Navigating the perfect storm in the labour market

Welcome back to the What's Next? Newsletter. 

The great resignation, an ageing population and global uncertainty following the pandemic have all created a perfect storm in the labour market with record numbers of active vacancies.

In this edition, we delve into some of the deeper issues arising from this tight talent marketplace and the challenges and opportunities they represent. We’ll be looking at:

• Talent pipelines - how can employers and employees navigate their way through?
• And why career progression is top of the agenda.

When talent eclipses supply, you need strategic action 

Behind the buzzwords like “quiet quitting” and “productivity paranoia”, the quest for the best talent wages on. In this competitive environment, leaders and organisations are exploring innovative solutions to engage, attract, and retain top talent. 

Savvy organisations have been turning “quiet quitting” on its head - embracing “quiet hiring” as a way to gain new skills and enhance capacity without adding new full-time employees. There’s a strong focus on building internal talent pipelines, as this article from HR magazine shows. To compensate people for their evolving roles, organisations are offering bonuses, a raise, additional paid time off, greater flexibility, and more. However there are plenty of other tools in the talent acquisition toolbox, and this report from Gartner demonstrates how to mix your talent strategies to avoid skills gaps. 

Many sectors are struggling, but the tech/AI talent shortage is taking centre stage. This article from IT World Canada (ITWC) shows how tech businesses are filling the gaps by upskilling staff, employing automation and leveraging partnerships. Meanwhile, China's huge shortfall in tech talent is driving up salaries astronomically. 

As City AM reports, it’s time to bolster talent pipelines to make UK a tech superpower in the age of AI with calls from Bloomberg for concerted efforts between the private sector and government. Reinforcing the importance of a global outlook, Forbes reports on the drive for global connections to fill tech needs. 

In India, a scarcity of skilled tech professionals means there is intense competition for top talent and a need for upskilling and reskilling. According to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report, India could face a shortage of up to one million tech engineers by 2026, and it is devising plans to upskill its youth; as this article from TechGraph shows, technology boot camps and tech platforms can play an important role, but a fundamental shift in the education system is also required. 

Meanwhile, as this article shows, Japan is planning internships to help older workers start in tech.

My take on talent attraction…

How can we find the best talent? I am asked this question in every country I visit and at every event I attend. It's a problem every business faces.

Talent attraction is a skill: there are people who are really good at it and there are people who are average at it. I dedicated a lot of time to understanding the difference. 

I wanted to grow and scale my business so I knew I had to be brilliant at talent attraction. Because recruitment is all about people. It’s not about your office or your logo, it's about having the ability to attract the right people, at the right time. If you can’t do this, then you are a boutique business - which is fine if that’s what you want to be, but it’s not fine if you want to grow and scale. 

When I was growing my first recruitment business, I had to delete some tasks and delegate others so I could restructure my days to allocate slots to specifically focus on talent attraction. Then it was all about differentiating, which also helped me attract the very best talent. 

Career progression is the key to unlocking potential 

2023 has been a year of huge focus on both personal and career development. There has been more emphasis on developing employees in line with their unique needs and wants and employers have enabled people to learn in a way that works for them - whether that’s learning on the job, classroom training, or a blended approach.

Addressing the skills gap through upskilling has emerged as an essential strategy for both employers and employees. This article in Personnel Today explores how employers are looking inward and focusing on the internal marketplace. And from Forbes, this article demonstrates that upskilling shouldn’t be a one-time event but rather a career-long journey. For individuals seeking to become more attractive to employers, Forbes recommends collaborating with mentors and industry experts to understand what they’re looking for, as well as following employment and career websites, monitoring job boards, and industry-specific blogs and outlets. You can also look for recurring patterns in job descriptions and qualifications and take note of frequently mentioned or required skills.

Employers should also have a finger on the pulse of emerging focus points for employers. HR News reported recently in this article that over a quarter of women say that menopause has had a negative impact on their career progression. And career progression can sometimes be slower, or stall, due to diversity issues. The FCA recently admitted slower career progression for black individuals, which it has pledged to address. 

LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report outlines how agility empowers both individuals and organisations, and how learning and development can lead the way forwards. 

And in this LinkedIn article, Brian Murphy, senior director employee skilling at Microsoft says: 

“WorkLab, part of the Microsoft Modern Work team, continue to produce fascinating research into the emerging world of work. Their research shows that in this new hybrid and increasingly flexible world of work, people are re-imagining what ‘career progression’ looks like. People are moving away from a rigid and linear approach to careers, to more of a ‘career playground’ mentality. I love this advice taken directly from the WorkLab research: “Choose a starting point, somewhere that interests you, and explore. Move laterally along the monkey bars, slip down the slide, swing up to new heights, or all of the above”.

Time for a quick spotlight on a woman who is both an entrepreneur and an advocate for career progression 

Roshaneh Zafar is a woman on a mission. A leading activist for women’s rights and their economic freedom, she comes from Pakistan where women struggle to have either. Her ‘why’ is her passion for creating accessible finance for women in rural Pakistan. 

Feudal agricultural systems, limited education and health amenities and lack of financial resources to access educational training have perpetuated the cycle of poverty.    

Ms Zafar founded the Kashf Foundation in 1996 and is managing director. She is also chair of sister company Kashf Holdings and founder of Kashf Microfinance Bank. Kashf places a strong emphasis on training and support programs – developed to combat the considerable obstacles faced by women in rural Pakistan. These include cultural resistance and abysmally low literacy, as well as a lack of the modest resources required to access education, training and support.  

Initially, Ms Zafar’s role focused on securing capital for Kashf’s revolving fund. Following success with pilot schemes, the programme was rolled out across more areas, and she has carved out a role as an advocate – using Kashf as a model for other community-based organisations. Her work has won countless awards and continues to provide aid and assistance to rural women in Pakistan.

Takeaways: 

• Find your ‘why’ - your passion for doing what you do 
• Start small, and then scale up 
• Define your objectives, outline your challenges, and plan to overcome them 

So, what’s next? 

• The shift towards skills-first hiring will continue
• Rise in the number of employers offering personalised pathways for growth 
• Increased emphasis on global hiring and developing global partnerships
• Learning and development programmes will become key as employers embrace internal mobility 

Be sure to join me for my next edition where I'll be asking “What’s next?” for the recruitment industry and give my take on the trends that will be shaping the industry in 2024.