Skills issues lead to talent shortage which leads to poaching
Employers are finding it difficult to hire new staff, according to a recent survey, as other recruitment issues are on the rise amid a tight labour market.
Survey from the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) sought the responses of 335 businesses across the country, with all of them saying they were struggling to fill vacancies.
According to 38% of the respondents, they have been advertising to recruit new staff for more than six months, but struggles remain in filling vacant positions.
In addition to the struggle of recruiting, employers also revealed that recruits are starting to cost more, and staff poaching is on the rise.
"We are eventually finding people, but we are having to resort to head-hunters and poaching staff from other companies. Advertising for roles is just not getting the level of response required to find the right people," said one employer from the survey, as quoted by EMA in a media release.
Employers also revealed a skills problem among job candidates, including work readiness, soft skills, and a mismatch from what they're looking for. According to them, some applicants were lacking technical skills and knowledge that were needed in their vacant slots, such as mechanical, electrical, and aviation skills.
Others, on the other hand, revealed they had concerns with their applicants' soft skills such as attitude, motivation, reliability, communication, and more.
"Our industry is very specialised, so it is hard to recruit new people. Younger people are good to train but if they find they don't like the work they leave. We have had limited success in this area," said one employer from the survey.
For 53% of the respondents, they said their applicants were "lacking in work-readiness skills." About 22% said their candidates were lacking in literacy, 19% said in numeracy, while 17% said in IT skills.
Read more: EMA welcomes report on immigration system
New Zealand has an Accredited Employer Work Visa that aims to bring higher-skilled workers into the country, but according to the report, 34.5% of employers had vacancies that would not be filled through the new immigration settings with the new media wage threshold.
According to one employer, this median wage criteria - which is at $27.76 as of July 4 except for a few industries - would likely worsen the ongoing workforce shortage.
"The median wage criteria for the new temporary work visa is likely to exacerbate existing workforce shortages in the disability and aged care sectors – perhaps to a critical extent," said the employer.
"Our organisations are price takers from our government funders – as much as we would like to, we have no independent ability to lift wages. With low unemployment, there is not sufficient capacity in the domestic market to fill all the roles."
Commenting on the results, the EMA called for a better transition of migrant workers to New Zealand, while also boosting the country's domestic workforce.
"The EMA want a more managed transition period for necessary and skilled – but lower paid – migrant workers to enter the country, while we also work on upskilling the New Zealander workforce to fill those gaps," said the association in a media release.
The report sought the response of 335 businesses across 50 different sectors and industries, but mostly from the manufacturing, transport, construction, health, and retail sectors.
