03 Jun The ‘Possible’ Talent Market – Post-COVID

“History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.” John Gardner

As we now begin to look to the future in the Covid-19 era, most people already recognise that this will be a profound period of change. The pandemic has touched every corner of the world and every aspect of business. We know that things will not go back to how they were before.

The employment situation has shifted dramatically in the last few weeks, since the coronavirus outbreak shut down large portions of the economy. HR leaders have had to quickly pivot from recruiting amid the lowest UK unemployment on record, to managing a sea change in the way people work, while planning for a very different post-COVID future.

Talent acquisition strategy is therefore changing quickly as a result of COVID-19. Remote working is now mainstream and unemployment levels, according to the Office for National Statistics* have shown a rise of 856,000 to 2.1 million in April; the biggest monthly rise since modern records began in 1971. *April 20 ‘Claimant count’

Planning for the new ‘normal’ will bring a new set of challenges. The biggest change, from a talent acquisition point of view, could be the glut of job-seeking talent on the market. However, the new pool of candidates will not necessarily make recruiting easier. Even though an organisation may potentially get a very high response rate to a job advert, it may actually be that much more difficult to find the right people with the right skillset.

A lot of good, experienced, people will apply for a lot of positions, whether or not they have the right skills. Organisations therefore need to start looking for critical talent now because it may take longer than it did before to sort through all the applicants. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that it has become an employer’s job market. Job seeker perceptions and behaviours are shifting quickly too. Many have seen real benefits in WFH and will be less than keen to go back to the way things were and less inclined to accept a new role that does not offer this.

‘Work life balance’ is possibly being replaced by a more realistic and gratifying goal than balance, that can engender wins between work, home, community and self. In the short to medium term, some good candidates many may choose not to change jobs through the fear of losing security.

It is important to look at the positive takeaways from any crisis; right now, every employer has a major opportunity to create employment branding in the way that they handle this tough situation.

How you communicate with your employees, how you identify and support their training and development needs, how you live your values and promote your culture and what you are doing as a company to help them feel confidant and safe in the new ‘normal’.

For many it may be overwhelming, in the midst of this crisis, to be thinking about “the other side” (particularly when we don’t yet really know what the other side will look like), but, talking to employees, customers, suppliers, bankers other stakeholders and yes recruiters, will all help create an understanding of how to plan different and flexible strategies to adapt to the new normal.