Changing employee demands and a tight labour market are putting strains on human resource departments at many of Western Australia’s large companies and government departments.
The state’s consistently low unemployment rate means the selection pool of suitable workers is shrinking and those who are available understand they’re on the right side of the supply-demand equation.
“Today, people know they are needed,” Coles Myer human resources managing director, Kay Goodwin, said.
“In the old days, loyalty to your company was important. Today, loyalty to the employee is important. That means workers can be quite demanding.
“They are aware of what’s accepted socially and what’s not, and that can be difficult to manage.
“Society teaches people today about what they’re entitled to, whereas years ago you were paid to work and not to think. It doesn’t work like that anymore so it can be quite difficult when it comes to managing large numbers of people.”
Australian Human Resource Institute state president John Burgess said there was lots of talk about how employees differed from previous generations.
“Their outlook is more demanding,” he said. “They’re not afraid to ask for things like flexibility of how and when they work.
“They change jobs more regularly; if they work at a company for three to four years, that can be a good spell for them.”
Today’s employees, especially those in the 25-34 years age group – the most sought after sector in an increasingly ageing workforce – have their ride through a booming and secure economy to thank for their advantageous position.
Unlike their parents, whose prospects were affected by high unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s, most recent entrants to the workforce haven’t had to contend with a lack of opportunities.
James Miller, a director at The Catalyst Group, a corporate coaching consultancy agency for managers and executives, said professional graduates had high expectations.
“They’re looking to be paid well when they graduate; they want a career path straight up, promotions very quickly. There are lots of wants,” Mr Miller said.
“People in their 40s are struggling saying, ‘we’ve got these young people with all these wants, oh no’. But they’ve got to be responsive to the market and if they aren’t, they won’t keep them.”
Australian Fast Foods chief financial officer Mark Lindsay said younger people were looking for more challenging experiences.
“About 15 to 20 years ago people tended to be more loyal. Now people are more likely to use companies as a stepping stone to go onto something else,” he said.
“All businesses have to be mindful of that. We’re going to have to look at the fact that our staff turnover is high as one reaction of this current situation.”
Hungry Jack’s state operations manager Jacqui Hanson said the fast food group had changed its approach to recruitment.
“We’ve now decided that we need to recruit frequently,” Ms Hanson told WA Business News.
“We have to look at it [hiring] monthly instead of quarterly to get enough people to sustain our chains.
“Especially now that we’re expanding and adding new restaurants, we need to be ahead of the game. So it’s a constant part of our jobs now.”
But human resource concerns are not limited to fresh-faced employees.
Since the baby boomer generation is currently the largest demographic, companies are also facing the issue of an ageing workforce.
As such, companies are also altering their human resource practices to retain and lure older workers.
“The war for talent is something we’ve been working on for the last five years,” Alcoa human resources general manager David Willet said.
“The fact that you have an ageing workforce, that talent is going to become more difficult to sustain.
“We are starting to do a lot of work in terms of career path planning, talent review, performance management, particularly for the top 1,200 people in the organisation to make sure we have an understanding of their capabilities and we have plans put in place for them moving forward.”
St John of God Health Care human resources group director Ian Oakley said the hospital group had started implementing practices to enable employees to remain in the workforce as they moved through their lives.
“The older worker is becoming more required,” he said.
“The greatest challenge is creating quality jobs in a part-time environment – keeping people in administration [positions] and providing them with meaningful work.
“Really, our challenge is trying to make sure we can match their availability to their work requirements. That’s how you can try to drive a workplace, not by putting barriers to flexibility.”
Pilbara Iron’s employee relations manager, Rick Briant, said: “The importance of attracting and retaining quality skilled employees has become more critical now because of the labour skills shortage and ageing employees.
“We’re trying to address this by looking at flexible working hours, alternative arrangements like job sharing and employing more part-time workers to help ease older workers into retirement.”
Along with stepping up their recruiting and hiring, companies are making more enticing offerings to meet the demands of workers.
Flexible working hours and job sharing have become more common.
Companies are also trying to fashion themselves as ‘employers of choice’ by creating greater balances between work and family lives.
Main Roads, the winner of the 2004 AHRI Attraction and Retention award, is a notable example of offering innovative incentive programs.
In addition to yoga and fitness classes in-house, Main Roads has health promotions, events and guest speakers, fitness/lifestyle assessments, personal health consultations, stress management and dietary information sessions.
Employees are granted a three-hour window as to when they wish to start and finish their work day, along with providing them with flexi-time and work-from-home options.
Australia Post has six successful enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) that address work and family life balance.
For example, its 48-52 initiative enables workers to adjust their salary over a year to grant them four weeks extra annual leave on top of its standard four-week vacation package.
Employees are also offered up to three years’ leave to care for children or ill dependants or for education purposes.
As well, Australia Post provides divorced or separated fathers with a program called Staying Connected to assist them with counselling about how to reach out to their children.
The concept of incentives has also changed to incorporate the idea of employee engagement. Managers understand that employees want to feel a direct correlation between the work they perform and the overall success of the company.
“It’s about respect, relationships and making sure people understand what is important about the jobs they do,” Alcoa’s David Willet said.
“We believe that engagement begets engagement so we’ve got to push accountability down to a level where people understand what their accountabilities are, but also get them involved and engaged in suggesting improvements.”
In order to ensure these current HR initiatives are meeting the needs of employees, most human resource departments have instituted surveying systems to rate their line managers and employers.
“Employees are becoming more of the fundamental issue that’s going to create your value and the value is coming from knowledge management,” Mr Willet said.
“We’re gradually bringing in survey tools to get a feel for where people are at because we realise employees are our most important asset.
“We need to understand their needs to maximise their level of performance because they are what leads to the success of your company.
“As the employee puts more demands on the employer, we have to be ready to meet or at least consider those demands to attract and retain employees now and in the future.
“If we don’t step up to the plate, everyone loses out and we lose our most important asset.”
