Written by: Antony Bream, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Almost one in five UK workers say they are likely to change jobs in the next 12 months as they seek better pay and job satisfaction, a survey suggests.
Accounting giant PwC said workers were starting to "assert their power" at a time when many bosses are struggling to recruit.
It found younger and highly skilled workers were most likely to be unhappy in their jobs or seeking a raise.
Some 60% also said they would prefer to work fully or mostly from home.
"The economic outlook may be uncertain but highly skilled workers are in hot demand and employers can't be complacent," said PwC boss Kevin Ellis.
"Employees will vote with their feet if their expectations on company culture, reward, flexibility and learning are not being largely met."
In March PwC surveyed more than 2,000 UK workers from a range of industries and found that:
18% said they were "very or extremely likely" to switch to a new employer within the next 12 months
some 32% also said they were moderately or slightly likely to switch and 16% were planning to leave the workforce temporarily or permanently
an increase in pay was the main motivator for changing jobs (72%), followed by wanting a more fulfilling job (68%) and to "truly be themselves at work" (63%) Overall, Gen Z (those aged 24 and under) and Millennial workers (25 to 40-year olds) were most likely to be seeking new jobs, raises or promotions, PwC said.
Those in management positions were found to be more content with their current jobs than those in non-management roles but ironically are the people feeling the most heat in terms of recruiting the right people into roles that are now more likely to be hybrid than in the office, providing onboarding and ongoing management issues.
According to latest ONS figures, around one in seven working adults in the UK (14%) said they were purely doing their jobs from home offices in late April and early May. Another 24% said they had adopted "hybrid" working patterns where they are in an office or other workplace part of the time.
Just 17% said they would prefer to be working full-time or mostly in the office.
Yet in contrast FinTech is getting a lot of the headlines, and for a good reason. It is one of the fastest growing industries and one that many people are keen to be a part of as they seek innovation, creativity, well-paid salaries and career progression opportunities in a fast paced and dynamic marketplace.
But it is also under a lot of pressure to find the right people to fit cultures often dictated by founders, from different countries or disciplines to the people they are hiring, and interviews conducted by video call versus face to face.
The face and CV might fit but how well will your new candidate with their welcome goody bag fit in with the rest of the company and their expected duties if the hire has been made in haste or under the compromise of available fit to role needs?
Contrary to what that line item in the Balance Sheet suggests, using external agencies can save the company money. It takes a lot of time and effort to search for the right candidate. A trusted recruitment partner ought to filter out anyone who is not the right fit before you ever see them acting in a consultative way instead of just pushing resumes to you based on a keyword search or advert response.
Internal recruiters have multiple roles with multiple disciplines. It can be tough to cover all of them effectively on top of the other internal responsibilities they will have within the business, such as onboarding candidates and coordinating requirements.
Great external recruiters take time to know their niche in-depth and talk to candidates and clients in the market daily. A good consultant will have a pool of candidates in specific disciplines, a lot of which will be on hand and ready to start a position which other companies and agencies also competing against you to hire. They will also have their ear to the ground across your talent competitors.
Talking to a former Programme Manager for over twenty years in Financial Services, responsible for spinning up and saving change initiatives to deliver results he was quoted as saying:
‘People are the critical resource, and building delivery teams quickly and effectively was always paramount. With varying degrees of difficulty, every organisation I was at we had the same challenges. Aside from budget and politics, the hiring process was always one of them. I spent too much time reviewing resumes, attending interviews and onboarding people. My client was essentially paying my team and senior resources to focus our time on these elements. Something was wrong. When we started eMFusion Global, we had the goal of improving the process, getting this right and helping our clients get the best value from their recruitment model.’
Those companies who succeed will be the ones that can discover, attract and retain talented people in this particularly competitive market, and the traditional model just doesn’t cut it. Too many companies are using HR teams to act as recruitment specialists or are recruiting their own internal talent team.
But in February 2022, there were 27,700 registered recruitment agencies working exclusively with their customers to perform this talent search so a plethora of experts able to advise and recruit as their 100% focus.
One such recruitment advisory firm is eMFusionGlobal based out of Brighton in the UK and finding great talent for companies across the UK, Europe and North America.
Founded by two ex-industry professionals from Financial Services and high growth FTSE 100 companies their mission statement reads: -
‘We bring skilled people and companies together. Our unceasing mission is to make the lives of our clients as easy as possible to find and hire the best people and build lasting relationships with our candidates throughout their careers.’
By having this specialised industry knowledge, experience and market awareness companies such as eMFusionGlobal are able to act as a trusted intermediary, co-exist alongside existing talent teams to free up capacity or provide a dedicated focus on specialist roles. As their mission statement says, they bring together skilled people and companies together so spend time getting to know and understand the cultures of both the hiring company and the candidate.
With Time and Cost to Hire as key performance indicators (KPI’s), and a very competitive market favoured heavily to the candidate’s preferences and increasing salary levels, it is imperative for hiring companies to get best value for money, whether from internal fixed costs or external variable costs. This is where using an external agency can help flex demand with capacity, territory penetration and recruitment process improvements whilst allowing internal teams to focus on other priorities and existing employee welfare.
Other companies, such as Pareto Law, another UK based company specialising in post graduate recruitment form the basis of their services around post graduates who are trained in sales techniques to fill those specialized roles and lower salary entry levels across the market.
The founders of the company spotted a gap in the late 1990’s after seeing the top 20% of talent, at all levels, deliver 80% of the results across the sales industry, but without a specialist company to train ambitious and career hungry Gen Z’ers, as we now call them, they formed their own to great success as they are now part of the larger Randstad Group.
This leaves HR and internal talent teams with a large conundrum of balancing capacity and more specialist roles with candidates wanting greater flexibility, from full-time office to three day primarily working from home, in conjunction with not disrupting existing team structures or culture.
My advice, having been in both positions of recruiting with internal teams and external agencies, is to find the right balance between capacity and specialist role expertise and find where your skill set can align with the industry specialists, often bringing great experience, contacts and candidates, to have the speed and agility needed to attract and retain great talent.
And if you get this balance right you can recruit in that great talent to fuel the growth of your company as well as keep existing employees content and motivated with career progression and promotion opportunities.
As the old adage rings true, there is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’, so having as many pairs of eyes looking to solve the problem of finding great talent whilst keeping existing teams motivated by strengthening the existing culture, values and customer focus is a great competitive advantage for your people power.
Antony Bream, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Antony Bream, is a business advisor and executive coach working closely alongside founders, boards and their teams to help them and their businesses take the leap to their next level. With a passion for understanding the processes and psychology behind how companies sell their products and customers buy them, he formed Ribbit Consulting to bring that experience and knowledge to his customers to empower them to reach their full potential.
