How Hiring Has Changed Forever

Companies of all sizes are feeling the impact of 2020. It is predicted that unemployment will reach record highs in 2021 (source: Institute of Financial Studies), thanks to this years’ economic context. We are already seeing businesses lay off huge numbers of staff, in an effort to offset lack of income. This is devastating to people impacted, and their managers, but for business this is a horrible necessity in today’s environment.

So what will the long term effects be? And how will hiring change as a result?

The cost of skills loss

It begins with a cost saving target. Next is a paper-based review of roles, to understand who does what and what the business can afford to lose. The next level review is for function-level managers to determine which roles they can lose in order to hit the target they have been given.

It is impossible in an organisation of thousands of people for everyone to know exactly who every individual is and what every individual does at a granular level, and this is often where oversights are made. For example, the team leader in a call centre whose stats might not be great but is brilliant at getting everyone out of a slump. He might be the first to put his hand up for voluntary redundancy, which, whilst it might be refused, sets in motion a series of psychological changes that cannot be reversed. His head has left the organisation even if his body has not.

The other scenario I frequently witnessed was the “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”, that is the loss of skills that were never known about, or at least formally acknowledged. An example might be the marketing executive who has been quietly providing copy for the website for the last six months, saving thousands of pounds of spend with an agency. Or the web developer who has been quietly improving conversion, following the course he did in his own time with his own money.

Making these individuals redundant results in a loss of capability which often goes undiscovered until it has a financial impact. This is likely to be long after the redundancy process is completed, and the person has left the business.

Previously this might have been rectified by using an agency for a while. Then someone would realise that it would be cheaper to have the skill in-house, resulting in a re-hiring of a similar position at a later date.

It’s a cycle I have witnessed time and time again. But one I hope that this revolution we find ourselves in, will stop.

The impact of COVID

COVID has resulted in two key changes which I believe will alter the way businesses hire forever.

The first is that people are now working from home and businesses have overcome the anticipated issues associated with this. They have adapted and are now able to offer the level of flexibility that people have so long demanded.

The second is that financial circumstances mean organisations now have to be more agile. In the biggest recession on record, the bounce back needs to be fast and it needs to be sustainable.

Flexible working

Working anywhere in the country opens up the resource pool massively, providing businesses with a real opportunity to reach people they have never seen before. This is a chance to do things differently and genuinely impact diversity, particularly gender, which is so closely linked to flexible working.

We should see an improvement in gender pay gaps. A better spread of age, race and social mobility. Of course, training will be needed for hiring managers but surely this is a case of putting into practice a theory that has been circulating for years.

This is an opportunity to be seized with both hands.

Organisations need to be agile

Economically, with no need for the traditionally huge fixed overheads associated with offices and full-time employees, companies will be able to assess viability of projects and change on a more granular level, factoring in the costs of specific skills and tools.

The transition away from cost permanence will see more lean and agile businesses that are better able to respond to pandemics, disasters or other unforeseen events in the future. Certainly, the ability to recover from disaster will be significantly aided by the spread of employees across the country, and potentially the world.

We’re moving into a world of fluidity whereby the distinct skills that are needed to perform a job to its optimum level is afforded. That means that companies will be looking more closely at exactly what they need and will easily be able to track down and use those skills. Need someone that specialises in child facial recognition on 2nd generation iPads? No problem. There’s someone out there with that exact skill, just waiting to be found. It means that businesses can contract with a copywriter for occasional website updates, or a web expert 3 days a month.

But it does beg the question of how businesses will contract with the people they need.

The contract of work

Contracts will look different as the world moves away from the career for life and into what Emma Gannon refers to as the ‘multi-hyphen career’.

Will this lead to a significant increase in the number of people who are self-employed? Potentially, yes. Initiatives like IR35 and workplace pensions will blur the lines between employment and self-employment until we have a new way of working, supported by tools and legislation that affords both businesses and individuals much more flexibility in how they work together.

Loyalty to organisations will be determined by how a business treats people rather than a legal tie in as the world of work opens up.

The need to perform financially will be intrinsically linked to how an organisation treats its employees and the commitment to their employees’ wellbeing will become paramount to performance. The businesses that genuinely care will win out in this new world.

With the value of skill rising as the walls of location, educational establishment and other dividing characteristics come down, the future is one that certainly looks different to what we have known.

COVID has changed the world of work forever. In more ways than one!

By Jessica Heagren, CEO and Cofounder of That Works For Me, which connects SME businesses with the skills they need and deserve via a marketplace of thousands of experienced professionals. Members range from social media managers to lawyers and everything in between. They are mostly mums seeking flexible and remote work. Search for the skills your business needs today and have honest conversations from day one!