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Posts Tagged ‘australian business’

There Has Been An Increase of Businesses Not Including Salary Details When Advertising A Job Vacancy

Posted by Emily Ridley

It has been reported that employers are increasingly not including salary details in jobs ads. As a result of this it is likely that they might be missing out on the best applicants.

Omitting salary details is also a surprising move for a business to make considering that the current unemployment rate is at 4.2 percent thus creating a shortage of available workers in many industries.

As a consequence of this Australian businesses are scrambling to attract the skills they need to grow.
As a result of the dwindling pool of available resources in the job market, vacancies are proving harder to fill for many employers.

A recent survey conducted by Indeed which included the responses of over 2,000 working Australians found that “65 percent of job seekers say a role’s salary is important to include in a job ad”.

However, according to the same survey “Only 9 percent of employers will always advertise a role with a salary”

Katie Furvey who works for Indeed says that there are a number of reasons for the disconnect.

“Our survey findings may reflect that employers want to appeal to applicants who are attracted to the role and the company, rather than those focused primarily on salary,” says Katie Furvey.

It is therefore understandable that employers are wary of applicants only applying for a role to achieve a rise in salary.

The reason many firms give for this is that if remuneration is the sole driver of an employee, they are more likely to leave in future when another organisation offers them more again.

It is also important to consider that other applicants may be deterred from applying if no salary is listed, especially in the candidate short market Australia is currently in the midst of.

Katie Furey agrees, suggesting that, “Being upfront about remuneration can work in everyone’s favour – greater transparency engenders confidence and trust from candidates and helps avoid surprise rejections when an offer is made,” says Ms. Furey.

However, from the perspective of an employer the large majority of businesses who choose not to disclose remuneration on a job advertisement will disclose it at the interview stage, so the latter point about surprise rejections may be a moot one.

Another possibility and reason for not advertising a salary is that displaying salaries for new hires may create issues with existing employees, especially if the renumeration offered is higher than what these employees are currently earning.

The last thing employers will want to do is create reasons for valuable existing employees to leave, especially if the war for talent is expected to intensify.

However, although the interview stage may be the safest option for employers to disclose pay details, in the current job market this option runs the risk of not attracting the required calibre of applicant in the first place.

Employers must tread a fine line in the current climate, but it appears inevitable that companies will be reviewing their strategies on how to attract new hires.

“If the last 18 months have demonstrated anything, it’s that the way we work is changing, so it follows that how job advertisements are structured can, and should, also evolve,” Says Katie Furey.

As with most things in the past two years, the pandemic has driven a lot of the change.

How employers navigate this change will go a long way to determining how successful they will be attracting the right candidates to apply for their advertised job.

How Your Small Business Can Become More Eco-Friendly

Posted by Emily Ridley

In recent years customers have become more conscious about the impact their purchases are having on the environment. If you are the owner of a small business, it is highly recommended that you evaluate the impact your business methods are having on the environment. By making any effort to do this your customers will be impressed and it will make you appear more trustworthy and respectable.

Here are some tips to help your business become more eco-friendly.

Use More Sustainable Products

The items companies purchase to ensure their workplaces function well be it printer paper, cleaning products or to-go containers can be toxic to the environment due to the processes that go into making them. 

For all those paper items commonly used, such as rolls of toilet paper and reams of printer paper, office managers can look for labelling that says it is made from post or pre-consumer waste. Recycled products such as these maintain a circular economy and reduce overall waste.

For cleaning products, there is a whole cottage industry of green cleaners that don’t include toxic chemicals, opting instead for natural ingredients that work just as well. Using these products keeps toxic ingredients out of the streams and their waste out of landfills. 

Write a sustainability page or policy

A brilliant way to share your sustainability values and efforts with both your customers and your staff is to create a sustainability policy or page and have it published on your website.

If you’re a business with many staff, a policy outlining the goals and steps to becoming more sustainable will help make sure that everyone who works at your organisation is on the same page. Your policy can literally be “Our organisation is aspiring to become eco-friendlier, here are the actions everyone in the business is required to take and the values that need to be considered when making future decisions within our business.”

If your business has a website, adding a sustainability page will help outline your values for your customers and explain what steps you’re taking to become a more conscious business.

This page can consist of a list of steps you’re both currently doing, and a list of steps your organisation is moving towards. Sustainability can be a work in progress, too as long as you’re moving in the right direction. If you don’t wish to have a whole page about your sustainability police, you can simply add a blurb or paragraph to your “About page”, “Values page” or even a blog or a post on your social media platforms.

Offer Your Employees the Opportunity to Work Remotely

Because we live in a world where it is possible for more work to be completed online, there is less need for people to be in a physical office. Remote work has taken off over the past few years, allowing employees to have work-life flexibility and substantially reducing their time spent commuting. 

Working from home has become a hugely popular lifestyle for millions of employees around the world during the covid-19 pandemic. By maintaining and expanding the number of employees working from home, emissions from commutes are greatly reduced. The less cars on the road the less emissions.

Give Your Staff Public Transport Commuter Benefits

When employees do need to be in the office, how their commute contributes to greenhouse gas emissions still can be influenced. 

Public transportation (buses, trains, vanpools) is the greenest way to commute, and companies can encourage employees to take advantage of these transport options.

Small businesses can provide employees with public transit benefits that help the environment, either directly or through their human resources (HR) software. 

To provide these benefits directly, many city transit agencies offer subsidized passes for businesses. Alternately, these benefits may be available to add through HR software that centralizes all benefit programs.

Encourage Your Employees and Customers to Make Environmentally Friendly Purchases

Many car companies are encouraging their employees to go electric when choosing a new car. Many businesses are incentivising employees to buy an electric car by providing them with a monthly voucher covering a portion of their lease or finance payment. Some businesses are encouraging carpooling to and from the office. Some businesses have switched to all LED lighting in their offices and have installed solar panels to offset their energy usage.

How To Ask for And Receive Customer Feedback to Improve Your Business

Posted by Emily Ridley

Australian Businesses Are Offering Employees Massive Incentives to Combat The Great Resignation

Posted by Emily Ridley

Millions of Australian workers are preparing to quit their jobs in the upcoming months. To try and entice workers from quitting, employers are making an effort to offer a number of incentives to try and convince their workers to stay.

One Australian organisation offer $6,000 to all of their 200 employees to spend on anything they want in order to prevent a mass exodus of employees as the Great Resignation looms in Australia.

The Great Resignation has been occurring in America with everyone from frontline workers to senior executives quitting their jobs as people seek out flexibility, work that aligns with their values and companies that treat them as humans.

Linktree is a social media start-up that has the backing of billionaire Afterpay co-founder Nick Molnar, is offering an annual $6000 reward for staff to spend across four pillars, including wellness, personal growth, lifestyle and impact.

Linktree is working in a fiercely competitive space for employees with a crippling shortage in the industry, as Deloitte Access Economics estimates Australia will need to upskill an extra 200,000 tech workers over the next few years.

A Linktree employee named Hannah has said that she is very impressed with the rewards program and she describes the $6,000 incentive as a “pay rise but with more intention”.

She plans to spend the money on personal growth courses that will help her with her wellbeing and also spend the money on a gym membership and massages.

She is also planning to spend the money to help the environment. “I have always wanted to get solar power for the house and I will use some of this to go towards powering it. It’s a big investment but the rewards program is giving me the opportunity to do it sooner,” says Hannah.

Hannah says it is the best employee incentive she has ever heard of and ever received from an employer.

“It definitely highlights how much that Linktree actually cares about its employees mental and physical health, both in and outside of work. One of the pillars that we could select to spend benefits on was priorities outside of work like cleaning, which I thought was really cool as people’s priorities are really different, and there’s the flexibility there,” says Hannah.

Defying the ordinary was one of the core values of Linktree, said its head of people operations Emily Moore, and implementing the rewards program was a fantastic feeling for employees after a tough few years with Covid.

“Right now many people are re-evaluating what is really important to them and making changes in their lives they may have been putting off prior to the pandemic. We want our employees to be able to bring their best ‘whole selves’ to work and truly believe in creating policies and initiatives that enable them to achieve just that,” says Emily Moore.

Other employers have been scrambling to offer their employees some major perks to stand out from the crowd and entice newcomers or keep current employees.

Some of the incentives range from heartbreak leave, time off for cultural celebrations, free cooking classes, shares in the company and more time out when having a child.

Fintech company Finder introduced five days paid leave for life’s big events on top of its annual and sick leave entitlements.

The $56 billion Aussie design company Canva introduced a vibe and thrive allowance for all workers, which can be spent on everything from gym memberships, home office set ups, social celebrations, wellbeing and education.

Financial technology company, Iress, has introduced more leave for staff, who will be able to take up to six long weekends each year, with no impact on their current annual leave balance or pay.

Emerge Advisory