2018 – where have you gone?! This year at Fetch has been another exciting, challenging and rewarding year. We have again managed to maintain our 80% year on year growth, and I am incredibly proud of the team here at Fetch for embracing all the changes and hard work that have enabled to us to take another big leap.
Here are just a few of our highlights:
We moved into a brand new office on Level 21 of the HWT tower in Southbank
We welcomed 17 new faces to the team in Victoria and NSW
We determined our fourth company value to complement our key values of Respect, Honesty & Drive – Passion
We opened our first interstate office in Sydney
And we had two engagements! Congrats to Dwayne and Vicky, and Geoff and Karolina!
Our Single-Minded Goal
Fetch’s goal is to be the consultancy of choice within the Australian built environment. We aim to be a one-stop agency for all levels of personnel, from trades & labour to executive, in both a permanent and temporary capacity.
We’re thrilled to say that 2018 saw our Labour Hire division grow 253% through the build space, expanding into civil infrastructure and opening our plumbing division.
We also expanded our Engineering consultancy area further into Building Services, Infrastructure and Land Development. We opened a brand new desk to support the Mechanical & Electrical contractor space with white collar placements.
We welcomed new faces into our residential construction team, business support and civil infrastructure teams, growing our industry presence in these crucial areas.
For those who love numbers (like me!), we ended the year having placed over 400 permanent candidates and over 700 temporary placements – a huge achievement.
Our Purpose & ‘Why’
2018 also saw us set our 5 year goal to be the exclusive national recruitment & HR support agency for our existing and future clients, and to have 80-100 specialist consultants across Australia. This is all to support our single-minded goal of becoming the consultancy of choice within the built environment. We are committed to a business model that will not only fully support our National clients, but to ensure we offer opportunity and career growth for our talented team members and continue our already strong staff retention. I am really pleased to say that we are well on track for success and we owe this to the unending support from our clients, candidates and consultants.
Another internal highlight this year was conducting various workshops where we refined our company ‘Why.’ For Fetch, this is to “Inspire, nurture and drive potential in order to create positive change.” This is the driving force that shapes our purpose and what we ask ourselves in both our processes and actions.
Our Industry
Industry-wise we have certainly seen an uplift in Infrastructure projects in 2018 due to a huge pipeline of projects across the country, and we have bolstered the team for strong growth in this area for 2019. Our clients are telling us this will be an area of skill shortage due to the vast amount of major projects in Victoria and New South Wales, so this will also be a strategic focus for us.
Construction has still been very strong throughout 2018 in both residential and commercial space and isn’t showing too many signs of backing off, despite some media reports. We have noticed a slight downturn in the apartment sector and foresee this cooling off a little more through 2019. We saw a spike in hotel construction along with aged care through 2017 & 2018, both of which seem to be continuing into 2019.
There is certainly more and more being invested into education, health and aged care throughout Victoria and New South Wales, which has seen a strong demand for this skillset.
Where to in 2019?
After strong employee growth in 2018 we are looking to invest in our continued growth through training and further development of our existing team. We have only a few new opportunities for desk expansion in 2019 as we are committed to giving our team the love and support they deserve in order to drive their own version of success.
I would like to personally thank everyone we have worked with in 2018 for the ongoing support. We are all really excited to see what 2019 will bring.
