‘Summer, Buddy Holly, the working folly, good golly Miss Molly and boats’ – reasons to be cheerful indeed according to the sage and rather missed, Ian Dury.
If such delights were keeping the nation’s pecker up in 1977, what might be fulfilling a similar role in mid 2013? All of a sudden, it would appear, there are answers abundant. This week saw the UK services sector index hit 54.9, up a healthy two points on April’s figures – this followed equally cheering news from the usually maligned manufacturing sector. YouGov, again this week, suggested that sentiment around the UK economy had improved for the third successive month across national households. The same findings also suggested that people are feeling more secure in their jobs than at any point since the survey began in 2009. (It will be interesting to see if and how this might influence what have been, since 2008, fairly one-sided wage bargaining positions over the course of the next year).
Perhaps even more telling are the findings from the most recent research from Reed, whose monthly Job Index suggested that the UK created 8% more job opportunities in May than in April. On an annual basis, the growth in new jobs stands at over 17% with the Reed Job Index achieving 165 points in May, the highest yet.
Returning to Mr Dury briefly; from fairly inauspicious circumstances, despite him being the owner of a fairly ordinary voice (and I think that’s putting it kindly), having hit 35 before his commercial breakthrough and being a childhood victim of polio, a success story ensued. And if Ian Dury created an effective image and brand that aligned to the times in 1977, we can see signs of organisations doing similar things right now. A working day – or a non-working one for that matter – wouldn’t be complete without at least one visit to both Facebook and LinkedIn. Both massively successful organisations have been enhancing and updating their user interfaces. As a result, they both feel more modern, more topical, more of the moment. Microsoft too, with the imminent launch of Windows 8.1, is presenting a brighter, more accessible, more confident brand and identity to the world.
And for me, this is no coincidence. There are simply too many metrics pointing towards a, perhaps more slowly than ideal, economic improvement – even the OECD suggests that the UK will have the strongest growth among G7 countries between 2018 and 2030.
However, if organisations as close to the consumer and candidate zeitgeist as Facebook and LinkedIn are sprucing up their brands, what is the response of employers? Are recruiting firms relying on an employer brand and reputation that belongs to the caution and apprehension of the past four years? Or is there a realisation that both employees and prospective applicants now have more choice (and more confidence to begin exercising that choice) than for some time? Can the employer brand organisations have projected during the darkest days of the recession still achieve both hiring and corporate objectives now that a faint glow of optimism might be detected? If employers are planning for growth and expansion, can this genuinely align to an employer brand anchored on yesterday’s survival and stability, rather than tomorrow’s ambition and potential?
Lest employers be tempted to adopt a complacent approach to their employee value proposition, research out this week from the Hay Group points to the dangers of this. Their findings suggest that as the economic improvement takes hold, some 765,000 more UK employees will resign from their current organisations in 2014, compared to last year. A figure which will increase to over a million by 2018. The research concludes that employee turnover will rise from 14.6% to 18% in 2015.
The economic landscape is shifting, people are going to be feeling more confident in their household finances and their employment prospects. This presents both opportunities and challenges to employers –whilst candidate audiences will feel more reassured about the possibility of moving jobs, on the other hand, organisations face losing exactly the sort of people who can help drive their expansion plans unless they are touching them with a message that strikes a similarly optimistic chord.
Reasons to be cheerful are undoubtedly emerging on a now consistent basis – however, only those organisations whose employer brands reflect these emerging times – and what they mean to internal and external talent pools – will be capable of both retaining and attracting the talent to deliver they seek to bring those horizons into view.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 