Clockwise from top left: Pieter Danhieux (Secure Code Warrior), Norm Jeffries (Truis), Darren Gore (Calibre One), Liong Eng (Silverfern IT), Michael Lester (Catalytic IT)
Ask any Australia-based IT leader what their biggest challenge is for 2022 and the answer is almost guaranteed to be finding talent.
Following the so-called Great Resignation of the last two years and migration to Australia only recently re-opening, tech leaders are being forced to hire from a smaller talent pool and increasingly competitive salary market.
For channel partners, the war on talent is no longer just being fought with each other. Instead, many are now losing top talent to their more-monied vendor peers and even to the enterprise market.
Some are feeling it more than others. For Liong Eng, managing director of Perth-based Silverfern IT, the current skills shortage is the worst he has seen in years.
“I don’t see the situation getting any better in the medium term,” he told ARN. “Luckily, the Australian government is starting to allow more skilled migrants to come to the country since the pandemic. It should be some relief, but not entirely.”
Pieter Danhieux, co-founder of Sydney-based start-up Secure Code Warrior, said the current talent crunch has made balancing ‘business as usual’ with future planning challenging at the best of times and “impossible” at the worst.
“There are a lot of external factors out of our control and competition is high,” he said. “We just have to do what we can to create desirable, nurturing workplaces that are going to help people grow and succeed.”
“It makes you appreciate the magic of a solid team even more,” he added.
As Danhieux noted, many factors are outside the channel's control. However, one thing they all can do is boost their own talent attraction – and retention – as much as possible, beyond salaries alone.
Organisational culture
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic kicking remote and hybrid working into high gear, one complaint likely to be uttered by many workers is that they miss the so-called ‘work culture’. For some, this means after-work drinks on a Friday. For others, it can be just a quick chat around the coffee machine.
However, for all IT leaders today, balancing that cultural attractiveness against many workers’ desires to continue hybrid or remote work is now critical.
At Brisbane-based IT service provider Truis, creating an office culture that’s “enjoyable” and “fun” has become paramount, according to managing director Norm Jefferies. Another initiative is encouraging Truis’ team to be united over a common cause.
“A commitment to sustainability – doing things that help our people, the community and the environment – means a common cause for our people to rally around and come to together on,” Jefferies explained. “Everyone has a sense that together we are making a difference.”
In addition, at both Truis and Perth-based Apple partner Catalytic IT, investing in skills development and career growth is also high on the agenda.
Catalytic IT, for example, provides a monthly technical training night, with food and drink used as an incentive for attendance.
“[We have] a heavy investment in training,” director Michael Lester said. “[This includes] individualised training plans, allocation of time for training, regularly paying for training and conferences. Training is our second largest operating expense, after wages and superannuation.”
Even just simply having a person dedicated to hiring and looking after staff was helpful for Darren Gore, CEO of South Australia and Northern Territory-based Calibre One.
Explaining the current hiring process, he said: “We have stuck mainly to paid advertising through the jobs website Seek and online social promotion. Some roles we find are relatively easy to fill and others, generally our more senior skilled roles, are almost impossible and can take months.
“We have the luxury of having a human resources (HR) manager on staff; she has been excessively busy over the past 12 months as we have been trying to grow in new roles and rehire for existing.
“With unemployment now sitting at 3.4 per cent, it continues to be a challenging employment environment.
“However, in the last few months, things seemed to have settled a little with people being less willing to jump ship. This could be due to consumer sentiment being at GFC lows, as well as the rising costs of living and now interest rates. People are a little warier of the ‘where to next’ question with so much going on,” he added.
Lots of red tape
As Silverfern's Eng noted previously, the federal government, alongside states and territories, have introduced a number of changes to encourage skilled migration, including removing some of the barriers towards permanent migration and re-allowing the ability to apply from overseas.
However, simply turning to the global talent pool is by no means an easy feat and more provisioning is still required, argued Lester.
“We think that the changes proposed by the federal government will go some way to addressing the shortages,” he said. “We shouldn’t be afraid of migration; we have some phenomenal people who have contributed great things to our industry as migrants.
“It’s clear that we have a shortage of suitably skilled and qualified individuals across a broad range of IT areas and so while we need to continue to boost the potential talent pool by local investment in universities, TAFEs and RTOs, we should also look to bring in people from diverse backgrounds and locations.”
Gore, meanwhile, was blunter still, saying: “It is still a very complex program with a lot of red tape and costs. Reducing the red tape, costs and providing easier pathways for small-and-mid size businesses is essential in getting this working better.”
Eng also noted that in many cases the migration sponsorship process can be both costly and stringent in its requirements for applicants.
“If we are serious about bringing skilled migrants then we need to consider relaxing some of those regulations and criteria plus employing more people in the immigration department to process the applications,” he added.
At least for Lester, the move to increase the number of people eligible for permanent residency and skilled migration has buoyed Catalytic IT.
“With unemployment at the level it currently is, we’re very close to ‘full’ employment and this is reflected in the number and calibre of candidates that are presenting for interview,” he said.
New versus old ideas
Nevertheless, talent-hunting via migration isn’t the only route for boosting the channel’s ranks. Another key area is Australia’s higher education system. However, in order to compensate for a graduate’s skills, more work is required to make students ready for an IT workforce, Eng believes.
“We desperately need tertiary institutions to produce graduates that can easily be transitioned into the workforce with the right skill sets,” he said. “This means universities need to work with IT vendors and channel players to understand what is needed in the industry so that they can design their courses to meet the demands.
“The relevant IT courses should have more practical course works plus internship with IT companies as part of the curriculum. Like medical doctors, their final year should be working as an intern for IT companies to gain some real work experience.”
One such partnership is Calibre One’s with MEGT, TAFE and Microsoft, which formed part of an SA government initiative. According to Gore, this has been relatively successful in delivering more IT trainees.
“The more government and training providers can partner with industry and business in developing skills through relevant off-the-job partnered with on-the-job training, the better,” he said.
Jefferies likewise echoed Gore’s sentiments but noted that the problem stems back to Australia’s overall population shortage.
“I believe our industry should be working with the universities to help attract more people into our industry,” he said. “Of course, this means other professions may miss out.
“Mostly we have been happy when we have hired people straight from university. Whilst they may not have the experience, they do bring new ideas and a freshness to them.”
While students and graduates sit at one end of the employment spectrum, older people and retirees sit at the other.
Is encouraging older people to join or return to the IT industry the answer to plugging some of the most chronic gaps? It’s not uncommon to see former IT leaders sharing their expertise and experience on tech company boards — for example, John Grant and Geoff Lord.
But within organisations is that always feasible? For Lester, age is only a number.
“We’re always interested in bringing on team members that have a lifelong passion for learning, continual improvement and a passion for customer service,” he said. “Age is somewhat irrelevant if it allows us to access a greater pool of candidates with those attributes. We’d be open to it.”
The relatively recent expectation of workplace flexibility has played into retaining older workers at Truis.
“We work hard to retain those we have, offering flexibility into their retirement, so they can semi-retire but remain part-time or on a project basis, [getting] the best of both worlds,” said Jefferies. “We are also happy to start new people on this basis.”
However, Gore believes that government policy should better enable retired people to remain in the workforce longer without penalising them financially, even if it were part-time. “That would be a great step forward in providing extra capacity to industry,” he added.
Meanwhile, for Secure Code Warrior’s Danhieux, the “wealth of knowledge and practical experience” that older people have “cannot be underestimated”.
“Perhaps looking at how we can facilitate general upskilling for those who feel a little left behind would be encouraging and help people who have been out of the workforce for a short time return with confidence,” he added.
