70 per cent of Australian job seekers now consider work-life balance to be more important than salary, according to research released by recruitment specialists Hudson.
The report, titled The Hiring Report: The State of Hiring in Australia 2015, revealed 67 per cent of job seekers held salary as the most important priority when looking for a job.
Hudson Executive GM Dean Davidson tells Dynamic Business the changing concerns among potential employees highlights a need for businesses to adapt.
“Employers need to accept that their workers hold a work-life balance at the top of the list of priorities. It is important for companies to be adopters of flexible work arrangements, which will open them up to a greater candidate pool. In years gone by, there have been a lot of highly skilled people going through various family situations that haven’t been able to rejoin the work force because organisations haven’t been flexible enough.”
Online job boards remain the most popular conduit from which to source talent, but 28 per cent of those surveyed said they consider it to be less effective than it was two years ago.
The variety of channels available to source talent is growing rapidly, which has pushed businesses to employ multifaceted sourcing strategies. 90 per cent of employers now agree that it is important to look beyond active job seekers in order to find the best candidate.
Mr Davidson says that businesses need to ensure they are using a “well balanced and diversified approach” to finding talent, or face falling behind.
“The businesses that are well ahead in terms of being ahead of their workforce planning and are not as challenged with workforce issues are those that haven’t put all their eggs into the one sourcing channel and relied upon that,” Mr Davidson says.
“Historically, if you go back a couple of decades, the recruitment process was very much a reactive process. You would put your ad up, people would apply, you’d go from there into screening. It’s just not like that anymore.”
There is a “perfect storm brewing” in the recruitment world, according to Mr Davidson. With the war for talent, the evolvement of traditional sourcing channels, and the variety of industry sectors consistently changing and looking for evolving skill sets, the sourcing struggle for employers is as intensified as it’s ever been.
“Now, because of the digital age and the acceptance of social media, people are happy to be approached in different ways. The organisations that are doing very well are those that are going out there to find talent, as opposed to reactively waiting for a role to pop up and then advertising it,” Mr Davidson says.
