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Madison
The Changing World of Work
The recession has many faces – and many of the consequences that New Zealand businesses have experienced have been the more obvious ones – “cash flow, funding, bad debt and competition”.

Or so found the business survey of (mostly) Auckland based small and medium sized New Zealand businesses carried out by the Madison Group and published last month.

Also statistically very relevant was the cost of “staffing inflexibility” – impacting a NZ business in these cost conscious and challenging times.

We have seen evidence of the less obvious consequences of the recession – the main one of these is the changing form of work in the marketplace.

There is a new demand - for and acceptance of - part-time and contract work – and a parallel decrease in the number of permanent and full time roles available.

Employment figures are, by necessity, always historical and somewhat out of date by the time they are published – The latest ones are no exception but do however support our observations.

The June quarter figures could have been a lot worse if firms weren’t still hoarding labour – the figures imply that firms are cutting hours and freezing wages rather than resorting to redundancies where they can.

Even so the unemployment rate jumped to 6% - a 20.6% increase over the quarter.  However the number of people employed dropped by 10,000 or 0.4%.

The drop in full time employees was 1.1% - offset by a 1.3% rise in part timers.

We believe these figures herald a new way of working that is partly a response to the recession and partly reflecting the changing attitudes to work –  shared (oddly enough) by the baby boomers and Gen Yers (both groups are less willing to now commit themselves to work or a job to the exclusion of life style and choice.)

We also believe that the growth of part time and contract work will help facilitate businesses true response to the changing economic cycle as we climb out of the recession.

Many commentators are picking on March/April/May turnaround in hiring intentions – (albeit a subdued turnaround) – and many of us who have experienced past recessionary times agree.

So businesses positioning for the coming upturn is hugely important – but the timing and form of this positioning is all-important.

We are very aware (as historical figures show) that taking on extra heavy fixed costs too early in the economic cycle can lead to at best, unprofitable growth and at worst business at dangerous margins.  We are also aware that as many company closures occur as the market starts to grow as when it contracts (scarily enough)

We understand totally this dilemma – these companies who are ready and poised to take advantage of more positive times will emerge leaders in their market – however too much extra fixed cost too early will be onerous.

We have then, carefully structured a solution to this dilemma – taking into account society’s demands for more flexible working conditions and marrying these demands with the changing talent needs of NZ businesses.

The Madison Group has always had a very large interim/temporary workforce – ranging from the supply of up to 140 temporary staff to facilitating specific government projects around the introduction of new policy, to a contractor to design and implement a sales strategy for a SME.

We have poured resource into creating a sophisticated talent pool with skill sets to support our clients’ diverse interim staffing needs.

We are augmenting this solution by the formation of “Interim Taskforce’ headed by Amanda Scott which will be part of the Madison Group and is charged with the provision of contract staff to ease our clients’ paths through the coming months.

We see the changing market as one that offers opportunities to the boomers who want possibly three days work a week – or indeed to have say June and July in warmer climes – and also offering the same flexibility to the Gen Yers who question the value of the dedication to ‘the job’ shown by their parents.

These two groups make strange bedfellows indeed – however such are the idiosyncrasies of the new changing world of work with its demands for a ‘new way of seeing and doing things’ and a flexibility that ‘survivor’ companies will embrace enthusiastically.