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Staff shortages bring less growth
5th of September 2024 Article by Katja Scholz
In Germany, the mood in the latest BIV survey was not so positive - reports Katja Scholz.
The Federal Association of Contract Cleaners (BIV) has been carrying out a business survey in spring each year since 2019, in which BIV member companies provide a picture of the mood in the sector and express their views on market forecasts, sales expectations and current issues.
The outcome first of all: a significantly dampened mood! This follows on directly from the results of the 2023 autumn survey. Only just under a quarter of the companies surveyed view the year ahead as a whole with positive business expectations, barely half expect to achieve similar results – and 28 per cent of companies are expecting negative trends in the current year’s business. The key issue: staff shortages.
A majority of the companies complain about acute staff shortages: one in every two companies is facing an employee shortage of up to 10 per cent and one in 10 puts their staff shortage at up to 30 per cent. The consequences of this are self-evident: shortage of staff means fewer contracts – since the company is unable to accept any more work – which results in lack of growth and reduced turnover. Almost half of companies stated they “frequently” or “very frequently” had to turn down new customer contracts, as they simply lacked the staff to handle them.
The citizen’s income reform in Germany is still giving rise to controversial debate and unfounded allegations. The BIV actually met this controversy in the last autumn survey when companies were asked whether they feared a ‘migration’ of employees to receipt of citizen’s income. The outcome: on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 = no concern and 10 = great concern), the score of 8.8 showed clearly that employers were extremely concerned that citizen’s income was increasingly competing with waged employment.
In the current spring survey, the question to member companies was worded more positively - in other words, they were asked whether they could attract people away from citizen’s income to work for their companies. This is in line with the declared aim of the Federal Government’s idea of citizen’s income, which is to educate and train people to enter the employment market and enable them to gain a formal vocational qualification on the way.
Since the introduction of citizen’s income in January 2023, however, 85.7 per cent of the companies questioned have not succeeded in attracting people away from receipt of citizen’s income into work, further education, training or an apprenticeship. Only 4.9 per cent declared they had been able to do that. So the more positive formulation of the question has unfortunately not produced the desired result at the moment.
BIV member companies have a very open and positive approach to the employment of all people. Federal guild master Thomas Dietrich sums it up: “We are the sector of opportunity – for all! Our statistics confirm that cosmopolitanism, diversity and tolerance are the guiding principles of our companies.”
And the results of the spring survey bear this out: 78.4 per cent of respondents consider it “quite important” or “very important” when recruiting staff to employ people from all over the world, including those from a migrant or refugee background.
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