a lot of the law firms and professional services firms, they’ve all been looking at resilience.”


Challenges and opportunities In September last year Information Professional published a piece called “Navigating the jobs market in the eye of a storm” – the storm being the uncer- tainty of the post-covid world. Rather than abating, that storm has intensified. At the time, one of the contributors, Sue Wills MBE spoke specifically about the challenges facing the public library sector. She said that initial hopes that the era of austerity for public services was over, were already looking unlikely. Instead she said: “The general direction has been reducing local authority grants while the financial pressures that had been there before Covid remain, and then councils had to step in as a response to the pandemic. So, the underlying problems have never gone away, and the financial situation still has to play out.” She has updated her views, saying: “Financially things are even more challenging in local authorities. Inflation is beginning to bite, the cost of living is now cutting into budgets and that includes the rising cost of fuel and the impact on staff travelling costs.”


And while resources become more scarce due to inflation, Sue sees the demand for library resources from their communities intensifying with “pressure on our resi- dents who need us to help them as much as we can, helping them get on line to access benefits, signposting to resources including food banks and providing a friendly face and a listening ear in their local library.” But she says there are opportunities for people who are up for the challenge. “What I am looking for in new profes- sionals is a can-do attitude”, adding that employers need to look after their recruits and give them opportunities with “new professionals wanting a rewarding job in a service that has a clear purpose and sense of direction with training and learning opportunities so staff choose to stay with us. I believe we are seeing a change in the profession slowly emerging as we build on the profile of libraries and the amazing things we did through the pandemic.”


Pressure from below


The impact of inflation and the cost-of- living crisis are most obvious in the new professionals job market. Simon says: “I think particularly at the junior end is where it hurts. If you’re a senior man- ager on £50,000, although that’s not an amazing salary for a senior manager in


a big city with the level of responsibility you have, you can get by on that kind of money. Partly because people at that level are more likely (but not always) to be established, they are more likely to have a home. It is often people at the earlier stage in their career, who are graduating, moving to new places to work, trying to get together flat deposits who struggle. They are expecting to have something left over to socialise, especially if they’ve been messed around by Covid. So, it’s hard to offer a salary of £18,000 to £20,000 in central London or any other big cities, to people who have done degrees and mas- ters. Because it gets really difficult for peo- ple to live, and they see other roles paying more and take the logical decision.”


Uneven rises


Pay is going up in most places, but it’s not uniform. “In the corporate and public sec- tors, we’ve seen salaries going up where they’ve acknowledged they’re not getting the applicants they need. The academic sector is struggling more with a lot of governance around every decision, par- ticularly things like raising salary bands. So, they are really struggling to fill some posts because they are now so far off what is being offered in other places.” The changes at this level puts pressure


Simon Burton. July-August 2022 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL 27


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48