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Happy Monday Community 👋

Our journey around the world will soon be coming to an end. This week, the last two continents of our global voyage will be presented to you. You can find an overview of the posts that have already been published for each continent here.

Let's discover our second to last continent today: 📍Australia!

With over 300 sunny days a year, a fascinating variety of plants and animals, pleasant temperatures above 20 °C and beautiful beaches, you might think that Australia is the perfect paradise to live and work, right? Nevertheless, Australia is a small continent and has a very low population density compared to other continents. In comparison, Europe accounted for around 9.4% of the world's population in mid-2022, Australia roughly 0.6%. - Source

Australia impresses with its fascinating and broad landscapes that amaze every person who sees them. However, these remote locations offer little incentive for companies. The labor market is concentrated in isolated cities - the continent's lively metropolitan cities such as Melbourne, Sydney or Auckland - where the highest population density can be found.
 

🦾 The battle for talent 

Furthermore, immigration also plays a significant role in Australia. A significant proportion of the Australian population is made up of people who have immigrated from different parts of the world. However, the pandemic has had a direct impact on this trend. The travel restrictions and uncertainties during the pandemic significantly affected immigration figures. 

👉 As a result, the labor market in the various regions of Australia is facing major challenges.

  • The international border closures led to a slower population growth of 0.1% in Australia. Fewer than 36,000 people migrated during the pandemic. - Source
  • 360,000 job vacancies were reported in the second quarter of 2022, compared to 288,000 job vacancies in the first quarter - the highest number ever recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, according to the Source.

So how do companies react when the market for skilled workers shrinks and does not recover in the near future? With the skills shortage being seen both in Australia and other regions, recruiting suitable employees is becoming increasingly challenging. HR needs to ask itself what it can do to tackle this!

💡 You can find helpful resources on talent management and recruitment methods in our HR lexicon.
 

HR-Discussion:

What approaches do you think can HR take to attract and retain talent? Feel free to refer to the challenges of skills shortages.

 

As always, write your thoughts in the comments! For each of your comments you contribute to a good cause, as we donate €5 per comment to the charity Doctors Without Borders.
 

Want to explore more continents? 👀 Click here for the HR-Discussions that have already been published!


Have a lovely start to the week,
Melissa

Happy Monday Community 👋

our campaign is at it’s final spurt. You still have until January 31 to participate in our HR-Discussions and at the same time participate in a good cause! 

@Edda van der Ende @AliceM @JHBEM @bbuxrude @Vida feel free to jump on the discussion for the continent Australia, you can also find a list of all the other continents 👉 here.

I’m very looking forward to hearing your thoughts and perspectives around the topic! 🚀

Best,
Melissa

Australia has quite an unusual economic standpoint.

It’s heavy focus on raw materials industries are unlike most other developed economies.

There are large volumes of works who fly-in/fly-out of remote work locations with high salaries who then live in urban areas - this is disimilar to most developed economies.

Also the labour market of vacancies aren’t all considered skilled workers - so there is a need to delve deeper into its specific shortage areas and in this respect many of the skilled professions are similar to those in other developed economies.

Australia failed to build sufficiently in tandem with growing populations and also population densities in its urban areas and sees as a result similar challenges.

Areas where it is able to lead is in solar energy conversion for households and being a pioneer in mini-power-generation (i.e. self-sufficient without grid) due to their days of sunlight.
If they use this to build more sustainable homes to help make them more affordable this will help with making the cost of living more affordable and employment easier across all shortage areas.

Sometimes the changes are bigger than HR or a single company and they need change from local, regional and national government.

Good morning @JHBEM ,

thank you for your insights and for highlighting the challenges facing the Australian economy. 
As you already mentioned, if the environment/ circumstances are not favourable, HR can only do so much. 

In these shortage areas, do you think retention or attraction is more of a ToDo for HR? 
Secondly, which methods can you think of? 

Also, I’m curious did you spend some time in Australia? @JHBEM 

@Vida feel free to join the discussion! 🙌
Feel free to also share some more general perspectives around attraction and retention methods. 🚀

Best,
Melissa

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