Calls for employers to be more open minded and flexible in their approach to filling vacancies and securing new talent (or workers really) should be music to the ears of strategic workforce planners frustrated at the fixed approach of many companies and hiring managers.
Recent events have seen a shift in labour markets in both supply and demand. The number of job openings in the UK is high whilst at the same time applicants are looking for more benefits - especially, it would seem, for the possibility to work more flexibly.
Companies are clearly responding to this as they look to grow or fill gaps in their workforce. Research from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and analysts Emsi Burning Glass highlighted that a quarter of jobs advertised in December 2020 mentioned hybrid or flexible working (including job shares and working irregular hours) versus 19% before the pandemic.
And Zurich Insurance has seen applications rise by more than 66%, from men and women, since it launched its initiative in 2019 to offer more flexible working for all roles - 23% of all new female employees are now part time (compared with 10% in 2019). Following its success Zurich is now urging the government to change legislation to mandate all job openings in large companies are made available on a part-time, job-share or flexible basis (unless there are specific reasons as to why not). Steve Collinson, Zurich’s HR director, is right when he says
if employers don't have flexibility, then we're missing out on whole swathes of potential candidates.
But it’s not just flexible working opportunities that will help organisations get and retain the best talent.
In Strategic Workforce Planning the demands the organisation must meet (it’s strategy and business targets), which the workforce must then deliver, is always in our focus. We break ‘the ask’ down to the implications for the workforce and consider how to best source the talent and skills required. This is why I was so enthused to read about new research calling out many employer’s rigidity when it comes to mandating that the university degree box must be ticked on candidate’s CVs.
Recruitment firm Reed found 49% of businesses were ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to hire more people in 2022 versus the previous year. However, despite this dynamism in the current jobs market - and with 41% of people actively looking for a new position either because of salary (39%), flexible working (31%) or more benefits (29%) - sixty percent of hiring decision-makers still believe it is important for candidates to have a university degree.
Putting specific professional qualifications to one side, doctors do need a medical degree after all!, in my experience a general blanket approach to “only graduates” is really just there to provide a reassurance for hiring managers without them really understanding what, or where, it adds to the positions or skill gaps they are looking to fill. Surely, practical skills gained in the workplace rather than the lecture theatre should be valued too.
As James Reed, chairman of Reed, says:
employers should be more flexible when it comes to hiring by looking at workers who haven’t got qualifications but who are willing to learn and have useful transferable skills for a modern working environment. By sticking to a rigid, old-fashioned approach to recruiting, you could be discarding talent that could help fuel your growth plans in 2022.
But some forward thinking, successful companies have been thinking like this for some years now. In 2018 job-search site Glassdoor shared a list of employers who were expanding their talent options by no longer mandating applicants had a University degree. Companies like Google Apple, and IBM - and last time I checked they didn’t seem to be performing so badly.
The overriding point for businesses and strategic workforce planners is that by not being more creative in the types of roles and working practices they offer, companies are missing out on untapped pools of skilled and committed candidates. It just erects unnecessary barriers to securing the most optimal workers.
But I’d go further, these workers not only plug skill gaps but if managed properly, can provide a more engaged workforce with more diverse perspectives - potentially more in keeping with society and consumers - and which can help build better organisational resilience. I can see companies becoming less vulnerable to large skill shortages and reduce the wasted ‘time to productivity’ of new employees – if in future we allow for more flexible work arrangements, sharing of roles and tasks between workers in a more flexible and creative way and removing historical barriers when hiring people.
So that’s why I believe more flexible working and a move away from traditional hiring mindsets is good news for businesses and frustrated strategic workforce planners everywhere. This forms part of what I call the “flexibility paradigm”.
Sources used in the article, in addition to embedded links: