Ask a recruiter: Managing infrastructure projects in a candidate-short market

The infrastructure industry has long faced skill shortages and gaps. While the government has been injecting billions of dollars into the infrastructure industry to assist with economic recovery, organisations are finding it difficult to source candidates to meet the growing demand.  

In order to fill roles where there’s a lack of talent, businesses have relied on overseas talent in the past. However, due to COVID-19 border restrictions and strict local hire requirements, contractors are struggling to find skilled workers. There’s a concern that skill shortages may worsen if borders remain closed for a long period of time.

The pressure on management to fill headcount can lead to employment of candidates who aren’t the best fit. 

The following strategies may help alleviate skill shortages and highlight why it’s important to find the right recruitment agency to assist with your needs.

Strategies to secure talent in a candidate-driven market

To ensure you are retaining the best candidates to build strong talent pipelines, consider the following:

• Retention: The COVID crisis has changed the way we work and has impacted everything from productivity to wellbeing. 
  • Engage existing employees by providing work/life flexibility and take the time to listen to their concerns.
  • Consider wellness initiatives, such as onsite gyms and free health classes.  
  • Provide ongoing education and clear paths to advancement by promoting from within. 
    
    For other retention strategies, read our blog here.
• Be competitive with compensation packages: Regularly review pay scales to ensure salaries are competitive. Loyal workers expect to be rewarded for staying, so ensure bonus pay is not only offered to new workers.
• Hiring mature candidates: A strategy many companies utilise is re-targeting employees who have previously left the industry. Mature age candidates are a valuable source of talent with plenty of work experience, further education, and skills over decades of employment. 

Women building the sustainable infrastructure of the future

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 97% of CEOs and 88% of senior managers within the construction industry are male.  When comparing these figures with other industries, construction is lacking quite substantially in relation to its proportion of male and female employees. 

With $15.2 billion of work in the infrastructure pipeline, the rail, roads and transport infrastructure industries are experiencing a surge in growth.  But even with growth surging and equality becoming more common amongst workplaces, we’re still observing an industry gender gap. 

Diverse workplaces are known to increase productivity among employees, producing benefits such as boosted profitability, better problem-solving, and accelerated innovation. 

So, how can you attract more women to your company?

According to recent research, you can: 

• identify how culture can be improved
• take responsibility and change viewpoints to ensure inclusivity, fairness, and diversity

Although it will take a lot of work, there’s optimism that the commitment to diversity in the workplace will result in positive outcomes, especially for women.

The benefits of partnering with an agency

If organisations are to attract, secure, and retain top talent, they need the right strategies, tools, and suppliers in place to help them.

Working with the right recruitment partner can help:

• make the recruitment process stronger, quicker, and more successful
• mitigate risks and help save by assisting you during the search, recruitment and onboarding processes, including having solid systems and procedures across the hiring process
• make quicker recruitment decisions by accessing large talent pools via established databases, a network of connections, and access to systems that help locate people with specific skill sets

In short, choosing the right specialist recruitment agency such as CGC Recruitment can help you recruit and retain the right people faster and more cost-effectively.  

<H3> Conclusion

It’s imperative for organisations to hold onto it’s top tier talent, especially in the current tight hiring market.  While there are challenges in sourcing skilled talent, creating the right culture by offering competitive compensation and looking at under-utilised talent pools, like mature workers, can help alleviate these issues.  

Embracing diversity by including females in the infrastructure sector will also address the skills shortage, while improving problem solving and innovation across the organisation. 

Finally, it’s important to choose a recruitment company who can focus on helping companies hire skilled labour in a cost effective manner, and one that enables quicker decision making. 

About CGC Recruitment

CGC Recruitment is a specialist construction, infrastructure, engineering, and architecture recruitment consultancy. We view our clients as our partners and work closely with them to meet their business needs. We work with some of Australia’s largest construction brands through to specialist SMEs and boutique consultants. We have proven experience delivering permanent, contract and retained recruitment solutions, consistently providing the right candidates for the right roles at the right time.

If you have an active role you’d like to discuss or just want to talk to a specialist consultant, please contact us. Alternatively, you can complete our online client form and a member of our team will contact you.