Take your pick – ‘no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength’ or ‘everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’. Same point, different levels of finesse.
UK-based organisations will have been busying themselves away planning how to address the implications of this month’s minimum wage increase and the rise in NI contributions. They’ve had since last October’s budget to do so. Many will have priced in their responses to this months in advance.
What such planning would not have taken into account was Mr Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on around 60 countries around the world. It’s hard to overestimate the reaction to this. Trillions have been lost on stock exchanges and pension values. Those organisations whose business exports to the US now face punitive tariffs. And there’s every chance that goods exported by the likes of China might find themselves in the EU or UK because of Trump’s decision.
There’s an awful lot up in the air. But how do employers respond?
Clearly, there’s wisdom in adopting an apolitical stance, but what messages should they be communicating to both their employee base and their candidate audiences?
We’ve seen of late a tentative and nascent improvement in recruiting confidence across the UK. Trump’s actions are unlikely to continue this. Indeed, one of the challenges the labour market has faced is candidate caution. People lack the confidence to leave one employer for another with all the potential risk involved. When such people look at the current headlines, their confidence is unlikely to be boosted.
People will want to hear reassuring noises from their employer. But what if that simply isn’t possible. Can those organisations exporting machinery, cars and medical products to the US genuinely reassure their employees right now?
For organisations and employees alike, there’s a loss of agency. So much is out of their hands – the struggles of their business are not down to a mistake or competition, but the whim of, largely, one individual.
Our own Sir Keir Starmer has led impressively during this time, neither inflaming Trump nor being supplicatory. However, the impact of what is happening has not been lost on him – ‘The world has fundamentally changed’. It feels like a huge moment in time.
How best should employers respond? A visit to LinkedIn is unhelpful – there are few if any mentions as to what is happening. Are some employers playing a ‘wait and see’ game? Hoping the worst of the Donald storm will blow over?
If people are working for US organisations in the UK or Europe, what is the mood? How is morale standing up? It’s clearly going to be more pressing for the likes of Tesla, but there will be no shortage of reputational employer brand impact.
Employer branding messaging needs to be consistent. But at the same time, those organisations that didn’t reference, for example, Covid and the experiences people were going through felt tone deaf and tin eared. It was real and it was happening. The same applies today. It feels too big to ignore.
People, both employees and candidates, want two things from employers. They want honesty – how are the proposed tariffs likely to impact them? And they want a plan.
How is an organisation proposing navigating the next few months? Is it simply hoping for the best? Is it adopting a passive approach? Or does it have a strategy that its people can get behind and feel they are contributing to?
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 