WORK IN THE BAY: Priority One projects manager Annie Hill. PHOTO/JOHN BORREN.
WORK IN THE BAY: Priority One projects manager Annie Hill. PHOTO/JOHN BORREN.
The Bay of Plenty's untapped supply of skilled workers could be unleashed if employers embraced flexible working arrangements, a Tauranga recruiter says.
Research conducted by SEEK showed the term "part-time" appeared in the top 20 keyword searches of 10 classifications out of 25, between August 2016 and October 2016.
Kinetic senior consultant Cherie Hill said the Bay had a generous amount of highly-skilled job-seekers, like mums and dads with children, who were after part-time work.
But they were finding it tough to secure work.
"It's a competitive market, there are good people around, and there is good, awesome talent in the Bay and awesome talent coming to the Bay. If you want the best talent, you have to create something attractive."
"Like flexibility in the workplace. Being able to create job share, or 30 hours a week. There is this massive talent pool of people, like mums or dads that have left the workplace, had two to five years off, that are amazingly smart and really good at what they do, but they can't find work as part-time work is so competitive and sought after."
Priority One projects manager Annie Hill said they had not seen an upward trend of part-time workers.
"However, with the increasing ability to work flexibly and the importance that millennials [those born from 1982 onwards] tend to put on taking equal responsibility for childcare, I think we are likely to see this becoming more noticeable in the workforce in the future."
Staffroom director Jill Cachemaille said employers had been responding well to the need for flexibility and accommodating part-time workers.
She said employers sometimes had to take less traditional paths to hiring the "right" person for their workplace.
It's a competitive market, there are good people around, and there is good, awesome talent in the Bay and awesome talent coming to the Bay.
Head of Strategy at SEEK Employment Florian Dehne said in a report there had been a strong trend over the past few years showing the number of non-fulltime roles were growing at the expense of fulltime jobs.
However, SEEK's independent research in May found 30 per cent of part-time workers felt discriminated against, with their reason being they were perceived to not be as readily available as fulltime colleagues, and 25 per cent said there was a perceived disconnection to their team.
Chief executive of recruitment firm Enterprise Ian McPherson said that part-time and flexible roles could lead to an increase in productivity.
"What we've seen is that part-time workers are more open to thinking laterally about how they do their job and how they fit into the team than the traditional 40-hour people. They are hungry to make it work."
JOB SEEKER: Bay mum and legal executive Kate Bosworth. PHOTO/GEORGE NOVAK
Part-time jobs hard to find in Bay
Bay mum and legal executive Kate Bosworth is among the job-seekers in Tauranga looking to continue her career, but still have time her children.
"Lots of mums around here have talent, and that experience is still there. I think many of them have a more focused approach [to work]."
Before she had children, Ms Bosworth worked as a legal executive at a bank, a corporate law firm and a private company, covering an extensive range of law.
She said there was a perception finding work to fit around school hours was a difficult task.
"They're the 'magic hours', it's like gold."
Of the respondents of SEEK's part-time worker survey, 70 per cent were female, 30 per cent were men. Twenty-six per cent wanted to work part-time to look after their young family, 24 per cent wanted the work-life balance, with the majority of people working part-timers by choice
