployment declined by 10,900 people.
00:02:27
Speaker
The unemployment rate remained at 3.5%. Total hours worked for the month rose half a percent. And for the past 12 months, average net national employment growth was 1,123 jobs per day.
Corporate Misconduct and Legal Actions
00:02:42
Speaker
The District Court of New South Wales recently sentenced a senior employee to a three-year term of imprisonment following a jury's guilty verdict in relation to 78 counts of having by deception
00:02:54
Speaker
dishonestly gained a financial advantage from her employer for around four and a half years. The case noted that the worker was a financial controller of the company with the responsibility for the payment of wages to all employees. The employer argued that repeatedly from July 2010 to December 2015, the worker intentionally overpaid herself regularly. Ultimately, the court found that the gross amount of the overpayment of the worker amounted to over $140,000.
00:03:23
Speaker
Despite the employers' contentions, the worker expressed no remorse and denied all claims against her in the course of her evidence.
Q2 2023 Corporate Performance Reports
00:03:31
Speaker
Ignite reported their revenue fell 9% year on year in the second quarter, ended 30 June 2023. Gross profit declined 23% to 2.9 million year on year. As at 30 June 2023, active contractors at Ignite were down by 6% compared to the previous quarter.
00:03:50
Speaker
and down 187 contractors to 656, a 22% decline compared to 30 June 2022. Randstad, the largest global staffing firm, reported organic revenue per working day fell by 5.1% in Q2 2023. Gross profit dropped 6.6%, and underlying EBITDA decreased organically by 12%
00:04:17
Speaker
year-on-year. Revenue in Randstad A and Z was up 3%, a slight drop on the 5% increase in the previous quarter. Second quarter global revenue at Manpower Group fell 3.5% year-on-year in constant currency. Expirus, the Manpower IT brand, saw revenue for 11% and the Manpower Staffing segment dropped 1%.
00:04:44
Speaker
Kelly Services has announced a global strategic restructuring aimed at accelerating profitable growth. The company expects to take a restructuring charge of around US$8 million in the 2023 third quarter, mostly for redundancies. Australia-based gig platform Freelancer reported net revenue for the six months ending 30 June 2023 of $27.1 million, down 7.3% compared to last year.
00:05:12
Speaker
gross profit decline 8.8%, although the pre-tax loss of $300,000 was a significant improvement on the $3.1 million loss for the previous year. Xref, the background checking, reference checking and staff survey tech platform grew revenue by 11% in the financial year ended 30 June 2023.
00:05:36
Speaker
annual recurring revenue was up nearly four and a half times to $5.6 million. Headcount at XREF rose by 42 in the 12 months to 30 June 2023 to reach 114 employees.
US Legislation on Employment Automation
00:05:51
Speaker
A bill introduced in the US Senate last week, the No Robot Bosses Act of 2023, would prohibit employers from relying exclusively
00:06:01
Speaker
on an automated decision-making system when making decisions about employment-related matters. Right now, there is nothing stopping a corporation from using artificial intelligence to hire, manage or even fire workers without the involvement of a human being, said US Senator Bob Casey in a press release. As robot bosses become more prevalent in the workplace, we have an obligation to protect working families from the dangers of employers misusing and abusing these novel technologies.
00:06:29
Speaker
The bill would require testing of any automated decision system as well as training, human review and disclosure of the use of these types of systems. Employees must also be made aware of their rights in relation to data use.
Economic Indicators in Australia
00:06:45
Speaker
Australia has experienced one of the largest increases in unit profits in the OECD between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2023, with an increase of 26.1%
00:06:57
Speaker
compared to the OECD average of 21%. Over the same period, the increase in unit labour costs remains lower with a 13.9% increase in Australia compared to a 15.6% increase in the OECD. The greater increase in unit profits compared to unit labour costs was not isolated to any one sector, but occurred in several sectors in Australia, including accommodation of food, manufacturing, trade and transportation.
Book Tour and UK Expansion
00:07:27
Speaker
After a reported 800 recruiters attended the Australian leg of the Greg Savage book tour, it now heads to the other side of the world in September. The UK's Recruitment and Employment Confederation is promoting six dates between the 19th and 28th of September, covering Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and London.
Recruitment Industry Challenges
00:07:54
Speaker
The question of the week this week is prompted by the report that was released about EY's culture and the problem of overwork and bullying and harassment. So the question this week is, can agency recruitment be a 38 hour a week job? And I'd like to open up Adil, not by asking you the question, but by asking you
00:08:24
Speaker
When you were working as a recruiter, responsible for a desk, what sort of hours did you work? Yeah, it wasn't 38. I can outright say I definitely worked more than a 38-hour week. I think pretty much the whole time I probably worked in recruitment. Initially, as a recruiter on a desk, it was about trying to hustle and trying to
00:08:50
Speaker
do as many hours as I could to make as much money as I could. And then certainly as a recruitment leader, often the last one to leave the office at the end of the day, just making sure everybody and everything was covered. So I have to say I'm a very bad example of that in the industry. I have not really ever probably worked a 38-hour week.
00:09:13
Speaker
Same with me, certainly when I was in London, I was probably working nine to six, I would have thought without really a lunch break. And then when I came back to Australia and I was working for Recruitment Solutions in the 90s, I was getting a ferry to work at 10 past seven in the morning. I was walking into the office about 25 to eight, 20 to eight.
00:09:40
Speaker
And then the vacant job meeting for the temp team started at 8 a.m. And then we were into the day and I mostly ate lunch at my desk. I didn't really take a lunch hour. I didn't really take much of a break in the middle of the day. And then I left.
00:10:01
Speaker
between 5.30 and 1.6. The ferry was at six o'clock. If I absolutely needed to stay, then the 6.30 ferry was the one after that. But my goal was to get the six o'clock ferry. So pretty, you know, the reality was nine and a half hour days. So I was working sort of between 45 to 50 hours a week. And that was pretty much my typical week. In my later years,
00:10:30
Speaker
I wasn't working those sort of hours. It was probably more about quarter past eight to about five, 30, quarter to six. But again, as mainly a temp recruiter, if I needed to call a temp in the evening to speak to them about an assignment for tomorrow, I did that. But by and large, I was able to manage the job in 45 to 50 hours a week. So can agency recruitment be a 30-hour-a-week job?
00:10:59
Speaker
I actually think it can be, and the reason I say that is that when you look at the amount of work that agency recruiters do that they don't get paid for, in other words, candidates they interview that they never place jobs that they work on, that they never fill, clearly there's a lot of hours that could be culled from those unproductive candidates and jobs. Now, of course, it's not an exact science. You don't know exactly which jobs
00:11:28
Speaker
are the ones you go to fill all the candidates you're going to place. But by and large, you've got a pretty good idea. So I think it's a classic example of the time expands to fill the work available. And if you decide you're going to be much more vigilant about the types of candidates you're going to interview and the types of jobs you're going to work on,
00:11:45
Speaker
then I suspect most recruiters would not suffer a billing drop. I would assert that most of them would make as least as many placements each month as they currently make and maybe more because they're fresher and they're just doing a 38 or 40 hour week, they're not doing more.
Work-Life Balance in Recruitment
00:12:05
Speaker
So that's my assertion. What do you recommend? Well maybe it's a question of should then as well. Our question says can it be and you've said yes but maybe it's about whether it should be
00:12:15
Speaker
a 38-hour week. And you think about this, I guess, on two sides. One, it is as a role really about trying to maximise opportunities, you know, it is the kind of role that the harder you work, the more you can earn. So if you think about the opportunity to make placements and access the commission as a result, you want to try to, you know, really kind of work as hard as you can and put in those extra hours. So
00:12:41
Speaker
Should it be a 38-hour week? No, if you want to really go hard, if you really want to maximize your opportunities. But then the other side of that is, I guess, the mental health and the stress element. So, you know, should it be a 38-hour week? The answer should be yes, then, because you want to be able to keep that balance. You want to be able to have some downtime to be able to come back strong and work hard when you need to.
00:13:10
Speaker
you know, can you push yourself in the short term? Yes, get the job done, work hard and hustle when you need to, but have that balance of pulling back and, you know, relaxing or getting away where you can a bit earlier and having that balance for the short term, just so it's sustainable. So I think what you're pointing to
00:13:30
Speaker
is more autonomy like the choice because I can remember again in the 90s, Michael Page in their ads would say, we're available 8am to 7pm. And that actually was true. Like someone who used to work for me went and worked for Michael Page and she said, you literally had to be there 8am till 7pm.
00:13:53
Speaker
even though most people between six and seven were just killing time, it was just the culture. Now, I don't know about Michael Page these days or some of the other agencies, but if people feel that it's mandated to do the hours, then I think that, those sort of hours, then that is very draining and people become resentful of that. But if people are choosing, like I wouldn't
00:14:20
Speaker
be choosing it every evening of the week. But if people are choosing to put in extra hours because they can see the results. And ultimately, I think this is critical. If you're putting in the extra hours and you're seeing the results that are coming as a result of that, you're going to be more motivated to do that. There's probably less burnout. I think most of the burnout comes from people feeling like the extra hours they're putting in is simply because they're mandated and they're not
00:14:45
Speaker
seeing those extra hours turn into results. And that just leads to a significant mental health strain. And that's the issue, I guess, when we're talking about that EY article and the investigation and reporting to their culture. It's the issue is around the fact that it is a culture of working long hours as opposed to being hardworking or trying to maximise opportunity, you know, in those kind of consulting firms where hours are billable.
00:15:12
Speaker
It's about being a good biller, billing maximum hours and billing the client for as much as you can. I think that's a different issue again, is it a culture like you said of sitting at the desk, chained to the desk, and if you're not at your desk, you're not working very hard as opposed to somebody who's really pushing the envelope and wants to really provide exceptional levels of service or is seeing the result, as you said, of
00:15:39
Speaker
know that those few extra hours that they're working is resulting in dollars in the bank. And of course now we've got the extra question of can recruitment be done in 30 to 32 hours because we've got bone on people quite prominently promoting the fact that they have four days work for five days pay. Now in listening to Nina, Nina maps and bone the CEO talk about that what I didn't realize is that it is
00:16:08
Speaker
very dependent upon each person fulfilling on specific KPIs for a month.
00:16:16
Speaker
to be eligible for the four days for the next month. That sounds like a whole another question of the week. Yes, true. Can it be done in four days as opposed to five? Well, at least we can agree that it can be done in five and should be. And I suppose it's up to people's individual motivation where they're going to put in extra hours or not.
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00:16:40
Speaker
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00:16:41
Speaker
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