The problem with getting people into employment has reared its head recently. It isn't just Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset … the Southwest, it’s UK wide and it's endemic. I have a friend who is willing to pay £22k for a full-time person, who he will train to be a Barista. He has been looking for six months.
There are a number of problems it seems. Youngsters don't
want to work hard and or don't know what to do, and think the future is
uncertain, so, what's the point? That may sound like a generalisation, however,
speak to some young people and gauge their responses, it's quite alarming how
disincentivised they are while being equally entitled, the contradiction is
mind-bending.
Underlying employment locally is the agency ethos, I have
made mention of this before. Employers have outsourced responsibility for
employees to agencies. So, you end up with an employer paying an agency £15 per
hour. The agency, in turn, pays the employee £9.5o an hour (for instance). The
employee has no certainty or security of tenure. The employer has no
responsibility for the employee -just the responsibility for paying a monthly
invoice. The agency can bench employees the employer no longer requires. The
employer no longer has any of the hassle of HR, pension admin, payroll etc.
Employees (agency staff, on the agencies books alone) jump from contract to
contract to move for as little as 5-pence per hour.
The only people making money in this scenario are the
agencies, who are providing `bodies', not skills, not assets, not human
resources (though if you think about bodies as human resources then I guess the
agencies have actually reduced people to things, to be traded).
If employers locally, and nationally woke up from their
fugue state, having been painted the picture of a hassle-free workplace, where
responsibility for all that ugly tedious expensive employee admin was magically
taken away and dealt by a third-party,
and instead "jogged" the agencies on, split the difference in
cost to the agency, between the prospective employee, and the incumbent
responsibilities for those employees; then in all likely hood, wages would rise
for the employee and one would broadly assume permanent, secure, relatively
well-paid roles with training and development and a future, would produce
loyalty.
But what do I know? I just look in and see the same set of
circumstances everywhere, and hear the same gripes from both sides, but
apparently, never the twain shall meet as long as the agencies are also agents
of fear for employers, who also allegedly have the magic beans that cure the
problem, for both parties. Flexibility for employees (read short notice, you
are changing jobs on Monday). Hassle-free employment (see lines above … avoided
responsibility).
I tend to think of the agencies as the workplace mafia.
Disagree: Go and read a Manpower job advert all the way to the end. Then just
read some copy and paste job descriptions across agencies on job boards, and
you won't be able to make an informed choice, because the words are the same,
the salaries are the same, they are just white noise. There are two
contradictory issues in the situation: One: there appears to be too much choice
among things of equal value (very little value ). Two: There is so little
differentiation you can't make an informed choice. People react to this in
exactly the same way as they do when presented with bland voices amongst
consumer goods .... they walk away.
The core issue isn't jobs. it's agencies, and I could write as
many words again about the recruitment personnel and practices as I have about
the labour market, but frankly, just read some modern job adverts … the penny
will drop soon enough.
