Embracing the New Order to attract and retain talent…

Richard East, Chairman of Cheltenham headquartered RE Recruitment, looks the recruitment market and the importance of evolution in the workforce.

policy to counter reduced productivity or even mental health challenges.

At RE and Safehands Recruitment, we advise clients to ensure they are attractive to the very best candidates whilst continuing to retain their existing talent.

Time to adapt

cultural improvements that skirt around the real challenge. Covid has caused many people to reflect on their work-life balance, and many are looking for a change.

Companies will need to look at the bigger picture and to attract talent, they will need to be bold.

As a recruiter, there are so many things that I could write about currently with a view to opening up discussion around the current UK Labour market. Still, the point I focus on today is a brief examination of how businesses will face a continuing evolution within their workforce.

In 2022, it is first imperative that companies do not fall into the trap of seeing the disruptions to the workforce during the covid pandemic as an anomaly and to misconstrue the idea that employees will willingly return to the previous status quo because they absolutely will not. Most of the changes are here to stay and will evolve further.

Many of the responses to the pandemic that affected the workforce were trends emerging before covid had been heard of. The lockdown periods merely accelerated the change process, but what this acceleration stole from us was the opportunity to experiment.

This missed opportunity may yet raise cause for concern in the future, particularly if companies must turn back on a new

Companies will have to adapt and improve the internal process to genuinely consider the changing workforce demographic and maintain fairness across all styles of work options. Companies will need to broaden their minds to the changing market and ditch irrelevant, old-fashioned, dated views around criteria. In the blue-collar sector, the idea that companies can continue with poor attrition of low-wage workers will prove to be a costly mistake.

Pandemic epiphany

It’s my view that companies need to consider the possibility of a complete overhaul of their internal job descriptions and redesign how best to benefit from a workforce far more certain of their value and expectations than pre-pandemic. This workforce could absolutely improve businesses for the better if given the freedom to grow.

At RE and Safehands Recruitment, we are fully engaged with many customers, working alongside their HR departments to explore new ways of engaging with and attracting talent.

We’ve been providing more personal, more dependable and more imaginative recruitment solutions for more than 20 years.

Those who embrace the new order will reduce staff turnover and improve productivity; those who don’t will struggle to service this year’s peaks. In the whitecollar environment, I see many ‘faddish’ ideas to engage with employees’ so-called