As we touched on during our previous blog, this is a confusing, often contradictory labour market. Many indicators suggest it remains extremely buoyant – 1.1m vacancies across the UK; the most recent Report on Jobs indicates a healthy hike in vacancies and an increase in the demand for staff; the ONS suggests that the latest quarter saw a reduction in redundancies compared to the previous three months; and the service sector enjoyed its best month for more than a year according to the PMI.
But we don’t have to look far to reveal statistics that suggest a far less healthy UK labour market. Candidate availability, according to the same Report on Jobs rose for the first time in more than two years (which, admittedly, speaks both to redundancies and to renewed candidate optimism). Ayming, the HR consultancy, produced a report in mid-April suggesting that 26% of all UK employers were going to reduce headcount. And HR vacancies are down 35% annually. Inflation shows no sign of inching below double-digit figures, never mind getting anywhere close to the Bank of England’s 2% target. And, anecdotally, but perhaps as telling as any cold, hard metric, a regular look at LinkedIn indicates a growing number of TA professionals who are suddenly open to work.
So, it’s not entirely beyond the reach of logic that you are currently working for an organisation that has/is/will be making some tough people decisions.
The challenge with such activity is that markets, optimism and sentiment change at pace. One minute your organisation is making some tough but unavoidable decisions around headcount, the next, the market is picking up and you’re back to a ferociously competitive candidate marketplace. Worse still, you’re back to a ferociously competitive candidate marketplace, armed with a damaged and unconvincing employer brand and reputation.
So, what is the advice for those with management and curatorship responsibilities for their organisation’s employer brand in such times? Several things.
Firstly, it’s important your employer brand messaging and its rationale is up to date. If it’s looking unlikely that this will be invested in during the course of 2023, then when things do merit a reinvestment, your content and its messaging is likely to be perhaps just a year out of date. Conversely, if you haven’t updated your content, even your EVP, for a little while, then it risks being several years out of date when candidates start taking a fresh look at your careers content and information.
Personally, I think honesty goes a long way. Take a look at what your current employer branding messaging is saying right now, particularly from both a candidate and an employee perspective. Was the content produced during early 2022, with the economy thriving and with candidates having choice and options? Some of the optimism and bullishness relevant to that time perhaps today feels a little out of place – both to cynical candidates and to concerned employees. Even more so, to those people potentially leaving your business.
It’s time to get on top of your Employer Brand. Get a step ahead of your competitors (who will undoubtedly target you), support retention of quality talent, provide clear and consistent messaging to manage your future employer reputation. In the current unpredictable Talent market, employer reputations can be won, tarnished or lost. Emerging technologies will only add to the ease that talent investigates and networks with their peer groups, which companies they would consider and ultimately commit to”, Andy Hendon, Global EB Consultant (Formerly of Syneos Health & KPMG)
And a practical point along those lines. Your people featured on your careers site and attraction messaging – are they still your people? Or have they left for the competition or, perhaps worse, been victims of downsizing? It doesn’t make for great optics if they’re still being used to help carry and advocate your employer brand.
“In difficult times and economic downturns, it is usually Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition teams that get left in the wake of this. I strongly feel that this is a short-sighted view and those businesses that invest in refreshing their Employer Brand and keeping their TA team onboard are those that make the biggest gains when the markets pick up”, Matt Dean, Talent Acquisition Manager – Operations, Post Office.
Take the time to evaluate your talent analytics. What channels are working and which do you sense are declining? Just as markets shift, so too do audience habits. But don’t trust intuition, look at the metrics which both your attraction messaging and your talent pipeline are producing. With perhaps less day-to-day attraction, it’s a great time to analyse the fundamentals – how could you improve the candidate experience you’re delivering? People are going to be more cautious and careful when they next look for a job – your applicant process needs to reflect that.
“The issue with Employer Brand is that many organisations perceive EVP to be a cyclical project to be delivered every 3 to 5 years and the budget is allocated accordingly, so content remains static around attraction. Where in reality it should be constantly evolving in line with the economy, the labour market, competitors, your organisational performance and any other factors which impact. Organisations who get this will have Employer Brand as a constant on the monthly agenda”, Adele Swift, Talent Attraction and Recruitment Manager, Toolstation.
Don’t lose sight of your external candidate audiences. What do they think of you? Do they sense you’re more badly impacted by economic headwinds than is really the case? Do they see you as an employment risk too far? What confidence do they have in your ability to navigate a challenging time? If you don’t know what the market thinks of you and your economic sea-worthiness, then it’s hard to address those concerns when you next come to focus on your employer branding messaging. You may be answering a question no one is asking.
Similarly, by keeping close to the market, you’re in a better position to sense a pick-up in confidence levels. Given how fundamentally Covid impacted, amongst other things, the labour market, confidence returned surprisingly quickly. Many organisations found themselves on the back foot as competition for candidates shifted from being non-existent to all-consuming apparently overnight.
(It’s important to bear in mind too that headcount decisions aren’t always binary – some organisations will be simultaneously hiring and firing at the same time, awkward and ambiguous as that feels).
The latter point is important when business cases are being formulated. You may be struggling to secure budget right now, but making the case for how quickly markets shift and the difference great employer branding makes should help come Q3 and Q4 and certainly for 2024.
And making the case for what employer branding and its EVP DNA creates and enables (both as regards external candidate markets as well as internal employee audiences) is critical. It might make the difference as to how well a team fares during a period of cost cutting.
“To say the current economic environment is confusing is an understatement. It’s clear that it’s not easy to know whether to hire now or hold off. It’s clear that attrition is still a factor. Despite all the gloom, employees are still leaving, causing holes in the organisation. This has an impact on getting the employer message right. Fighting attrition is a different message to backfill hiring, which in turn is different to hiring for growth. Managing brand has never been so difficult and a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t going to cut it”, Martin Dangerfield, CEO, immersive
Finally, it’s entirely likely that organisations emerging from the current challenges (whether such challenges relate to the economy or factors such as ChatGPT) will pivot significantly in order to either thrive or survive. It’s important, then, that employer branding messaging reflects this new, emerging organisation, with potentially different goals, missions and objectives. As always, employer branding and its associated EVP should look forwards rather than backwards. They should be painting an attractive picture of what new joiners and existing employees can help shape, rather than what has gone before.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 