Insights

The world of work is set for radical change, accelerated by Covid-19. Although there has been a steady move towards flexible working over the last few years, the 2020 pandemic has given it fresh momentum.

Most recent research indicates that working from home over the last few months has not led to any loss of productivity by employees and in fact several studies indicate that productivity is improved.

It now looks likely that the majority of employers, especially in knowledge based sectors, will rethink the way they operate for the long term. Reduced office costs for employers combined with improved work-life balance for staff is a compelling win-win.

So we can now expect to see flexible working become widespread in future. This radical change in working patterns creates important new challenges and opportunities for the recruitment sector.

Here are the top five ways in which we believe recruitment will be transformed over the next five years.

The recruitment sector will become more agile and flexible.

The current pace of change in the world of work is unprecedented. We are at a major crossroads and this will revolutionise all the old business models and traditional ways of working. Only the recruitment businesses that are agile and lean enough to respond nimbly to the changing conditions will succeed.

Access to a wider pool of candidates.

With the advances in technology and the option for flexible working, geographical restrictions become less important. It will be possible for employers to recruit staff who live further away from the office, enabling access to the best talent worldwide. For recruitment companies, this creates new challenges and new opportunities. Increased use of remote working also means that people can choose to live in attractive locations, such as South West England, whilst working for companies in cities hundreds of miles away. Geography will cease to be such an important discriminator in recruitment and this transforms the way recruitment companies can operate.

New criteria for people management.

As employers need to respond to rapidly changing market conditions, we will see further growth in the perceived importance of soft skills and emotional intelligence in management. There will be increasing demand for people who can adapt quickly to the changing face of technology and rapid economic shifts. Hiring for soft skills like the ability to communicate and collaborate as well as the ability to be agile, adapt and innovate will increasingly take centre stage. Recruitment companies will need to up their game in identifying and promoting the candidates with the right soft skills for an increasingly fast-paced virtual world. Recruiting candidates for soft skills requires a different screening process and new ways of undertaking soft skills assessment.

Technology will continue to transform the recruitment experience.

The role of recruiters will continue to change as tech enables new ways of engagement. Both candidates and employers expect and demand a top quality experience at every stage of the process.As the tools recruiters use become more sophisticated, the end goal remains the same: to attract the right people for the role by creating a great candidate experience with a human touch. At all stages of the recruitment journey, technology can be used to underpin and improve the experience. Video interviewing is likely to become increasingly mainstream as well as greater use of people analytics and AI in early screening of candidates. The challenge will be to maintain the personal touch throughout and ensure that tech is an enabler, not a replacement for human interaction, communication, and judgement.

Recruitment companies will become strategic partners.

The growth of people analytics is already accelerating the extent to which HR departments are taking a more strategic role within businesses across the board. Improved analytics and sharper data-driven insights are allowing HR to become a vital contributor to business planning, especially in larger companies. This trend will continue to grow and recruitment companies will be increasingly regarded as strategic partners, working closely with clients to leverage their data and create long term recruitment strategies that can help businesses grow.

At TalentTide, we are excited by the new opportunities created by the changing world of work.

We are an agile and flexible company and we plan to be at the forefront of tomorrow’s recruitment industry, helping our clients find the people they need for success well into the future.

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