Caryn Katsikogianis, chief people officer, Woolworths Group:

On innovation: 

“[What has] been really incredible for us is the increased agility and innovation, just seeing our teams have this new sense of freedom to make decisions and come up with really innovative tools to help better our customers’ lives. One great example of that was the Q-tracker, which one of our teams developed.”

“We’ve always welcomed our teams ideating and innovating. We always talk about the truth being in our stores and being on the shopfloor. Our teams are closer to the customers, they know what they’re looking for. And for us, it’s ensuring from a support team perspective, that we’re always listening and learning. I think that’s where the best ideas come from actually.” 

On recruitment:

“What’s very exciting is our team is really recognising the difference we are making and the challenging and exciting work they get to be involved in. Our lesson has been that people are interested in the work, and they have been wanting to join us.”

Richard Murray, CEO, JB Hi-Fi

On economy:

“We’ve suddenly discovered a number, $60 billion of money that Australians spend overseas, and they can’t leave at the moment. I think for most retailers, they will never ever forget that number ever again. While Australians can’t travel that money is staying in Australia … and it’s been very good for retail. 

“What’s a little hard to say is when travel, or borders, reopen how quickly that normalises ..  whether that’s six, 12, 18 or 24 months. This will have to normalise. There are going to be some big numbers to cycle.

“I’d much prefer for JB to be operating in a solid economic environment. And even if sales are not quite as good as they are today, I think we can all accept they’re going to normalise, I just want people to have a job. We all want people to feel proud of what they’re doing from a self worth perspective and that’s what employment brings. And if we operate in that environment, that’s good for all businesses.”

Carl Hartmann, co-founder of Compono, Lyre’s

On the role of technology in recruitment:

“I think the big trend to come is more data-driven decisions. Obviously, these can have some wonderful impacts in terms of reducing biases and increasing diversity, because you’re starting to think about the sum of the parts versus perhaps gravitating towards a predetermined thought.”

On widening the net:

“We’ve been a global company from day one. Being able to say ‘Look, I’m going to hire the best talent, no matter where they are’, and taking out that location requirement … [we’ve been able to] find some gems of people that might be located in a regional area, and are prepared to work across three time zones, so naturally that gives you this sort of agility when you can do that.”

On recruitment challenges:

“The challenge for most retailers has been finding good e-commerce people. One of the common themes from retailers I’ve spoken to in the last 12 months is that it’s been very difficult to find people. The net does need to cast somewhat wider, it probably hasn’t been helped with close borders and not being able to have some of that skilled migration talent some of the larger retailers have really needed in order to sort of heat up headcount numbers.”

On purpose and values:

“I think you’ll see a lasting trend with employees around purpose and value. From an employment perspective, it’s about the ability to understand how someone can match both skill qualification and culture, and particularly on the culture side, purpose and values. When you think about the workforce of the future, we have to understand that customers now are so connected, they have so much information, particularly when they are looking at higher value items. They go into a store with a lot of requisite knowledge, so the baseline is set pretty high [in terms of] who you hire in order to have a performing team.”