Recruitment CATEGORY FOCUS 49
Rum Recruitment
Finding the perfect fit
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taff shortages are an issue that we have repeatedly reported on within the pages of ShelfLife during the past couple of years, with many retailers telling us that they have found it difficult to find experienced staff, particularly for specialist roles such as butchers, bakers and fresh food staff. Showing the extent of the issues retailers are facing, last month The Irish Times quoted Musgrave’s director of corporate affairs Edel Clancy, who said staff shortages were an issue “across the board” for retail, which had created the need to recruit from outside Ireland and the EU. In fact, the Musgrave Group lobbied the government last month for changes to foreign visa rules to allow more workers into the country. The group met with Minister of State from the Department of Enterprise Damien English, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney and MEP Mairead McGuinness and other politicians to seek changes to visa requirements that would make it easier to recruit from third countries, according to lobbying records. Clancy said that while the group “exhausts all avenues to hire Irish workers and EU workers,” a shortage across the board, created
the need to recruit from outside the EEA.
Working with a recruiter The issue is not one that’s unique to retail, with ManpowerGroup reporting last year that 75% of businesses in Ireland are finding it difficult to track down the right candidates for jobs. However, the sector’s unique cocktail of conditions has left retailers particularly vulnerable. With many retailers busier than ever, there are clear advantages of working with an experienced recruitment partner to find the best talent possible. As Excel Recruitment CEO Barry Whelan stated in a recent interview with ShelfLife’s Fionnuala Carolan: “There are no easy roles to fill. In our own business we have two recruiters working each role instead of one. This is due to the difficulty in filling the roles. The hardest roles to fill are the specialists such as butchers and bakers followed by entry level staff.”
‘Great Resignation’ Barry Whelan, who as our readers will know, is a regular columnist for ShelfLife, also wrote about the ‘Great Resignation’
phenomenon in our November 2021 issue. “The dog on the street knows that the Irish economy is in the grip of a ‘staff crisis’ with employees leaving their jobs in unprecedented numbers, changing employers, or taking time away from the workforce entirely,” he said. “Anyone can see the unprecedented demand for workers whether it is the amount of job creation announcements or a simple walk down a main street, with signs in the windows of most hospitality outlets and retail stores. Many people have stepped away from difficult frontline jobs made even harder by the pandemic, while others are forgoing opportunities for money and status in exchange for greater flexibility or work-life balance and many employees have simply left the workforce altogether, hence the phrase we have now started seeing, the ‘Great Resignation’. According to journalist Kathryn Hymes writing in Wired magazine: “Taken on its surface, the Great Resignation foregrounds the language of job status, but misses a parallel, arguably bigger story: the radical realignment of values that is fuelling people to confront and remake their relationship to life at home, with their families, with their friends, and in their lives outside of labour.”
Speaking to retailers ShelfLife journalist Julia O’Reilly also spoke to several retailers specifically about the difficulties they were experiencing in finding staff within a feature published in July 2021. One of those retailers was John Eivers, managing director of Spar Irishtown Service Station who said that while recruitment during the pandemic had been challenging, the past nine months had been particularly fierce. Although Eivers and his team advertised
www.shelflife.ie | ShelfLife March 2022
Dairy
The difficulties surrounding staff shortages have been well documented during the past two years, particularly within the pages of ShelfLife. For many retailers, working with an experienced recruiter can provide the solution to this quandary, helping them to discover new staff members who are a great fit with the existing team, writes Gillian Hamill
