DEBATE RECRUITMENT
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
PRESENT: Richard Slater
Lancashire Business View (Chair) Purves Ali
Boost Business Lancashire Sue Denver
Boost Business Lancashire
Brad Hacking Revival Books
Ian Hartley Pendle Doors
David Lavery Adlington Law
Dennis Letts Hall and Lets
Michelle Mellor Cummins Mellor
Dr Eliza Morgan University of Central Lancashire Pam Pinder ELE Advanced Technologies
Claire Shore Blackburn College Mark Vaughan
Hive Land and Planning GETTING WORK IS MORE THAN JUST THE JOB
Recruitment and retention are among the biggest challenges facing all businesses. We brought our panel to the offices of Adlington Law in Chorley with the support of Boost Business Lancashire, through the Growth Lancashire brand, to discuss the issues and how to overcome labour market struggles
Michelle Mellor - Cummins Mellor
The key issue is the candidate shortage. We’ve got 1.2m vacancies across the UK on any one day. Unemployment is at a record low and more than a fifth of working age people find themselves inactive.
There are 630,000 people who could be working that aren’t. A staggering 2.5m people are sick. I’ve been in recruitment for more than 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Every sector is struggling.
People looking to change jobs firstly want flexibility and wellbeing. Secondly, they want to work with great people and to feel they are contributing, not just to the profits but to a higher purpose. Employee value propositions now have to be front and centre for every employer, every business, in terms of attraction packages.
The third thing they are looking for is developing their career. Businesses must understand how they can bring people in and then further develop their skills so they can do their best work, playing to their strengths.
We’ve got to get our head around the fact that hybrid and flexible working is not going away, it’s here to stay. As is the four-day week, which is coming down the track. Managing a distributed workforce is a skill in itself but how many managers and leaders are trained in that skill?
Brad Hacking - Revival Books
There’s no panacea to retention and recruitment issues. Solutions need to work for the business and for the employee, especially in the challenging times we’re entering.
We’ve got 160 staff and looking to grow, so for us it is going back to old school basics. We’re trying to add value to our employees, to give them a reason to come to work, to build loyalty, and to make sure that they’re happy, because we find a happy staff gives us better outputs.
It’s keeping interest in their role, in collaboration. It’s improvement, fulfilment, social events, teambuilding, all that normal stuff that we do. But the biggest thing we’ve found that helps is flexibility. Giving staff the options to work when they want, that still works for us.
Employee value propositions have to be front and centre for every employer, every business now in terms of attraction packages. It is also understanding how we can bring people into our business and then further develop their skills. We have clear career progression and employees can see that and it is massively important.
We try to do the simple things and to be completely flexible with our approach. If somebody wants to come and work ten ‘til two, we’ll see if we can accommodate it. That has been refreshing for us in a relatively traditional business.
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