Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce
And although this situation is often referred to broadly
In a tight, tough recruitment market, get help to attract and retain talent
For businesses trying to attract and retain talent in order to drive growth – and let’s face it, which business isn’t trying to do that? – there’s a very apt phrase that describes how things are at the moment: ‘It’s tough out there!’ T is is true even of larger businesses with signifi cant
talent acquisition resources, so at the small and medium enterprise (SME) end of the scale, where there often just isn’t the recruitment expertise and capacity to draw on internally, the issue is being felt particularly acutely. It’s a challenge that strikes from many angles at once.
It’s not just about competing with other employers to appeal to talent. It’s also about addressing the challenges of low unemployment and the poverty trap that many economically inactive people face when transitioning into work.
Justin
Richardson CEO
Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce
as the ‘skills shortage’, it’s important to remember that there are implications far beyond simply not fi nding people to fi ll your roles – in fact, the skills shortage also often means the candidates you do fi nd don’t have the training and education they need to do the job. So, if you’re that SME struggling to fi ll posts that are
key to driving your growth – or even just maintaining your productivity – what, if anything, can you do about it?
Understanding the shortfall To identify the solutions, we must fi rst delve deeper into the nature of the problem, and at Bedfordshire Chamber we’ve worked with the wider British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) organisation to gather data and insights that have helped it produce some very illuminating statistics. T e BCC’s research shows, for example, that from May
to July 2024, there were 884,000 vacancies in the economy, but the low unemployment rate provided little impetus to drive applicants to fi ll them. As result, some 62% of businesses reported they are
experiencing skills shortages – an inordinately high fi gure in itself – but the situation becomes graver still in certain sectors, like manufacturing, where 74% of companies cited similar diffi culties. T e old joke phrase ‘You just can’t get the staff ’ has never sounded less fl ippant.
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