2021 was referred to, by many, as the year of the great resignation.
Yet I don’t believe that it ever hit the UK.
I strongly believe that it didn’t affect us significantly here in the East Midlands.
2022 was a year of unprecedented talent shortages. The most acute “war for talent” that I have experienced in my 25 years at Macildowie.
Having spent my entire career recruiting white-collar professionals into the best businesses in the region I have never known such a lop-sided recruitment landscape as the one we experienced in 2021/22. Candidates had all of the power!
As a result of how difficult it was to replace someone leaving, businesses realised that they needed to do what was necessary to keep their current employees as happy as possible. The initial strategy adopted by most businesses was to pay (everyone) more. In my opinion, this has been nothing more than a quick short-term sticking plaster.
This is why I refer to last year as the year of “The Great Payroll Explosion”. (To illustrate my point, I spoke to the MD of a local distribution business last week whose payroll cost has increased by a mammoth 41% year on year!)
Under extreme economic uncertainty, with living costs spiralling out of control, the increase in wages has really done nothing more than balance the books for most individuals and households.
Your employees are expecting more from you as their skills are in high demand, yet there is low confidence & a seeming reluctance to move jobs due to such high levels of economic uncertainty. So you still have time to act. Your team are expecting you to.
For businesses, when combined with all other costs rising due to spiralling inflation, it has led to serious margin and profit erosion.
So, as with any additional investment, businesses want and expect to see a return on their payroll investment.
As a result of both employee and employer expectations rising (with/from one another), I am referring to 2023 as the “The Great Expectation”.
So the question is…
How, as a business, do you win The Great Expectation and what role does HR play?
Below are my observations and thoughts from insights gleaned from local Business Leaders over the last three months:
The Great Expectation means that once again, we all have lots of work to do to create a great place to work, with highly engaged staff, who are helping us to hit our business goals.
Good luck this year, I look forward to speaking to some of you soon,
James
PS – if you would like any kind of assistance with any of the points raised in this article, Darius Matusiak is our MD of Talent Partnerships here at Macildowie – he would be delighted to have a no-obligations intro call with you.
PPS – we have a series of on-line free-to-attend events which have been designed to help with many of the points raised in this article. You can access these here.
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