Case study: Empowering workforce participation through flexibility – GLT's innovative approach
[Background Music]
[Shay Chalmers – CEO, Graham Lusty Trailers (operating as GLT)]
Welcome to Graham Lusty Trailers. We are an Australian-owned, proudly Queensland-manufactured trailer company. I've been with the business only 4 months now. I am the CEO of Graham Lusty Trailers, and I've learned so much about my workforce in that time. During the first week that I was here, I did a survey to really understand what was most important to them. Was it flexibility, was it time, or was it money?
We got about 90% of those surveys back in the first few days. What I found was that we had a large proportion of our workforce that needed to get out in order to pick their kids up from school. We also had a large portion of our workforce that really wanted the opportunity to earn more money, but then we also had a portion of our workforce that really wanted more time.
What we did was restructure our entire work week to enable all 3 of those things. We work 4 days here. If you want to work on Friday, it's optional, but it's an overtime day, so you have the option to increase your salary. We also have 2 shifts, one of which means that the guys can leave on time every day to go and pick their kids up from school.
In manufacturing, there is a skill shortage, particularly in the type of fabrication that we do. We manufacture aluminium and steel products and do a lot of fit-out, so it's really, really tough to get skilled workers. We have an ad out constantly, and we could hire another 100 today to meet the demand if we could.
An action of the Queensland Workforce Strategy 2022-2032 (QWS) is enabling workforce participation through flexible working arrangements, something that Australian owned, Queensland manufactured trailer company GLT has implemented within their company.
As the CEO of the company, Shay Chalmers and her team engaged in the first Women in Manufacturing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Toolbox Talk. One of the key discussion points was flexible working arrangements, and how to implement them in a non-corporate environment.
Shay issued a survey to employees to better ascertain their priorities.
"What I found was that our workforce had a range of different flexible work arrangement needs. We had a large number of people who needed to leave work in order to pick their kids up from school. We also had a large proportion of our workforce who really wanted the opportunity to earn more money, and others that wanted more time off," said Chalmers.
This inspired a total restructure of the work week within the company to allow for employee flexibility and improved participation in the workforce. The option of a 4-day week or paid overtime was implemented.
"One of the changes we initially implemented were 2 work shifts in the factory, which meant those who need to can leave on time every day to go and pick their kids up from school," she said, "but we now have 4 start times, as we have continued to listen to the staff needs and adapt. This enables those who want to start early and do school pick up, and also those that want to start late and do school drop off".
The changes implemented removed some important workforce participation barriers for GLT employees, improving workforce attraction and retention.
The changes made at GLT demonstrate the opportunities to implement flexible working arrangements in ways that move beyond the typical working from home system. By doing so, businesses can attract and retain a more diverse range of skilled employees and benefit their staff and the company as a whole.
The QWS contains several actions that focus on workforce participation, diversity and inclusion and workforce attraction and retention. The QWS aims to support more Queenslanders, particularly women, to access the workforce through fostering flexible work practices, and to support employers to implement flexible work to widen the pool of available workers.