South Pacific Laundry shines - diverse workforce transcript

We've got a great relationship with APM. They've supplied us staff for all areas of factory over a couple of years now. I would contact Adam, the manager of APM that I deal with, and we'd organise a tour. He'd bring staff down make sure those people understand what a commercial laundry looks like and whether or not they want to work here, as much as we want them to work here.

So I got a really good relationship with Paul at South Pacific Laundry. Myself and Paul have had many meetings about what a perfect candidate would look like within the position. And we've managed to get plenty of candidates in here that are still working. I try and make sure that I have a very face-to-face relationship with my employers around the states because I believe that's the best way to build those relationships and maintain them. As much as I want to help as many candidates as possible, I've got to look out for the employers as well and what better suits their business. It's all about trying to find that right candidate. Trial periods is a great marketing tool and a great tool that employers can use as well of seeing a candidate in a working environment for a couple of weeks at APM’s expense. So it's been really beneficial to use that for employers to find the right candidates and rate fit for their business.

We give everybody a chance here and in our industry you know we deal with anybody from any Walk of Life who wants to work. We’ve got a very diverse culture. We’ve got people with disabilities, a lot of people with mental health issues. So we embrace anybody in our industry. APM, they’re very good from a financial perspective. They’ll go organise the medicals and attend the medicals with the staff. They’ll help them with all the paperwork.  

They’ll do the online induction make my job a lot easier before they even start working here. Very easy, yeah.

I would tell other employees, give them a chance because there's a lot of people who work for APM or are with APM that can work in your industry. It's about seeing the ability rather than seeing the disability.