Casual labour will play a key role in Australia’s post-COVID workforce, says APG Workforce general manager Dhaval Trivedi, with the food and beverage sector expected to be the “largest catalyst for revival”.
Drawing on his international experience and recovery from the recession in the 1990s and Global Financial Crisis in 2007-08, Trivedi believes Australia’s recovery should be V-shaped, with casual workforce at the forefront.
“The GFC brought a 50 per cent cut in job vacancies in a single quarter but in a V-shaped recovery, it led to the back-to-back recovery in the three following quarters. Importantly, businesses using agency workforce recorded growth that was significantly higher than the rest,” said Trivedi.
“Leading growth will be food manufacturing, food importers and wholesalers, food service companies and warehousing/distribution businesses.
“At the forward end of the value chain within Food & Beverage, it is hygiene-centric fast food and semi-processed foods that are likely to have a massive edge over high-end and fine dining, which could take a lot longer to kick back to life,” he told Food & Drink Business.
Out of a total of 10.7 million employees in Australia in 2019, 2.6 million (24.4 per cent) were casual workers, cites Trivedi. Food & Beverage constitutes just over 25 per cent of manufacturing in Australia, with a total of 725,000 employees of which 467,000 (64.4 per cent) were casual workers.
“When the mineral boom is not driving the Australian economy, it is the food industry value chain that does so,” Trivedi said.
‘Grow local’ and ‘buy local’ are important sentiments during these times, Trivedi adds, with this connection expected to stay for good.
The food and beverage sector will also expect to see an emphasis on technology and mechanised logistics and handling, with even more technology at the forward end of the supply chain.
“Perhaps more significantly than ever, technology will have a massive role to play in the post-COVID F&B era. If businesses within F&B cannot cope with these shifts, they may well shut up shop and instead, open a pizza joint,” Trivedi told Food & Drink Business.
“Those [businesses] that survived through the hibernation, will need to control their finances pretty tightly as they come back to business in the post-COVID era.
“The variable cost model that the casual workforce model offers will be a big boon in not committing themselves to a fixed cost structure.
“Flexibility will be the buzzword and flexibility is what casual workforce will provide. On the other hand, the customer will be more price-driven than ever and will demand value for money. This is where labour hire comes in.”
“Coming out of a financial crisis, the F&B industry will have the crème de la crème of talent available. Besides the internal student community, a major source of labour for the F&B sector, will be rearing to go. This will provide ability to the F&B sector to attract the right talent to meet the challenges that the post COVID era will pose.”
Trivedi believes that as the Australian economy moves from one wave of COVID to another, the F&B sector is currently in a ‘W’ shape, and has been “the most resilient thus far and shall, without any doubt, be the first of the sectors to recover”.
