- 3 years ago
9 October 2023
Uncertainty on the side of both employers and employees is impacting the jobs market but many employees seem oblivious to the fact the market has shifted this year and they no longer hold all the power while some employers are surprised to find that good employees are choosing between multiple job offers.
On Q Recruitment has just released its ‘2023 Job Satisfaction & Salary Report’ to which more than 2,000 people working in the Australian life sciences sector contributed. Now in its 17th year, the report is renowned for tracking trends in the sector, this year proving no different.
“Last year the pendulum was really swinging towards employees and while we feel the pendulum may have swung back towards the employer, employees still don’t see it like that,” On Q Recruitment Managing Director Catherine O’Mahony said.
“When clients are looking to fill a position, they’re still surprised to find that good quality candidates have multiple job offers and are highly sought after, so yes, the power has shifted, the reality has shifted, the market has shifted, but if a candidate is in the right sweet spot, they still have multiple job offers.”
On Q’s report found 45 per cent of respondents had applied for a job in the past 12 months of which two in three had successfully obtained a new position. Of those looking for a role, four in five received multiple job offers, most turning down at least two jobs before accepting a position while some turned down more than four.
O’Mahony said the report also found a difference between those companies that were growing and those that were downsizing. While 29 per cent of managers wanted to increase the headcount in their team, 18 per cent wanted to decrease headcount – the difference being between Australian-owned companies who were looking to hire, and multinationals who were looking to downsize, managers in the latter predicting greater use of contractors and casuals going forward.
“For employees, the lesson here is that there are good opportunities out there, either in Australian-owned companies or smaller, mid-sized life science companies,” O’Mahony said. “There is work out there.”
The life sciences recruitment expert said the sector was fortunate in that it continued to enjoy high rates of job and salary satisfaction with almost three quarters of employees content with their pay pack although half were willing to change jobs for better pay. Interestingly, sign-on bonuses were almost gone, replaced in many cases by loyalty bonuses as employers looked to retain good staff.
“Since Covid, financial reward has become very important to people across all Australian industries, perhaps due to a lack of wages growth and cost-of-living pressures,” O’Mahony said. “I think people have realised the easiest way to get a significant increase is to change jobs.
“Ironically, it helps managers to recalibrate salaries in their team because when they hire someone at a higher pay, this justifies increasing the pay for the rest of the team. Likewise, if someone gets a job offer and you don’t want to lose them, it’s easier to fight for a one-off market adjustment to keep that person, which in turn empowers managers.”
Another trend identified in the On Q report was a growing expectation gap between employers and employees when it came to where they worked, with bosses wanting their staff in the office and staff increasingly wanting to work remotely or in a home-office hybrid mix. O’Mahony says given flexibility has been highly sought after across all ages and genders since On Q began surveying the sector, this was unlikely to change going forward.
“We’ve had candidates who turn down roles where the employer would not give them the flexibility to work from home,” she said. “Flexibility was a non-negotiable. Employees will always value the non-cash benefits that they have in regard to flexibility but when looking to change jobs, they’ll hold out for money and if they don’t get it, they just stay put.”
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