A Word From the Managing Director

In the current market the amount of short sighted vision from business operators is alarming. Australia may currently be in a recession but history has shown that it’s not long lasting. Employers have already forgotten that just a short time ago that there was a huge skills shortage in Australia and it was a struggle to hire good quality employees.

The businesses that will survive this recession have realised that this is the opportune time to take the employees that they have and instead of retrenching them, they will invest time in training them. The recession won’t last forever and when it is over, after you have made a number of employees redundant, where will you find them again? If you then decide to hire people who have limited experience since the skilled employees are hard to find, who will train these new people?

Great businesses will keep the people they have and while the recession is affecting us, they will take this time to increase their skills. As soon as the recession is over these companies will be ready for the influx of business while their competitors will be scratching their heads over where they are going to find employees. While their competitors are struggling to find good staff, the organised businesses will be handling the volume of sales by providing great customer service and capturing their competitors business that can’t service their clients needs.

It’s easy to say keep your employees but the cost of doing so is also a major factor. There are other options then just retrenching team members and still keeping costs low. Some companies instead of making people redundant have reduced the majority of employees to 20 hour working weeks instead of the full 38 hour weeks and paying them in respective to their hours. This way the business keeps the majority of its employees as they are content with just having some sort of income and it creates loyalty because the team members appreciate the effort and fore planning of their employers.

You may notice as you read this article that employees are regularly referred to as team members. I attempt to use the words staff, employees and workers as little as possible. Any good operator knows that you are only as strong as your weakest link therefore every company should aspire to work as a team instead of individuals with their own agendas. The terminology of team member is appropriate because the team is working like a fine tuned piece of machinery where everyone knows their role and responsibilities that contribute to this team. All team members are as vital as each other and form this notion of a team that constitutes mutual respect, job satisfaction and the mentality of not letting the rest of their team members down.

Together
Everyone
Achieves
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