SKILLS
Recruiting talent – why has it become so difficult?
By Sabina Talib, Stakeholder Manager, East Midlands Chamber (Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire)
Across the East Midlands we are facing substantial socio-economic challenges. Firstly at an industry level, labour
productivity in the UK fell by 0.6% quarter-on-quarter in the three months to March 2019, the biggest decline since the last quarter of 2015 - UK productivity now ranks among the lowest of the major economies. To make things that bit bleaker,
according to ONS (Office for National Statistics), the East Midlands, and more to the point the D2N2 LEP area, is one of the lowest ranking sub-regions for productivity in the UK. Why does this matter?
Increasing productivity is critical to increasing economic growth and failure to achieve greater productivity levels is reflected in lower wages, which results in deprivation, inequality and poor health. The healthier the population the greater the talent pool you have as employers to recruit from and upskill to meet your future workforce needs. Alongside this, according to
Public Health England, we have an aging population and working age population that won’t increase significantly. So as employers you
can’t expect an influx of an additional working-age labour pool. We have what we have and therefore the message is that we need to work smarter recruiting from it and upskilling it. The labour market is also
currently very tight. Employment sits at 76%, the highest figure on record. So we have fewer people not in work. On the other hand, the number of vacancies have been steadily increasing (ONS, Vacancy Survey). So we have more jobs and fewer
numbers of available workers. Employers have to compete harder to attract the right talent to sustain and grow their business. And let’s not forget skills…
According to the DfE Employer Skills Survey, when businesses in the D2N2 area were asked why vacancies were unfilled, 57% identified the quality of applicants - linking to skills and qualifications - as the main reason. It’s not surprising to find that the
D2N2 working age population is, on average, less well-qualified than the national population; with a smaller proportion of residents qualified to Level 4+ and a higher proportion of residents whose highest level of qualification is level 1 or 2.
It’s clear we have an ongoing
mismatch between the skills of our population and the jobs available and growing in our labour market. In summary, we have an aging
workforce, a tight labour market, a squeezed demographic, low unemployment and an element of skills mis-match – no wonder such a high proportion of employers according to the Chamber’s Quarterly Economic Survey struggled to fill their vacancies.
So what’s the solution? Namely; three things: 1. Change the way you recruit your future workforce: Think differently; think inclusively.
2. Change the way you support and upskill your current workforce for the future; through apprenticeships, internal training and development programmes, skills exchanges and so on.
3. Change the way you grow and work to develop your workforce for the future: Working closer with schools, colleges, universities and providers.
To focus on point one - how can we think differently about recruitment? Although ‘skills’ was cited as the
main reason employers struggle to fill their vacancies, 38% said it was down to a low number of applicants and 34% stated it was down to contextual factors - i.e. not being a full-time/permanent role, lack of flexibility or unsociable hours/shifts. So the challenge to employers is
can they change the job role, the working pattern, or the way they advertise and select talent so their vacancy appeals to a wider pool of talent? The Answer is yes. There is so much employers can
do to think differently about the way they advertise and recruit job vacancies. From offering greater flexibility on advert - rather than once in work - to trailing new work- placement models or in-work observation models of recruitment, to developing more creative traineeships or apprenticeship – there’s a whole host of things. We need to work collectively to
support the D2N2 economy to thrive, for businesses to have the right skills, for people to be in work, earn a good wage and have a good quality of life - which ultimately means good health and a longer more productive working life.
78 business network July/August 2019
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