Three global workforce trends coming to Australia

Workforce trends range from micro to macro, local to global. Australia’s domestic challenges include an ongoing lack of skilled migrants, a massive worker shortfall across almost every industry, especially in the infrastructure workforce, as well as an ageing workforce. 

If we zoom out a bit, we can see that the skill shortage is a worldwide phenomenon. However, that doesn’t mean that what’s happening in other countries will happen here, or in the same way. For example, the United States’ Great Resignation hasn’t yet happened in Australia at a significant scale. Even so, there are certain factors behind these overarching global trends which can impact hiring costs here in Australia, along with talent pools and workforce strategies. 

Keeping a finger on the pulse of these trends is crucial for making smart investment decisions in talent acquisition. Perhaps, for example, your organisation should be investing in enhancing the candidate experience, finding ways to attract remote candidates, or transforming to a flexible workforce model.  

Below, we unpack three of the biggest workforce trends sweeping the globe:

1. Fierce competition for talent
2. The decentralised workforce
3. Tech-enabled recruitment

1. Fierce competition for talent

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in mid-2022 that one-third (31%) of businesses are struggling to find suitable workers. 59% of hiring managers believe the problem is about applicants not having the required skills, while 79% say there are simply not enough applicants.

Indeed’s own research shows that there are 471,000 job vacancies across Australia – more than twice as many as before the pandemic.

Hospitality, tourism, manufacturing and healthcare have been hit hard by employee burnout and plummeting net migration. Companies looking for highly skilled tech talent are competing with markets globally, with businesses of all sizes struggling to attract the workers they need.   

Raising wages is one solution for winning the talent war, but inflation and rising operational expenses (energy and freight costs) are keeping margins tight. Instead, companies are looking to fill the talent gap by hiring workers who wouldn’t normally fit the bill in terms of skills and experience, engaging overseas remote workers and hiring contingent staff. Companies are also ramping up their EVPs to tempt candidates with additional flexibility and other perks.

A candidate-driven market means in-demand jobseekers have additional leverage at the negotiation table. With plenty of offers to choose from, they will confidently ask for additional benefits such as signing bonuses, higher salaries and increased flexibility. A Robert Half survey found that 81% of employers believe candidates have become more demanding about salaries since the pandemic, requesting an average of 15% on top of their proposed starting salary.

Retention has also emerged as a key issue amid the talent shortage. Companies are paying attention to their employee’s engagement, health and wellbeing in a bid to keep a lid on rising turnover rates, and making more robust counteroffers to win back people who are considering leaving. 

2. The decentralised workforce

The decentralised workforce trend is being driven by two factors. Firstly, many people have embraced working from home and do not wish to return to office-based employment, with candidates gravitating towards flexible jobs. Indeed’s Workplace Happiness Report found that remote working is important to four in ten (38%) of currently-employed Australians who are looking for work. 

Secondly, companies are leveraging remote workers to expand their talent pools beyond their usual geographic catchment. The World Economic Forum expects the future of work to be “borderless and inclusive” with companies at risk of being left behind if they fail to act. 

Talent acquisition teams can attract remote workers by investing in their online recruitment branding including careers pages, career-related content creation, and increasing the organisation’s social media presence. 

Review and reconsider your organisation’s EVP to ensure that perks are attractive to remote workers and not predominantly office-based. These could include subsidised memberships for employees’ local gyms, software subscriptions or home office stipends. 

Managers should be equipped with the right tools and training required to manage a remote, flexible team, which may require a completely different approach to their usual office-based style. As this trend continues, HR teams face a steep learning curve in managing differing payment, tax, leave and other legal obligations depending on remote workers’ locations.   

3. Tech-enabled recruitment

Tech-enabled recruitment, powered by emerging technologies like AI, is gaining pace as organisations look for ways to extract maximum value from their hiring data. AI goes beyond the benefits offered by conventional recruitment automation by eliminating manual tasks, supporting decision-making, reducing human bias and speeding up the hiring process. The HR Research Institute found that 73% of recruitment managers expect AI to increase the speed of recruitment and 53% expect it to raise the function’s overall productivity. 

AI has the potential to transform nearly every part of the recruitment funnel. Specifically, AI can support employers across three key action areas:

Candidate matching

• Application and resumé screening can shortlist candidates that meet set requirements.
• Matching candidates to open positions.
• Eliminating the likelihood of human bias by disregarding identifying data such as name, age or ethnicity. However, care must be taken to ensure the data that the AI learns from does not contain instances of bias.

Managing the candidate experience

• Automated interview scheduling can remove the need for the usual back-and-forth emailing. 
• Faster, easier, more streamlined hiring processes lead to a better candidate experience. 
• Using automated video interviews where candidates record their answers to pre-determined questions on camera without a human interviewer. 
• Automated communication and AI-enabled chatbots to answer candidates’ questions and reduce queries to the helpdesk. 

 Uncovering insights

• Leveraging data at scale across multiple locations, regions and offices, to drive continuous improvement across the hiring function

Stay informed of global workforce trends

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