The surf, the beaches and the climate are not enough to attract and keep employees on the Sunshine Coast these days.
A report by University of the Sunshine Coast researchers, in conjunction with the Sunshine Coast Council, has found that workforce attraction and retention are an issue for Coast employers.
The report, Regional Workforce Attraction, Development and Retention: Employer and Employee Perspectives, was based on interviews with 26 employers and a national online survey of 1003 employees.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Retha de Villiers Scheepers said some employers struggled to find employees of specific skill and experience levels, while others struggled to snare and keep unskilled labour.
“It was quite interesting because there were differences between them in terms of skill levels: it might have been highly skilled or hospitality workers, they were having trouble attracting those sorts of employees,” Assoc Prof de Villiers Scheepers said.
“One of the big reasons for that difficulty was the cost of housing and low rental availability. They were really having trouble relocating.”
Want more free local news? Follow Sunshine Coast News on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, and sign up for our FREE daily news email.
Assoc Prof De Villiers said there were a number of other factors that influenced the attraction for highly skilled workers.
“For a fast-growing manufacturing business that might need a factory manager that can uplift productivity faster, it’s very hard to attract that sort of specialist skill set to the Coast because it’s often family that need to relocate, too,” she said.
“The partner is often involved in the industry or something else and for both of them to move to the Sunshine Coast and find employment and meet all the requirements of the household in terms of schooling and hours that work around that, and a support system that goes with that, made it hard to relocate for a number of factors.”
She said employees on the Sunshine Coast had similar expectations to their counterparts elsewhere in terms of being able to work from home.
“Thirty to 40 per cent of them want to work remotely, this was two to four days a week,” she said.
She said Sunshine Coast employees felt they lacked a little in terms of artificial intelligence skills but were confident they could improve.
Assoc Prof De Villiers Scheepers said there was one age group of employees who were not as happy as others: generation X.
“Generation Xers, unusually, were almost the lowest of all the generations. Their positive emotions, enjoyment and relationships were the worst,” she said.
She put this down to the positions that some were in, rapid changes in the workplace, and that Generation Xers were less likely to ask for help than younger age groups.
Assoc Prof de Villiers Scheepers said the government, education and private industry would need to work together to address factors which affected attracting and keeping employees.
