Skills Shortages
TASMANIA faces a skilled labour crisis as baby boomers leave the workforce, says demographer Natalie Jackson.
Employers should implement workplace reforms to tackle declining employee numbers or risk losing their businesses, Dr Jackson told a conference in Launceston yesterday.
Speaking at the Employer of Choice conference, she said Tasmania would be the first state in Australia where there would be a greater loss of employees than entrants to the workforce.
The "entry-exit crossover" from 2010 would mean 10 departures compared with nine entrants to the state's labour market. Dr Jackson said as well as having the nation's oldest average population, Tasmania had the highest proportion of people expressing interest in retiring. "Tasmanian employers are going to have a shortage of people coming through and there is going to be a massive exit of baby boomer staff," she said. "The combination probably spells crisis unless they are ready for it. "By crisis I mean that, if a business cannot get staff, the business may have to fold. "It may be a small eatery or a building business that people have put their whole life into." Dr Jackson said workplace reforms that improved the work-lifestyle balance, including a shorter working week, were an answer to retaining older workers.
"Most of the baby boomers are relatively wealthy and they are not looking for more money, what they are looking for is workplace reform so that they can really enjoy going to work," she said.
"Employers are going to have to deal with the demands of the baby boomers -- the mature-age workers -- as well as the Generation Y people (born between 1976 and 1991) who want a work-life balance.
"At the moment we are asking Gen Y women to have children and to work and basically they can't do it." The shortages in labour and skills were demographically driven and were little to do with managing the economy. Dr Jackson said Tasmania was still suffering from a net migration of 25,000 Generation X'ers (born between 1961 and 1976) in the 1990s. She said reducing people's work hours could result in higher productivity. "Workers who really want to be there and geared up are much more productive than workers who by Wednesday or Thursday are flagging on their feet," she said. And absenteeism dropped when people worked a shorter week. The University of Tasmania associate professor said immigration was a short-term answer.
"Tasmanian employers could be using the 457 immigration visa more efficiently -- South Australia is doing wonderfully with it," she said. "They have quadrupled international migration while Tasmania's has doubled."
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