Almost every employer faced challenges to recruitment after the pandemic and throughout 2022. Much has been written on the reduced supply of candidates and the recruitment industry should be leading the way on how every employer can address that.

If we look at the latest figures from the office of national statistics that were released in December 2022 there were:

• 1,266,000 job vacancies
• 1,242,000 Unemployed

Candidate shortages will continue in 2023 meaning that demand from employers for recruitment and staffing services is likely to remain robust, but there has never been a more important time for businesses to think about their employee value proposition (EVP) from both an attraction and retention perspective.

“Candidate Motivators” is probably the biggest topic of all. It is one area that businesses must understand to remain competitive in today’s recruitment market.

Understanding the motivations of different generation is an increasingly important consideration for all employers.

Millennials will be 75% of our managers by 2025 and 75% of our leaders by 2035.

Updating an EVP for the emerging generations is not the only challenge. There needs to be a balance to ensure that the proposition is fit-for-purpose for the older generations also. This was brought more into the spotlight in December when it was reported that the Prime Minister was looking at plans to bring middle-aged retirees back into work to boost the economy. Government estimates show that 630,000 people had left employment since 2019, a significant rise that has been fuelled by retirement, sickness, changes to migration and the UK’s ageing population.

Our work over the last 12 month has highlighted how important it is for businesses to look at EVPs and Employer Branding (EB) through the eyes of candidates as we move into the “New Normal” for employment.

Features of the millennial era include -

• The importance of work / life balance but not at the detriment of still willing to work hard to advance their careers and achieve leadership roles.
• Millennials typically look to work for organisations they perceive to be ethically sound and that conduct their business operations in a socially responsible manner with a focus around diversity, Environment, Social and Governance.

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These changes have created a growing disconnect between employers (leaders) and employees (candidates)

Over the past 12 months we’ve worked with a number of businesses on their EVP to help improve their disconnect.

There are plenty of solutions and things that businesses can do to help improve this, there is no one big solution but plenty of small adjustments.

Employer Value Proposition and Employer Brand has never been more important, ensuring that your EVP and EB is aligned to current motivators and communicated correctly is what will make a difference in today’s recruitment market.

It’s important that you empathise with candidates – understand what they want to see in a future employer and current employer for staff retention.

We’d love to hear from you if you’re a business that is looking to review their candidate attraction over the next 12 months. We work with many of our clients to benchmark their EVPs against their competitors, to clarify their main attractions and to start a plan to communicate to candidates.

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Our thoughts

In most recruitment campaigns, it’s the passive candidates that we want to engage with - it is important that the information they see on you as an employer gives the best possible impression of the business to help you stand out from other employers.

Over the course of the next month, we will be looking at a couple of areas around candidate attraction and retention. Look out for....

• Interview with Catherine Wilson, Solicitor and founder of McBrownie Limited, with some personal reflections for HR Professionals as we come out of lockdown and approach the challenges of 2023
• What Pratap Partnership are doing to develop their people
• Thoughts from a HR / Talent leader on why EVP is key for growth in the future.

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