Employers favouring part time workers to fill gaps
By Josephine Asher
A recruitment expert says the spike in part time workers and drop in full time workers revealed in today’s official unemployment figures shows employers were still taking a wait and see approach to talent and would pay the price.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the unemployment rate for July increased by 0.2 per cent to 5.3 per cent after holding at 5.1 per cent for three months. During July, the number of full time jobs dropped by 4,200 while 27,770 new part time jobs were created.
Peter Gleeson, Executive General Manager Recruitment for Chandler Macleod Group, says instead of bringing on full time staff and training them up to have the right skill set, employers were taking a “try before you buy” or a low risk approach to filling gaps in their teams by hiring part timers and contractors.
“Organisations are picking and choosing when they have an overload of work or can’t find people with the right skill set to fill their jobs,” he says.
“Employers are still reluctant to go the ‘Full Monty’ so they’re hiring someone part time or on a contract basis to get the job done.”
Gleeson says there is not a shortage of people so much as a shortage of candidates with the right skills to fulfil employers’ requirements. He says the difficulties in finding full time employees would raise the cost of hiring staff as well as push salaries higher.
“During the GFC no one got trained and no one got up skilled. We’ve still got the skills we had in 2008,” Gleeson says.
“Organisations need to understand they will be paying more and getting less – they won’t get the 100 percent they’re looking for. [Employees] won’t be as productive as they planned for and their profits will drop.”
Overall, Gleeson says he is optimistic about an increase in activity in the overall job market in the next three months, which he described as the traditional hiring season.
He said that banking and finance, health and resources sectors would continue to be strong, while the retail and hospitality and retail sectors would take longer to recover.
CareerOne, August 12, 2010.
