As market demands evolve, the sector continues to experience a number of recruitment and retainment challenges. In line with other industries, we are recognising the importance of ‘power skills’ as top proficiencies, overtaking traditionally regarded technical abilities. Recently recoined from the more contentiously labelled ‘soft skills’, power skills include communication, emotional intelligence, creativity, adaptability, and a collaborative mindset.
It is becoming easier to accumulate physical skills due to technological advances, and organisations are homing in on this with retainment strategies that include upskilling opportunities for existing employees. This is becoming preferable to looking for new people to fill existing roles for a variety of reasons, including the risk, cost, time and resources involved in hiring fresh talent, however, developing power skills, which are behavioural skills, can take more time to learn and adopt.
Shared Values, Flexibility and the Power of Engagement
As will be the overarching theme through 2023, a connected approach to recruitment, retainment and development will be key to ensuring our workforces are thriving, energised, and engaged. At our winter Senior Leaders Networking Event in December, Barry Forsythe, Greenacre’s Associate Director, shared some of our own insights in terms of what we are seeing across the country and also our own organisation.
There has been a significant shift in the way we hire due to the transition to remote and hybrid working conditions. Organisations have started to permanently adopt more digital approaches to the entire process, including the areas of talent attraction, recruitment, onboarding, retainment and career advancement.
Geographically, distance has been taken out of the equation almost completely for many roles, especially at senior and executive level. We are seeing examples such as London-based organisations hiring people who live in Aberdeen, and who no longer need to physically visit the office for their jobs. Although there is a more relaxed expectation around office-based roles, this has also opened the door for other challenges, such as team engagement, employee relationship building and close contact participation.
Building Resilient Teams Through Positive Company Culture
At Greenacre, we have long embraced remote and hybrid working, and are pleased to say we adopted this way of working way before Covid reared its ugly head. We recognised the benefits early on of building an organisational culture based on trust and a shared sense of purpose, where people will feel motivated to achieve in whichever environment they work best from.
As with all hybrid workforces, the continuous challenge is to keep everyone across the teams engaged, and we have adopted a number of tools to assist. These include nurturing a supportive and inclusive company culture, setting up an intranet platform with various communication options, and other remote touchpoints where we share things, have daily check ins, and connect with each other on things which are not just work related.
It’s been a welcome and important return to be able to get together outside the office for fun activities, and to get to know our newer team members from up and down the country in a more relaxed environment, after the various lockdown periods we all experienced over the past couple of years.
As a service provider, we are now seeing more than ever candidates asking us about company culture, values, purpose and wellbeing support, alongside salary, which used to be the sole top driver. Being aware of these transformational changes and adapting your recruitment and retainment strategy to reflect the new workplace demands will be key to ensuring you stay ahead of the game, and are ready for future challenges.
If you are an organisation looking to drive your recruitment and retainment offer to the next level, or a candidate seeking your next opportunity with a leading consultancy, feel free to get in touch for an informal chat. We are here to help you get the very best out of your workplace in 2023!