The Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association (RCSA), already mentioned in this article for its partnership with the State of Queensland to connect professional recruitment and staffing agencies with job seekers during the Covid-19 pandemic (Jobs Finder Programme), launched a new campaign to promote the role of the staffing industry.

The “Working Sooner” campaign started in August 2020 intends to show the role played by the private employment services industry in Australia’s economic recovery.

It builds on the outcome of the May 2020 FTI consulting report on “Leveraging Australia’s Agency Workforce to Drive Economic Recovery” that deepened on the role played by Australian job agencies to create jobs and restore confidence in the economy.

The report stressed how “agency staffing firms are well-positioned to provide employment opportunities for professionals, skilled and semi-skilled workers who have been displaced due to the economic downturn, even on a short-term basis. They provide a transition pathway from unemployment to agency work and on to permanent employment in a recovering economy, and as well as a transition to employment for young people seeking to develop their experience in the jobs market or transition from studies. Importantly, agency staffing firms provide their workforce with all the protections that are inherent within workplace laws such as Fair Work, Modern Awards, work health and safety, workers’ compensation, long service leave and antidiscrimination”.

Such a statement is based on an analysis of the impacts of previous economic downturns in Australia, notably in the early 1990s and in the years following the global financial crisis, per year and per sector. It is also constructed around the World Employment Confederation (WEC) previous report on adapting to change, “How private employment services facilitate adaptation to change, better labour markets and decent work” (Boston Consulting Group BCG and Ciett – now WEC, 2011). Based on this insight, the report sets out the “predicted impact on the main industries serviced by the agency workforce”, distinguishing between the impact of the economic downturn and of the economic recovery.

The report estimates that “access to and leverage of the agency workforce will boost the nation’s economic recovery by almost $1 billion and deliver around $200 million for Government in jobseeker savings and additional tax revenue from the extra jobs created”.