Warrnambool council struggles to fill 40 vacant positions

The worker drought has not just hit the city's hospitality venues post-lockdowns, it has extended to all areas of council operations but the revelation came with a warning from one councillor that the shortage was starting to impact services.

Deputy mayor Debbie Arnott told this week's council meeting that the city's workforce was very limited with over 40 vacancies.

Mayor Vicki Jellie said that even though the city had had a good recovery from the pandemic so far, it was hard to attract people to come to Warrnambool if "they have to live in a caravan" or other short-term accommodation for a short time.

She said that even though there was low unemployment, businesses across the city were still struggling to fill job vacancies.

Cr Ben Blain said that even with building permit approvals through council jumping over the last year, the city was still struggling to house its workforce.

"With the number staff vacancies, this is that workforce shortage that we have been talking about," Cr Blain said. "It is hurting service levels for council.

"Hopefully we can get more staff and get these issues addressed in the coming months."

The council's chief executive officer Peter Schneider said the vacancies at the council were not just in child care with the council having "a lot" of jobs on offer in the engineering and infrastructure area.

"It's really a raft of areas right across the organisation at the moment," he said.

"The big resignation that you hear about is there.

"I know Corangamite is looking for 20 early childhood development practitioners.

"The government has brought out the three-year-old kinder and there aren't a lot of trained people to do the jobs. We've been very fortunate in getting what we've got."

Mr Schneider said there was always a "constant churn" of staff through the organisation, but even though the city was experiencing below the average turnover of staff numbers - about eight per cent - they were struggling to fill vacant positions more than ever before.

He said the turnover of staff was not any higher than normal, it was just harder to recruit them at the moment.

"It's a universal problem. Not just across local governments in Victoria, it's every industry," he said.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content:

Now just one tap with our new app: Digital subscribers now have the convenience of faster news, right at your fingertips with The Standard:

Have you signed up to The Standard's daily newsletter and breaking news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in the south-west.