Ben Newnham - Iron Merge Group

Speaker A: At uh, Rubber Band, we empower each other through positivity, kindness and practical advice. Join a community of thousands of peers who understand the unique challenges you face. Rubber Band company Agnostic, low ego, high empathy. Always supportive.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Rubberband podcast where we sit down with leaders in recruitment and the wider talent industry to explore their journeys, challenges and contributions to our profession. Uh, my name is Martin Hill and I'll be your host today. Before we begin today's conversation, I'd like to take a m moment for an acknowledgement of country. I acknowledge the whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which we record this podcast here in Perth, Western Australia. I pay my respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Today I'm joined by Ben Newnham, operations manager and CEO at IronMerge Group. Iron Merge Group is, uh, making real impact in the mining and contracting space at the moment only by delivering workforce solutions, but also through their strong commitment to community and indigenous employment pathways. Ben, thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker C: No, absolute pleasure mate. I've been looking forward to this.

Speaker B: It's great to have you on and yeah, interested to hear about your recruitment journey. So without further ado, we'll get uh, started. So tell me a little bit about your origins and recruitment. It's always great to go back and see how you sort of, how people sort of came into the industry. Most generally fall into it. But yeah, tell us a little bit about your, your pathway and what drew you to the industry.

Speaker C: Yeah, mate, it is one of those industries where everybody's background's slightly different and look, I think M M like like many others, it was, it was a role that I kind of fell into. I'd come straight out of school and, and did a fair bit of time sort of in warehousing and logistics as, as you do halfway out of school into a manual labor job and um, yeah, transitioned into some sort of sales, internal sales, customer service sales. I remember working at Coventry of time there. So sort of your automotive spare part sales. And then I'd landed a gig at uh, the Water Corp as a data entry person in their stores division and it was actually through integrated, which is now uh, programmed. So yeah, I was actually a candidate at one point in time and yeah, got to a point in my life where I was looking to settle down and you know, wanted to get a loan and buy a house and do all that fun adult stuff and I went back to the consultant that placed me and said look, I've just missed the cutoff permanent workforce sign over for the budget year and uh, I'd be interested if there's any other full time opportunities with any of your other clients. I'm keen to get into something full time. And then about a day later I actually got a call back from the branch manager who'd said she'd seen my CV and noticed I'd had a bit of sales background on there and had ever considered recruitment. And um, I think as, as most others did, the first question was what's recruitment? So yeah, one thing led to another and I was in there for an interview in a couple of days time and you know, had a bit of a chat to her and she soon realized that there's some transferable skill sets from things that I'd done and you know, it was, it was a full time job and that was ticking all my boxes and yeah, you know, ended up as a, uh, as a consultant at the Balcata branch. Jesus. This is going back maybe 2005ish. 2006ish. Show my age there. Yeah, 20 years in the industry now. So um. Right, yeah, yeah, kind of just fell into it and, and then you know, as, as most people say, never look back and you know, it's taken me a long way.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Yeah, it's um, it's a solid stint in recruitment as well. You know, 10, 20 years. Definitely doing the hard yards and sticking with it. And when you, when you look back now at that experience, what were some of the early lessons or turning points that really shaped your approach to recruitment and operations?

Speaker C: Yeah, look, I think, look, I've been really lucky in that my journey in recruitment hasn't just been on one side of the fence. I uh, started my journey on the agency or the external side of the fence. And then I was lucky enough to move internally and had a really solid stint internally and then I found my way back over the other side of the fence and have done external agency work again. So I think early doors, I learned pretty early on that I was, in my mind, I was a terrible salesperson early on. I didn't feel genuine trying to sell. I wasn't comfortable in cold calling situations. And you go back, you know, 15, 20 years ago and that was what recruitment was. Back then. Agency recruitment was all about sales calls, it was all about cold calling and how many calls have you made this week and log them in the system. And you know, to me it just didn't make sense. Uh, I wanted to focus on the outcome which was, you know, trying to get a person into a job. Uh, but I had all these other distractions which you know, sometimes are a means to an end. But you know, I learned pretty quickly that I wasn't comfortable in those types of scenarios. So I think that's why, you know, after a couple of stints at different agencies, I was lucky enough to do a uh, you know, 12 month stint out at a place called Sat Logistics out in, in Forestfield, um, which is a rail and logistics company and essentially rail runs 24, 7, 365 days A. So I was kind of an on site consultant in that um, scenario. And you know, we had five warehouses on the same stretch of road that we were manning up and could be anywhere from you know, 150 to 200 in the quiet season, up to sort of three, 400 people in the busy seasons which are usually a holiday periods. And that taught me about workforce planning, that taught me about moving puzzle pieces, that taught me about, you know, multi skill people and having backups. It was relentless. You were running from warehouse to warehouse, sitting in front of stakeholder and stakeholder and I guess as you can imagine being, you know, rail, logistics, trucking, those stakeholders, I guess their communication was very polished and professional at times. So mistakes were uh, you know, you definitely learned the uh, hard way. But you know, I actually learned a lot in that 12 months. And I still refer back to, and still point back to lessons learned in that period of time around multi skilled people and how to move puzzle pieces and how to look at workforces uh, differently. So I think when I look back retrospectively over my journey, you know, there's a lot of lessons that I've learned along the way that kind of shape where I am at the moment. But yeah, after a few little agency stints I managed to move internally. And then again I had a different appreciation for internal uh, recruitment. You know, for me that was more about, I didn't have to do any of the cold call sales. I was in the facility, I was in the building. I was just selling what that company did. And it gave me an opportunity to grow my networks exponentially. I think looking back to my first internal gig, it would have been Simoco Slash Forge. I don't know if there's many listeners out there that remember that name but, but um, I guess for comparison back in, you know, 12, 15 years ago forge would have been the equivalent of a smaller scale monadelphis or Minres. Today they were the engineering, construction, maintenance firm that did everything back then and yeah, unfortunately collapsed under uh, some poor management. But that was my first job internally and I still speak to and catch up regularly with people that I work with there. Had the luxury of working with some of the team in other places beyond that and um, also got the luxury of actually one of the people that I work with there is a current client of mine now. So, yeah, I guess internally, fast forward to where I am today, back into the agency space. My time internally has given me a better appreciation of how to approach recruitment towards my clients. You know, the motto and the mantra that we have at Ironmerge is uh, quite simple. Uh, we're here to solve our uh, clients problems. We're not here to try to back sell or cross sell or you know, reverse market people and, and, and gain revenue that way. It's quite simple. We're here to solve people's problems and, and we do that quite well and, and what we find is people come back once you've solved their problem for them. So, uh, yeah, that's, it's kind of. Yeah, it's, it's definitely throughout my career I've reshaped the way that I've approached recruitment and, and taken a lot of lessons learned along that journey and put them into place to where I am today.

Speaker B: All right, great. Sounds like definitely a bit of a baptism by far at certain points in the career journey there. And um, I think Forge Group was actually where I first learned about yourself over in the west as well, because I remember Forge where everywhere when I first started my recruitment career back sort of 2011 before the collapse. And yeah, um, they were, like you said, um, sort of involved in just about every construction project that was around at the time. So that was a bit of a shame to see. And let's talk about, um, your time with Ironmerge Group. So how did you come to join the business you're with today and what did it look like when you first started out?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's something that I've, I've had a lot, a lot of time to reflect on recently as you do at sort of end of month, end of financial year, sort uh, of sit back and reflect and look at the journey of the, the business. And I've been with the company um, for over two and a half years now. I was lucky enough to come in and be offered an opportunity that most people kind of dream of and it is be handed a blank canvas to sort of, you know, grow and mould your own. So the two majority owners, the two Majority indigenous owners of Ironmerge, uh, Wayne Nanop and Des Hedland. And I've had a pretty long standing relationship with Des uh, over the years through the industry, through his, one of his other businesses which is Spartan First. They're involved in pre employment medical and obviously if you're a recruiter in the mining space, everything you do circles around that. And I'd always been a big fan of that business and anywhere I'd ever worked internally I'd always referred and got them on board to use as a medical provider. So Des and I sort of formed a bit of a friendship over the years and you know we'd catch up regularly and sort of joke about you know, if the opportunity ever popped up. Love to work with each other but you know my response is always I don't know anything about medicals mate. So. And I was, I think I was plugging away at an Integral into integration contract at our trade at the time. They just purchased a couple of companies and I'd gone in to sort of restructure uh, the recruitment function and help integrate the teams from those companies into the Greater Outrad business. And yeah, got a call from Des out of the blue and went and had a coffee and he bought his business partner Tony along. And I knew that something was up the second I seen Tony because he's the money man and he sort of said to me I might, I need some advice. We've, we've just bought a recruitment agency and you know we're sort of going into this blind and you know, had a bit of a chat about what we should do first, first the first couple of months to help set it up and you know those chat sort of eventuated into uh, you know, what are you doing mate? Do you want to come and uh, do you want to come and run this for me? To which I'd sort of been doing a bit of reflection at that point in time myself and yeah, I mean my answer was was pretty straightforward. Uh, yeah, let's do it and we'll figure out the rest later. So yeah, I was lucky enough to come into the business when it, when it was transitioning into Des and Wayne's ownership. There were some strategic changes that happened within the business at that point in time. So the previous indigenous owner was uh, up from, up in the ah, in the, in the Northwest, in the, in the Pilbara. And I think with mining and indigenous businesses there is sometimes partnerships that are formed based on where the traditional owner is from and the mines activities are on their Country. And with the transition of the business out of the Pilgrim into basically Perth. Yeah, we learned really quickly that some of those alliances don't really mean too much for clients beyond that. So yeah, I walked into a business thinking there's a few good clients in there, there's a good pipeline of, there's a bit of a base to build off and um, there definitely needs to be some restructuring. And yeah, literally on day one we were sort of smacked in the face with the realities of I think all but one client walked away from us and yeah, basically didn't return calls and no more work guys. Uh, sorry, we can't help you. Not on our country anymore. So, you know, that was, you know, rather than sit there and sulk about it or you know, sit around the campfire and admire the problem, it was straight into solution mode. How do we fix this pivot? What are we going to do? And you know, let's just focus on um, you know, delivering the best quality service business we can and we'll let the rest figure itself out. So yeah, that, that took, you know, the better part of 2023 was, was the redesign and the restructure of the business which at its point, at a point in time, you know, I uh, I'd sort of removed everybody out of the company. We didn't have enough work to keep some of the staff that were there and, and it got down to just me at one point and there would have been more people on the board than there were temps on site, which was a really scary prospect. I remember sitting in the office in West Perth and I was in there by myself and looking around thinking, yeah, you know, this isn't great.

Speaker B: I made the right move.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't, yeah, I don't know if I ever second guessed the move that I make. I'm pretty confident that, you know, it was more about this isn't great but uh, you know, how are we going to dig ourselves out of this? How are we going to, how are we going to redesign this business and how am I going to learn really quickly about the intricacies of indigenous business within the mining and resource industry? And then also on top of that, how am m. I going to rebuild it and how are we going to learn to self perform a lot of the capabilities? Because prior to myself coming into the business, there was a lot of outsourcing of opportunities, there was a lot of passing of work to other companies to complete and then come back through and um, invoicing out of Iron Merchant and That's not something that we wanted to be known for nor was it something that we wanted to be proud of. So you know, it was important that straight off the bat we found ways to self perform everything that we do and to date, you know that is a big part of who we are today. So yeah, I think looking back to where it was when I first came into the business to where we are now, it's, yeah, it's uh, kind of pinch yourself and, and, and yeah, try to, try to stay focused on you know, there's still more to go rather than be content with, with the amount of growth and, and good things that we've done along this journey. But it's, it's, it's, it's come a really long way from, from you know, where I was that day. Sitting in West Perth by myself in the office today.

Speaker B: What does ironmerge Group stand for? So are there any sort of standout moments across that journey? I know that you sort of highlighted a couple um, there during the early stages, um, but that really capture what the company is all about today.

Speaker C: Absolutely mate. Look, um, we've really rebuilt our image in the industry and it's definitely one that we're proud of as it stands today. So yeah, I guess I can comfortably stay in the space of about 18 months since we landed on our uh, ah, strategy for the redesign and then started to push forward with you know, enticing people to come into the business and again that wasn't easy. You know, I'm sort of sitting there trying to convince people that uh, are that are working for companies to trust my vision and you know, thankfully a couple of folks did do that and came on board and I knew that there was a few more people that I'd worked within the industry that you know, when the timing was right things were going to land in, in the right space for them to be able to come on board too. But I think if, yeah, we look in the space of about 18 months we've experienced somewhere in the vicinity of about a 700% increase in revenue which is phenomenal. Yeah, you don't particularly in our industry and you know, not many people talk about those types of figures. You know there's a fear of the tall Poppy syndrome in our industry and things are sort of guarded so that competitors don't come after your patch of work. But um, you know that's something that we're really proud of. It's particularly for an Aboriginal owned business as well. You know, we tend to go into opportunities pigeonhop into areas already and we've really smashed through people's expectations and perceptions. And once we do that and we're out there competing with some of the biggest companies in our industry, that's kind of the moment that we really strive for and what we are ah, really most proud of. The size of our team has absolutely grown as well, but not to the point that it's not manageable. I think we could sit here and rattle off name after name of cautionary tales in our industry of companies that grow too quick and make it more about the marketing machine than it is about actually servicing your clients. And that was something that um, I'm really mindful of. And you know, we're hypersensitive of avoiding those situations. So uh, our growth has been rapid and it's been fantastic, but it has also been strategic and methodical and we not chasing after uh, things that everybody's chasing after. More often than not we're running in the opposite direction and we're chasing down opportunities that nobody's looking at. We're filling roles that are ah, hard to feel for the average recruiting, um, function, um, and that's led to the revenue growth and also the size of the business. The team size has grown. We've got 13 staff in our business now at the moment. 12 in Balcata and one support function over in the Philippines which we're looking to add to again pretty soon. So yeah, I think that was kind of the sit back and pinch yourself and pat yourself on the back moment that I had recently. Yeah, I, uh, I think I'd not spent enough time um, just looking back and just smelling a rose. Yeah, I, I, I'm just, I was so focused on what's next. What's next, how can we do more, how can we do more. And then when you sort of sit back and look at the end of your figure, you're like, wow, that's uh, that's not too bad for, for a company our ah, size. So yeah, and, and that's not, that's not all just, you know, that's not all just my work. That's the hard work day in, day out of those 12 other staff that come in, you know, and punch in in the morning and give 120% and you know, work weekends and work after hours to help support our clients. It's a lot of that success can be chalked up to the folks in the business that do all the um, hard ah, stuff and I don't want to sit back and take all of that Credit at all.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And for your journey and focusing on the today. Where is Iron Merge? Uh, sort of focus right now. So moving forward, what's, what's your priorities in terms of clients and projects and building that workforce?

Speaker C: Yeah, look, I think we're in a pretty unique spot at the moment where you know, we're still managing to grow week on week, month on month, which um, I'm not going to be upset about. You know, it's seemingly still sustainable growth with clients that we believe we can still support further. So you know, when it comes to what's next, you know, we're probably still in a phase of our growth where you know, we're trying to service the current clients that we've got to the absolute best of our abilities. I believe if we go out to market and start signing you know, contracts and T's and C's with new clients, you could spread yourself thin real quick and you really lose the essence of your company. And that DNA that makes what we do different to everybody else. You know, our quality of service, uh, our speed to fill roles, our agility when it comes to supporting our clients. I don't think bigger companies can do that as well as we can just because of the sheer size and volume that they have to deal with on a day, on day basis. So for us it's about trying to settle into where we are at the moment with a, you know, one eye's on that and the other eyes looking forward for, you know, how can we then continue all of the good stuff that we are doing with our clients and also outside ah, of you know, running a really top quality labour hire business. We, we do a ton of diversity programs and voluntary services with communities and clients that, that are just as important to us as, as filling jobs. That's a really difficult balance to manage particularly for myself. You know, traditionally a ah, senior leader in uh, uh, a labour hired business or an agency, your focus always has to be about revenue, revenue, revenue and growth. Growth, growth. And sales. Sales, sales. But I will put just as much attention and focus into how can I do better for the communities that we work in. How can I create programs that give people opportunities that are not, not represented fairly in, in our communities and in our industry? How can I help support the next generation of job seekers about to come into the market that probably haven't been given the right tools? So that's, you know, for me that's just as important as revenue and sales. And you know, I'm a big believer in the universe has a Plan for everything. So if I'm putting a lot of good into the industry and I'm giving back after, you know, uh, all of, all of the, the luck and all of the good things that I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to in my time in the industry, if I can continue to give back and help that next generation of job seekers into work, you know, I believe that the universe will look after the plan for us. And you know, seemingly things are tracking pretty well. So I'm not going to argue with the plan that's set out so far.

Speaker B: Uh, great. No, definitely, um, job seekers and employers definitely remember that journey as well and that's what help you give them along the way. You know, I still stick to candidates helped just fix up their resumes 10, 12 years ago. So yeah, it definitely comes full circle in different ways and sometimes we least expect it. So I think it's definitely a great thing that you're doing in the community. And on that, um, it's probably one of my next points to bring up. You've recently been sort of recognized in the industry for building quite a great indigenous, um, sort of employment pathways and programs. And can you sort of share what that sort of commitment looks like in action and sort of what you do to sort of assist with that?

Speaker C: Yeah, look, it's um, I guess going back to one of the points I made earlier when we first started to reintroduce our business to the industry. Sometimes clients are quick to misunderstand just because you're an Aboriginal owned business. They assume sometimes that you only deal with Aboriginal staff which, you know, it becomes a bit difficult to try to differentiate between the core service offerings. So that was one of the challenges that I, I'd face pretty early on. And you know, as with everything I face, I try to come up with a solution and you know, sit back and look at things, um, from outside the box and you know, what's something that I can do differently that nobody else is doing, but still is going to help impact community and support Aboriginal job seekers? And you know, I knew I wanted to come up with a program and I knew I wanted to support employment pathways with the clients that we were dealing with. But again, I'm lucky enough to have had experience on both sides of the fence. So I'm able to sort of draw on that knowledge and, and understanding of how companies internally work and the functions and you know, the budgets and the approval processes that people have to go through to get things done. And I've seen it myself firsthand. Working internally, where, you know, you can run a program once, but sometimes the cost is too much at the end of the program, so it prohibits it from being run again. And I didn't want to be, I didn't want that to be the case when it came to this aboriginal employment program that we were designing. I wanted clients to do it over and over again. I wanted them to do more of it. So as crazy as it sounds, we come up with a way to deliver that program for free. And that's kind of. Yeah, that's kind of the thing that's really helped support a lot of our community jobseekers into work is the fact that, you know, this is a core part of our business that we offer, but we don't charge for it. And we find a way to work it in with the current service offerings and scopes of work that we do with our clients. But also, you know, there's a massive part of, you know, consulting and advice giving and, you know, supporting their journey along that way to make sure that, you know, the job seekers, once we place them, that they're looked after and they're retained, and most importantly, that there's a career at the end of the day. So there's a few stipulations with that program that we don't want to charge for it. We want to be able to support you in other areas so we can tie in the labor hire service to be able to offer to birds with one stone. But for the indigenous jobseeker, uh, program, the seed program, we focus purely on entry level positions, which gives the candidates the best opportunity to stick around, gives them the best opportunity to figure out what they want to do in that company. The bigger the company, the more career pathways you can take. Some of our clients, there's 12 different career pathways they can take internally, which is, you know, amazing. So if we can help them get their foot in the door, get them in at entry level, then, you know, the rest is up to them. And then they've got the opportunity to choose that pathway afterwards and the client can upskill them along that journey. So, yeah, that's been something that we've been really proud of. We trialled it with a couple of clients early days, went back to the drawing board, tweaked it, fixed a few things that we sort of weren't happy with, and then rolled it out with a few more clients. And in the space of probably just a little over 12 months, we've been lucky enough to support over 100 indigenous jobseekers into full time work with our clients with just really impressively high retention rates. And that's partly due to the way that we've designed the program and also partly due to the fact that we don't just roll this out with any client. We're quite picky and choosy with who we want to um, support with their indigenous journey and you know, that's a huge part of retention as well. When the staff are looked after, obviously they're going to stick around and they're going to grow. And we've heard stories of some of the first cohorts that we'd placed are on leadership courses now and are getting stepped up into supervision and leading hand roles. And some have already taken a, uh, PIV internally into other divisions and departments within the companies that we placed them with. So uh, yeah, it's been really exciting to see that, you know, while we are growing, uh, a really high functioning labour hive business. At the same time we've got this really cool initiative that's also having a massive impact on the communities that we work in and it is having a massive impact on the clients workforces that we're supporting.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Yeah, that'd be incredibly rewarding and the stats speak for itself, both cross retention and the numbers that you've got in the industry with the indigenous placements. I think your recent post on LinkedIn got a lot of engagement from a lot of levels um, in the industry and just really recognizing what you've done, which is great because I know you're not one to talk about it often and uh, market yourself heavily. So it was good to see actually. So, so definitely got behind that when

Speaker C: I saw it again. That's, that's, you know, that's a key part about our business is um, you know, it's a very fine line between you know, celebrating and marketing and then you know, just becoming a social media machine and you know, when you start to worry about the posts that you're putting on social media versus the actual supporting of your clients, then it's when you've got to start thinking are you in the right industry? So, but then to the other side of that, you know, we don't want to not celebrate these types of things either. So uh, we find that, you know, when we do post about these initiatives it's usually at a milestone point and it's genuinely something that we're really proud of and want to share with the industry more to thank our clients as well. You know, a bit of recognition for the folks internally at Ironmerch that help run that program. You know, the massive pat on the back for all their support and tireless hours and effort that goes into coordinating that program. Yeah. When we do post, we want to make sure that it's for the right reasons and not just to show off, which is opposite of what we want to do.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I definitely think that's something that should be celebrated. And just on that, would you happen to have a story or an example from that, that program that really sort of highlights the impact that you've seen?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, there definitely are, there's, there's, there's a few really cool standout stories and, and you know, we get returning candidates coming back to the, to the office and coming in for a coffee to meet with the team that supported them and thank them for the journey and. But one of the ones that sort of stood out to me, I was told pretty recently, was one of the groups that we ran at the back end of last year with one of our clients that, uh, wanted some females to go into some trades traineeships in the mining industry. And you know, that was challenging for the team to try to find all the boxes, uh, that the client was chasing. You know, it's a physically demanding role so they had to be aware of it and agree to that. And also the conditions on mine site are not easy either. So yeah, it wasn't an easy task. But, you know, in true Iron Merch fashion, the team managed to smash it out the park for the client, which on the surface we thought everything was great, good job, everything successful contract sign, um, you know, they're off, they're given their flights when they're off to site and then, yeah, we get told that a couple of the girls that were in the program were actually, I guess, for lack of a better term, homeless at that point. They'd been unfortunately caught up in, uh, a cycle of domestic violence and alcoholism. And they were in, you know, a type of safe housing at the point that they were engaged by the program. And I guess for a lot of reasons, you know, they chose not to point that out. Nor did, you know, we chose not to point that out to the client just to try to give them the best opportunity to succeed. But yeah, they managed to make it through the training portion of the program, go through all of the onboarding, get to site, you know, complete a few swings and, you know, come back and sort of give the feedback that, you know, they're really appreciative of the opportunity. This has given them the chance to sort of Break that cycle and allow them to get out into their own housing. And you know, for us that's pretty cool. You sort of taken, you're taking someone that's in a really terrible situation. You know, you've treated them equally. Yeah, absolutely, you've treated them equally. You've given them the opportunity to succeed and, and you know, they've, they've stuck, they've stuck to the program and gotten to site and you know, saved up enough money to be able to go out and try to get their own housing which is, you know, that sort of stuff. When you, you know that, that community impact for us, that's, that's, that's the reason why we run this program is to help people like that and help people get into, to work.

Speaker B: Great. And that's what it's all about. If you, if you're giving back and helping people get back on their feet, helping people sort of into careers and helping people make that first jump into, you know, mining or you know, heavy trade based roles and yeah, absolute credit to the team. That's, that's a great result and I'm sure there's plenty more stories that'll come from that as well. Taking a bit of a helicopter view of the industry as a whole. Um, so from your perspective, what do you feel like the biggest challenges would be in all workforce challenges across the mining sector right now? So sort of stepping back from your day to day just looking at the industry in which we work.

Speaker C: I think our industry, it's an industry that's always had its challenges. It's an industry that you can look from different angles and uncover, um, new challenges. I think something that's always been there and I don't think will ever go away is obviously there's always going to be, you know, that high demand, skill shortage for good tradespeople across all trades. You know, I think as the government tends to fund a lot more of these renewables initiatives, that's only going to push more pain points and pressure into the electrical industry. You know, mechanical industry's always had its issues but you know, on top of that now we're probably going to see some pain and some stress in the electrical industry. You know, that's the challenge because as you look at it from the business's perspective, they've got to run the business, they've got to service their contracts, they've got to do what they've said they're capable of doing. Can they do that with a workforce predominantly made up of apprentices? Probably not. Can they do that with a mixture, uh, maybe. But most of them put service over that and, you know, go for an experienced workforce and you know, the further back those apprenticeship opportunities get, get shuffled, you know, the bigger and more compounding your skill shortage problems become. Particularly in wa, we're spoiled for opportunity. We've got one of the biggest and leading industries in the world with mining and resources. Oil and gas is bubbling away at the moment and you're starting to hear a bit of noise out of that. Just down the road on the other side of the river, Henderson, Kwinana with the defense sector, that's going to be massive for a decade or more. Just off the top of your head, there's three massive industries that are all huge employers which are all going to have massive skill shortage problems due to the fact that, you know, there's not enough opportunities for apprentices to get in and have cracks at these jobs and stick around to turn into those tradespeople.

Speaker B: Great insights and yeah, hopefully programs like your seed program help um, alleviate some of that pressure and actually connect people with the skills and training with jobs. And if people were looking to get in contact with you to sort of connect or explore, sort of partnering with ironmerge Group and your seed program, where and how's the best, um, sort of place to contact you?

Speaker C: Yeah, look, I think um, you can learn a lot about us on our, on m, our website and social media pages. But um, you know, you're going to get much more out of a coffee or a conversation face to face with us. So we're always open for that. And there's one thing I love doing and it is talking about our business. And yeah, we were always open to that. So, uh, yeah, I mean uh, uh, our uh, information email is just infoionmerch.com or they can call us into the office on uh, 130058 5151.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing your contact details and again for sharing the journey and the work that ironmerge is doing to uh, not only deliver workforce solutions, but to create lasting opportunities in the community for, for Less advantaged and uh, indigenous employment pathways, um, doing fantastic work there. So I really enjoyed the chat and hearing your journey in more detail. And that's all for today's episode of the Robond podcast and thank you for tuning in and thanks for joining us, Ben. We'll see you next time.

Speaker C: Thanks Martin. Appreciate it.