The Whipped Baker and The Whipped Baker Express Maungatapu co-owner Frances Cooper and baker Jade Gibson. Photo / Mead Norton
Tauranga business owners are closing up shop, having family members or customers pick up the tools or working long hours as staff shortages plague the region.
They believe employees are leaving for work across the ditch, starting families or quitting in search of something new.
Local recruiters say a looming recession could turn the tides.
Frances and Aaron Cooper have had to close both of their bakeries - The Whipped Baker at The Historic Village on 17th Ave and the newly opened The Whipped Baker Express Maungatapu - on Mondays due to a lack of workers.
“Staff shortages have been really tough,” Frances said.
Their Maungatapu bakery opened on January 3 and they had been trying their best to keep both bakeries going despite the staffing challenges.
“We are the only bakers. We are doing seven days a week and 14 hours a day so we made an executive decision to just close on a Monday.”
When they first opened the bakery, they were three staff down and struggling to keep up with demand, she said.
They had since managed to hire a baker and a front-of-house staff member in the cafe, while two former customers had put their hands up to help with dishes and cleaning up at the end of the day.
Even Frances’ mother, as well as the Cooper children’s former primary school principal, put their hands up to help until they were able to hire more people.
“The community has been amazing.”
They still needed to hire another baker and barista, she said.
Looking forward, Frances would like to be able to hire a couple of bakers to join the team so she and her husband could take a step back and spend more time with their children aged 10, 13, 15, 20 and 21.
“We can’t keep doing seven days a week,” said her husband Aaron.
Aaron said it had never been this hard to find staff in their 17-year career.
“It is the hardest we have ever had to find staff. Hospitality has become very hard.”
He believed it was because people just did not want to work weekends.
Of the staff they did have, he said, “we wouldn’t be here without them”.
Jason Chooi, who owns The Lakes, Tara Rd, and Pyes Pā pharmacies, said he was “gutted” to have to close The Lakes pharmacy due to staff shortages.
“It is not about the money. It is more that we are open and here to help the community and provide them a service. We are just here to help people. It is more upsetting to me to lose that ability.”
Chooi said the pharmacy was closed during Christmas and New Year and the business was about to lose three qualified pharmacists.
“We have been advertising since November ... and nothing.”
About 14 people were employed mostly part-time across the three pharmacies and while half a dozen had applied for the job listing, they were not qualified.
Chooi said it took five years to be qualified and there were a lot of pharmacies closing down across the country.
“We are not the only ones.”
He said he believed the reasons for the shortages were due to not enough people passing their pharmacy exams, many leaving to find jobs in Australia, people quitting the industry in search of something else, female staff leaving to start a family and poaching between businesses.
Chooi said he would often work 60-hour weeks but preferred it that way rather than his staff burning out.
“I haven’t had a good sleep for weeks, I have been quite stressed.
“But my main concern is my staff and giving them enough rest and making sure they are happy. I have learned that if you work five days a week at 45-plus hours, you burn out. I make sure all of my staff don’t overwork themselves.”
He did not know if the closure was temporary but hoped it would be.
The Staffroom Ltd director Jill Cachemaille said they were seeing the typical movement of candidates returning from holiday tendering their resignation in the hope of searching for their dream job and chasing new opportunities, with clients reaching out to them for potential new staff.
Cachemaille said it was too early in the year to say which industries were struggling to find staff the most.
“However, we know that hospitality and retail are within this description. Legal is another industry that was struggling at the back end of last year.”
Overall, she said the volume of options still remained minimal.
“However, we did experience great responses to adverts from candidates during December, high volume, and great calibre.
“[We are] hoping this will continue to flow through 2023 so employers have choice.”
Tauranga recruitment agency Ryan + Alexander executive consultant Natalie Milne said there were slightly more candidates becoming available in 2023 compared to last year.
“This is not unusual at this time of year though as people head back to work after holidays and people are more open to making significant changes in their lives.”
Milne said hospitality, tourism, retail, and healthcare were all experiencing shortages, some of which may be eased by the increase in working holiday visas.
Low unemployment had been the main cause of why businesses were struggling to find work, coupled with Covid-19, and a lack of people coming into New Zealand, she said. However, she believed that was easing.
Milne said overall application numbers for roles were improving, however, the more specialist and technical roles were difficult to recruit for.
“There are often applications from overseas regarding these roles but not all employers are able to go through the processes required to bring workers in on visas. We advise all employers to look into the employer accreditation scheme, which eases the visa process significantly.”
Restaurant Association chief executive Marisa Bidois said a Bay of Plenty member survey in November indicated 85 per cent of businesses reported they were understaffed.
Two-thirds had to temporarily close or reduce operating hours due to staffing challenges, she said.
While revenues were tracking well, Bidois said the “single biggest issue” was access to skilled labour.
Tauranga Business Chamber chief executive Matt Cowley said many retailers, hospitality, accommodation and tourism operators were stretched to meet the demand, as predicted at the start of our peak tourism period.
“Although it was last minute, the Government’s changes to New Zealand’s immigration settings has allowed more temporary overseas workers to help fill some vacancy gaps, particularly in hospitality.”
Cowley said despite tertiary students filling some vacancies while at home between semesters having helped, they had also contributed to increased demand for hospitality and retailers.
“Visitors over the next few long weekends should be well aware of New Zealand’s staff shortages. Hopefully, they remain relaxed and patient as many staff and business owners will be working split shifts in hot weather to serve as many customers as they can.”
A spokesperson for Immigration Minister Michael Wood said the Government’s immigration rebalance was designed specifically to address immediate skill shortages, simplifying the settings and streamlining application processes for businesses, while ensuring wages and working conditions are improved for everyone.
The new Accredited Employer Work Visa made it easier for employers to hire and attract migrants for specified “high-skilled, hard-to-fill occupations”, offering eligible workers a guaranteed faster and simplified pathway to residency.
The rebalance was focused on building the skills New Zealand needed rather than focusing on “on large volumes of low-wage labour in some sectors”.
“This is a shift but it will be better for the New Zealand economy, and it will reduce the unacceptable levels of migrant exploitation that the old settings facilitated.”
The spokesperson said 44,000 working holiday visitors had been approved since March 2022, with almost 25,500 having already arrived and thousands more expected in the coming months.
To retain staff, it had extended the visas of working holidaymakers with visas expiring between August 26, 2022, and May 31, 2023, by six months.
The spokesperson said there have been approvals for businesses to recruit internationally for more than 112,000 positions.
Businesses had been making the most of this opportunity, with more than 37,000 international migrants applying across 550 different occupations across New Zealand since the Accredited Employer Work Visa opened.
For the third quarter of 2022, New Zealand’s unemployment rate was 3.3 per cent, and 3.9 per cent in the Bay of Plenty according to Stats NZ data from November. The next update is due on February 1.