Recruitment and jobs blog

We are delighted to welcome Michael Megally as Director of IT Consulting at Ignite. Michael will lead the IT consulting arm of our Technology and Talent Solutions team, which uses cost efficient and vetted technology squads to drive technological solutions for business problems as-a-service. Michael has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years and is a highly experienced delivery and transformation executive. He has assisted a wide range of multinational enterprise organisations on their IT transformation journeys. Michael has strong capabilities in program management, IT operations, service delivery, customer onboarding, product management, negotiating complex outsourcing deals and business transformation. All of which will be essential to our technology-as-a-service offerings. Michael is also an entrepreneur who has setup and run multiple businesses. He knows how to develop companies from inception to profitability with strong governance, innovation, and digitisation principles. He is also involved in several not-for-profit organisations and is passionate about helping neurodiverse people have meaningful careers and creating opportunities for indigenous Australians in technology. Michael said “my role at Ignite is to lead the IT consulting arm of the business, powered by team Ignite to provide innovative solutions to business problems. Project by project, Ignite has curated the best talent, skills, expertise, and availability to deliver direct access to world-class vetted technology squads to deliver solutions for clients on-time and on-budget”. We are delighted to have Michael on-board who brings advanced knowledge and technology expertise that will help our Technology and Talent Solutions team thrive.

A healthy workplace benefits everyone. From senior to junior, board to graduate, everyone has an important role to play. In this blog, we discuss the importance of health and wellbeing at work and explore the key roles that managers and employees have in creating and maintaining a healthy work environment. What is a healthy workplace and why does it matter? A healthy workplace is one that safeguards the mental health and physical wellbeing of all individuals within it. They have strong internal cultures where people feel included and inspired to want to come to work each day. They have strategies and tactics in place to help manage and minimise the anxieties that individuals uniquely experience. They are supportive environments for all employees irrespective of seniority and individual differences. A healthy workplace is good for everyone. For individuals, it positively correlates with improved health, happiness, productivity, motivation, job satisfaction and performance. For companies, it boosts team morale, talent attraction and retention, internal engagement and bottom-line performance. According to PWC research, every dollar spent on creating a healthy workplace can, on average, result in a positive return of 2.3 times. Not only this, but the more that organisations do to promote health and wellbeing has a positive snowball effect in the broader community. The Role of Managers Managers wield the power and influence that shapes the experience, health and wellbeing of employees. They create the policies, drive the strategies and make the decisions that affect how employees think, feel and behave. At it's core, management is about supporting people to be their best in their respective role. This is very difficult to achieve outside of a healthy workplace.  Consequently, commitment and buy-in from senior managers is crucial to any successful corporate health and wellbeing strategy Small changes can make a big difference when trying to create a healthy workplace. A discounted gym membership, nutritious snacks, vivacious plants, natural lighting, an informal conversation or a more collaborative workspace can all elicit a healthier workplace. In most cases, these are decisions that can only be made by a manager. Take a step further and managers have the power to develop specific training, adjust work models (flexibility and work-life balance) and provide access to professional support (internal or external) in a concentrated effort to boost employee health and wellbeing. Research by AIM highlights just how important open and effective management is. 72% of Australian workers have left a job due to poor leadership, citing poor communication and emotional intelligence as key reasons for their departure. Why? Because such inadequacies impact the mental health and physical wellbeing of employees. When this is compromised, employment at a particular company quickly becomes untenable. The Role of Employees Employees also have an important role to play in a healthy workplace. After all, they make up the components that allows the machine to run. When these components aren’t working correctly the machine tends to breakdown. Every individual will most likely face their own unique mental and physical health struggles at some point in their career. They can be unforeseen and unpredictable. Consequently, as an employee, you are ultimately responsible for looking after your own health and wellbeing. To do this, ideally with help from your company, you need to enhance your understanding of all thing’s health and wellbeing. Learn how to identify when you or someone else is struggling. Learn constructive ways of navigating challenging times. Learn how to find the professional support you need when you need it. By upskilling yourself in these areas, you will boost your resilience to health and wellbeing issues thereby doing your bit to create and maintain a healthy workplace. This learning could also give you the ability to recognise and support someone else who may be struggling. While it's not your place to diagnose or counsel someone, there are certainly things you can do to help. A simple chat about how they’re feeling can go a long way. A referral to an expert is a courageous contribution. Sharing your own health struggles can remove feelings of isolation. Temporarily alleviating some of the burden in their role could be a difference-maker. These actions all contribute to a healthier workplace. The machine works best when all components are working together and supporting one another. In this blog we’ve highlighted the important role that each employee plays in workplace health and wellbeing. Managers must use their power and influence to promote health and wellbeing, while employees must support themselves and help others by upskilling. When all employees perform their role the outcomes of a healthy and positive workplace benefit everyone. At Ignite, we understand the importance of health and wellbeing. We work with clients and candidates who value a healthy workplace, and we make lasting employment connections that ensures people work with organisations that care about your health and wellbeing.

We all love a great success story filled with dogged determinism. The actor who lives in her car and works odd jobs so she can become a blockbuster sensation. The high school dropout who puts in 20-hour days to launch the next game-changing internet company. The immigrant who moonlights as a janitor while working his way up to become CEO of the world’s largest bank. Most people will never become famous enough to garner widespread interest in the sacrifices they make to meet work goals – the sleep deprived IT professional who perpetually works 32 hours straight to keep systems running smoothly, a public servant who misses his child’s school events to keep up with paperwork or an executive assistant who answers the beck and call of an executive 24/7… It’s easy to admire the single-minded focus to achieving goals, after all, you’ve been pumped full of motivational quotes, memes and inspirational speeches most of your life. As a society, we tend to celebrate commitment at all costs and equate giving up as failure. But, in the professional world, this belief is gradually changing. The key questions you need to ask yourself is when does the healthy professional strive turn into the useless struggle? When does going over and above in our jobs begin to affect our health and wellbeing? When should we throw in the towel? The answer is surprisingly simple. When we associate a job with more pain than pleasure, it's time to re-evaluate. After all, the only reason we strive for success is the underlying belief it will make us happier in some way on another. If this is clearly no longer the case, then  it's time to move on. The key here is finding balance in both our professional and personal lives. If your job is affecting your physical health and mental wellbeing, its a clear sign your strive might not be worth it. Sure working a long shift to complete a major project might be part of the job, and something you're willing to do to get ahead. But if one late night turns into an expectation of working late every night, at some point, somethings got to give, and most likely it won't be in your favour. Many people spend years finding the right balance between professional and personal. An added complication is often that many people are willing to self-sacrifice in the pursuit for success. A junior lawyer knows the hours will be long to ascend the ranks. But, they do it anyway to become a senior partner quicker. The problem is though, when this imbalance becomes too unsustainable, the result is often burnout, exhaustion, stress, mental illness or something even worse. In the modern working world, the concept of work-life balance has become far more accepted among employers. Good companies understand that there is no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance. In fact, they know that when they provide talent with a healthy work-life balance, their performance and productivity often improves. As a result, work-life balance has become much more commonplace and is highly sought after by all walks of talent. If your company doesn't understand this, then it's probably time to move on. Yes, it's important to strive for success and reach your professional goals, but this can be achieved without impacting you health and wellbeing. There is a tipping point in all jobs where your healthy strive can become a useless struggle, and your ability to recognise and address this will influence your overall happiness. At Ignite, we value work-life balance and ensure we support people in both their professional and personal endeavors as  much as possible. We connect great talent to like-minded organisations who understand the importance of work life balance for their employees.  

In the war for talent, sustainability is an extra weapon in your EVP arsenal to help attract hard-to-find talent. Now more than ever, talent wants to work for companies committed to sustainable practices that align with their values. In this blog, we discuss the growing relationship between sustainability and talent acquisition and why it should be an important part of your EVP strategy to attract great talent. What is sustainability? Sustainability refers to a business approach where organisations consider the social, economic and environmental ramifications of all their business activities. These companies recognise key global issues and their publicly perceived responsibility in addressing them. Sustainability comes in many forms. A café might use fair trade coffee beans or recyclable cups. A Government department might only partner with companies demonstrating diversity in their workforce. A tech company might rely solely on renewable energy to source their high-power needs. A builder might only use ethically sourced raw building materials. Whether its social, economic or environmental sustainability, what was once considered “bad business” has now become “smart business” to appeal to mounting stakeholder pressure and intensifying global issues. Why is sustainability important to talent? History is littered with corporate tragedies tied to unsustainable practices. Ecological disasters, high carbon footprints, poor working conditions are examples of unsustainable activities that have destroyed company reputations. Bluntly put, people don’t want to work for these companies any more given the choice. Talent wants to work for companies that align with their values. They want to be proud of what they do and the companies they represent. A passionate environmentalist is unlikely to work for a company that mines coal. An ambitious female graduate is unlikely to join a government agency where none of the senior leaders are women. If your business doesn’t align with the values of your increasingly finite talent pool, particularly those who value sustainability, your company won’t be considered as a realistic employment option. This will hinder your EVP and affect the calibre of talent you can attract and retain long term. How can you attract talent that value sustainability? Employers not leveraging sustainability in their EVP are doing so for two primary reasons. Either they aren’t acting sustainably, or they’re not effectively communicating the good work they’re already doing to help attract talent. The second reason is a wasted opportunity. Communication is key to attracting talent that value sustainability. You need to be concentrated, consistent, compelling and creative in all your communications to reap any benefits for your EVP. Make it clear what issue(s) you’re committed to, how you’re addressing them and what tangible impact you are having on them. How? Update your content to include sustainable language. Identify touchpoints with your target audience and showcase the efforts that you’re making. Benchmark your activities with competitors to see where you sit in your sector. Create internal objectives and update stakeholders on your progress. You don’t need to solve world hunger or fix climate change to prove sustainability. It could be as simple as introducing recycle bins, fundraising charities or sourcing ethical materials. If talent perceive real effort towards sustainability, it’ll naturally enhance your EVP and make talent want to join your business and contribute to the cause. The link between sustainability and talent acquisition is ever-increasing. Employees want to work for companies that are actively trying to make the world a better place now more than ever. If you can translate these efforts into your EVP, then talent who value sustainability will more than likely want to work for you. At Ignite, we are focused on sustainability primarily around diversity, inclusivity and parity in Australia’s workforce. We are passionate about connecting talent from all walks of life with likeminded companies and boosting the number of under-represented talent in Australia’s top employment sectors. For more information, visit our website.

Job creator, Job destroyer or Job enhancer: Three qualities used by many to describe the potential contribution of AI and automation to the global jobs landscape. Will AI and automation render jobs obsolete? Will it create new and exciting ones? Or will it simply augment how workers operate? In this blog, we explore each of these ideas, to better understand how AI and automation could impact jobs now and into the future. Job destroyer According to the World Economic Forum, the rise of machines and automation could eliminate 85 million jobs globally by 2025, making it a potential mass job killer. This upheaval is most likely to occur in lower skilled positions that involve basic administrative tasks, physical activities and large amounts of data processing, since these jobs are more easily replicated by technology. In some industries, we have already seen this substitution take place. Manufacturers are using advanced robotics in their factories; mining companies are using autonomous vehicles to transport precious goods and big banks are using AI-chat bots to deal with simple customer enquiries. If your occupation sits in one of these areas, you’re probably quite concerned about the rise of AI and automation. Our recommendation is to focus on reskilling and retraining yourself to improve your resilience to technology. Understand what aspects of your role can be replaced with technology, and what aspects rely on human capital. By doing this, you’ll mitigate some of the risks posed by the destructive potential of AI and automation on jobs. Job creator However, It’s not all doom and gloom for the jobs market. From the ashes of jobs destroyed will rise the flames of new jobs created. In the same report by the World Economic Forum, AI and automation could also create 97 million new jobs, equating to an overall addition of 12 million net jobs globally. So, where will this job growth stem from? While demand for lower-skilled rolls will likely sink, demand for other higher-skilled roles will undoubtedly soar. Increased reliance on machinery tends to need more professionals to run them, and more technical specialists to harvest its proposed benefits. Such requirements will see particular roles like data specialists, engineers and technology specialists’ flourish in the future. Furthermore, development and adoption of new technologies will see new jobs emerge that don’t currently exist, creating new opportunities for those with the right technical and soft skills to harness them. Due to this, the key learning here for candidates is the need to constantly upskill. Experience is hardly a barrier for jobs that don’t yet exist, and equipping yourself with the right skill combinations in the meantime for an AI and automation enabled future could be crucial to individual success. Job enhancer Go through history and industries have been advancing via technology since the beginning of time. However, the need for people has always endured. For many workers, companies and industries, AI and automation is simply another tool to enhance how people work. It wasn't too long ago people feared that the internet would destroy jobs, yet it now fuels millions of roles worldwide. While some roles are vulnerable as previously noted, the vast majority cannot yet be fully automated by currently demonstrated technologies. This means, from truck drivers to software engineers, most workers will continue to have a place to work alongside technologies rather than be replaced by them entirely in the foreseeable future. What’s the key learning here? Simply put, adaptability. AI and automation is inevitable because of its unrealised value potential it has in the corporate world. However, those who are adaptable, and can leverage the power of technology to bolster their own capabilities, are likely to reap the benefits of the job enhancer potential of AI and automation. Job destroyer, job creator or job enhancer? The reality is that AI and automation has the potential to be all of the above.  Its impact will be felt differently across occupations depending on how resilient or vulnerable your skillsets are to rapidly advancing technology. No matter where you sit on this spectrum, we recommend retraining, upskilling and being adaptable to technological change to help you manage the rise of the robot workforce and reap the benefits rather than endure the costs. At Ignite, we’ve seen demand for technology talent specialising in automation and AI increase sharply in recent years. Our large network of clients are increasingly looking for the best talent with one eye focused on emerging technologies of the future. If you’re looking to make a move in this area, or simply need guidance on how to get there, contact our specialist recruitment team today and Ignite your potential.

To return to the office or stay at home? A key decision high on the agenda for many employees. it’s easy to look at the benefits of remote work and decide you never want to return to the office. Who doesn’t love the additional flexibility, work life balance and autonomy that comes with working from home? However, whilst there are undoubtedly some great perks of remote work, there are also some key shortcomings that can be better accomplished in the office. Perhaps this is why many companies are adopting hybrid work models, to give their employees the best of both worlds. The advantages of remote working are easy to see – no commute, no office dress code and more time with the family. On the other hand, the advantages of the office may be less clear. Whether you're pro-office or pro-home, it's important that  you understand the advantages of both environments to make a more informed decision about where you work from long-term. Here are the top 3 reasons you should consider working (in some capacity) from the office. 1.Socialisation One major drawback of remote work is the lack of face-to-face socialisation. Many of us experienced the Zoom fatigue phenomenon of 2020, where despite great improvements in our trivia skills and ability to talk on mute, socialisation became far more challenging. This is not surprising given we are hardwired to be social creatures, and the office provides us with a physical environment to satisfy this intrinsic need with our colleagues. Sure, we can talk online and give a virtual thumbs up, but technology still isn’t capable of replicating the impact of physically shaking your bosses hand or sharing a meal with your teammates to celebrate a job well done. Remember, great companies are underpinned by strong teams that need to work cohesively and collaboratively to be successful. In a remote environment, these relationships are harder to build, harder to maintain, and harder to leverage to optimise both your individual and team performance. In all areas of our lives, including our professional careers, we search for a sense of belonging. Research suggests that people who have a strong sense of belonging to an organisation are six times more likely to be engaged, motivated and productive. Furthermore, people who work remotely over an extended period of time are far more likely to feel disconnected with their employer. This disconnection, exacerbated by ‘social distance’ while working remotely, impacts your overall mental wellbeing and happiness. Therefore, offices provide an environment that enable you to socialise with others, feel a sense of belonging and build stronger team connections that ultimately enhance your mental wellbeing and performance. 2.Learning & Development If your primary motivation is learning and development, then you are potentially limiting your opportunities for growth by adopting a fully remote work experience. Learning goes well beyond simply reading a book or watching a webinar, it also relies on immersive and experiential forms of learning that are more likely to occur in the office. According to the 70 20 10 learning framework, 70% of our learning comes from experiential knowledge, 20% comes from social knowledge and 10% comes from formal knowledge. Based on this, 80% of our learning is better achieved in a face-to-face environment (i.e., an office) than a remote one (i.e., at home). Consciously or not, we learn a lot from the people around us. We listen to conversations, we read body language, we see how our managers display leadership and how our colleagues solve business problems. These teachings are almost impossible to replicate remotely, meaning that you’re inhibiting your professional development by abandoning the office completely. 3.Career Progression Most people, particularly early in their careers, are looking for opportunities to advance. If you want the next promotion, a new job, more money or more opportunities, then never being in the office may harm your future prospects. Rightly or wrongly, When it comes to career progression, you are ‘out of sight out of mind’. Research suggests people who work remotely are less likely to receive a promotion than someone who works in the office. This means merit or productivity aside, facetime with colleagues and managers is important because in this case, perception is often reality. If you’re not in the office, you have less opportunity to build relationships, showcase leadership abilities and demonstrate your technical and soft skills. You may be working just as hard if not harder at home, but if you’re not visible to the people making the key decisions, then chances are they will choose someone else rendering your progression stagnant. Yes, remote work has great perks and is an increasingly popular feature of how people want to work moving forward. However, it’s important to realise that the office also has key advantages crucial in your career journey. So, when the time comes to make that decision for yourself (or others), it’s important you consider all of the above to make an informed choice about where you work now and into the future. If you need assistance with making this decision, or are looking for a company whose work model accommodates your needs, get in touch with the team at Ignite today.