The Benefits of Local Know-How in HR & Recruitment

September 18, 2024

Written by Natasha Hawker
Founder and Managing Director

Natasha is a leading HR expert, entrepreneur, author and sought-after media commentator for outlets such as Sunrise (Channel 7), ABC Radio and The Australian Financial Review. Natasha co-founded Employee Matters in 2011 to help Australian businesses achieve success through their people.

We’ve been helping organisations across Australia with HR and Recruitment for well over a decade now, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that not only are no two businesses the same, where they operate matters too. While a lot of our clients have been Sydney and Melbourne based, we have local teams across Australia to ensure that we can deliver local knowledge for our clients.

In an increasingly globalised, digitised Australian economy, it’s common to think there’s global, one-size-fits-all solutions, but our experience (and client feedback) has shown us that this is not the case in HR and Recruitment, and that the organisations who need the most assistance from us are often those overlooked by organisations that don’t take a local approach to delivering their services.

Case Study: Western Australian HR & Recruitment

Case in point: if you’re a WA employer and you’re up at night wondering how to find the best talent, you’re not alone. In the article below, we’ll cover some of the common HR & Recruitment challenges faced in WA, the combinations of which call for local know-how to support local businesses.

Recruitment Challenges in Perth and Across WA

Hiring the best talent in Perth and across Western Australia - in a timely manner - comes with a unique set of challenges. Key challenges include:

Talent Pool Size: WA has a smaller population compared to other Australian cities, which limits the available local talent pool, particularly for specialised roles.
Industry Focus: WA economy is heavily focused on mining and resources, which can create a shortage of talent in other sectors such as tech, creative industries, or healthcare.
Geographic Isolation: WA is isolated from other major Australian cities and international markets, which can make it harder to attract talent from outside the region, and may require additional effort to relocate candidates.
Competition for Talent: With the mining and resources sector often offering high wages, other industries may struggle to compete for skilled professionals (even those with ‘transferable technical skills’), especially when those sectors are booming.
Skill Shortages: There can be specific skill shortages in certain areas, such as advanced technology or medical fields, which may require businesses to invest in training or even consider international recruitment.
Remote Work Preferences: With the increasing acceptance of remote work, local businesses may face challenges in competing with out of state / overseas companies that offer remote or hybrid work options further reducing the already stressed local talent pool

What’s HR Got To Do, Got To Do With It?

The list of challenges above are all ostensibly recruitment related, so how does this pose a challenge for HR practices in Western Australia? Simple: your in-house and/or outsourced HR team has to do everything to optimise your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and Employee Experience (EX) or overcoming the recruitment challenges will all be for naught:

Optimising your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) helps your in-house or outsourced recruitment team attract the best talent by positioning you as an employer of choice over your competitors, somewhere the best talent wants to work at. You want them knocking on your door looking for work because of the workplace culture, perks and organisational purpose that you offer, rather than you having to chase the best talent, with their ever increasing wage expectations being the only lever you can pull.
Once you’ve recruited top talent, you want them to stay and to do their best work. That’s where Employee Experience (EX) comes into it: from a smooth, warm welcome ensuring that they have the systems and training they require to fit in and hit the ground running, to a positive organisational culture that drives productivity through engagement, to constructive feedback mechanisms and fair performance management processes that ensure each employee feels they are treated fairly, and given the opportunity to do their best and progress with - and at - your organisation.

Without a solid EVP and EX that work together to attract and engage the best talent, then your front door will be a revolving one - costing you a considerable percentage of each employee’s salary to find and onboard a replacement, each and every time they leave, in recruitment, onboarding, as well as lost productivity & opportunity.

Where to Start Addressing Our HR & Recruitment Challenges?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to HR & Recruitment woes, especially those unique to a given geographic region as highlighted above. But there is a high-level decision that businesses need to make: do we do it ourselves, or get help? Or both?

If you’re a medium-sized business, between 50 and 500 FTE employees (or sometimes as high as 1,000 depending on your operations), then you may find the best way to approach these challenges is to ask yourself: do we as business leaders have the time and skills to set up and oversee these functions? If you think so, you may still want to use outsourced consulting to help you draw up, onboard and maintain your in-house HR or Recruitment function or help deal with a short term problem that may require particular expertise. In our experience, the most efficient Small and Medium-Sized operations find that the answer is “no - we’d rather focus on doing what we do best” which is where an outsourced service like Employee Matters comes in - we’ve been helping our clients meet their ER requirements to minimise risks, while also building an exceptional EVP and EX to make their employees their greatest asset - an engaged workforces that drive their success.

For larger organisations with 1,000 FTE employees and above, it often makes sense to have some or all of your HR & Recruitment function in-house. Even then, we would recommend supplementing your in-house team with outside help during busy times, or with ensuring that you are up-to-date with the latest Employee Relations legislation requirements in your region, especially if you operate across multiple regions.