Join our Business Doctor, Clare Harrall, as she talks to Richard Cummings, Lead Partner in our strategic HR Consultancy, Sophie Lord, our Head of Learning and Development, and Victoria Pounder, our Head of HR.
Find out about the challenges they’re facing here at Moore Kingston Smith, as well as what they’re seeing in the wider marketplace. And get their insights and top tips on addressing skills shortages, competing for talent and adapting to more flexible ways of working.
We welcome your questions to the Business Doctor, you can contact us at https://mooreks.co.uk/business-doctor/
Join our Business Doctor, Clare Harrall, as she talks to Richard Cummings, Lead Partner in our strategic HR Consultancy, Sophie Lord, our Head of Learning and Development, and Victoria Pounder, our Head of HR.
Find out about the challenges they’re facing here at Moore Kingston Smith, as well as what they’re seeing in the wider marketplace. And get their insights and top tips on addressing skills shortages, competing for talent and adapting to more flexible ways of working.
We welcome your questions to the Business Doctor, you can contact us at https://mooreks.co.uk/business-doctor/
00:00:00 Clare
Welcome, I'm Clare Harrall, your Business Doctor, and today we'll be discussing the talent war. Is it coming or is it already here?
00:00:08 Clare
People development and retention of top talent is complex for many employers currently, with skill shortages and a lack of available talent in multiple industries.
00:00:17 Clare
For years, employees have been asking for more flexibility in the way that they work, and certainly this pandemic has given them that.
00:00:24 Clare
But as we start to return to a new normal, many companies now have ambitious growth plans. There's a need to recruit more people and fundamentally retain the top talent.
00:00:34 Clare
For the moment, though, many
00:00:35 Clare
employers, large and small, are perhaps just looking at the here and now. So for today's discussion, I'm joined by my colleagues Richard Cummings, lead partner in our strategic HR Consultancy, and our internal experts Sophie Lord, who heads up our learning and development team, and Victoria Pound, our Head of HR.
00:00:56 Clare
Welcome all.
00:00:58 Clare
So Richard, can I start with you? What should businesses be thinking about at the moment to deal with these challenges of the future?
00:01:06 Richard
Yes, I think there's two key things here that you need to consider. One is how do you retain your current talent and the other one is
00:01:13 Richard
how do you attract new talent? And I don't think that you can actually go and get new talent first, until you've worked out how you're going to retain your existing. Because it's all very well going out to the market and trying to attract new people to your firm, but not if all your current people are leaving in droves.
00:01:28 Richard
And what we do know is that
00:01:30 Richard
turnover creates more turnover, so once you start that and people start to leave more people start to leave.
00:01:36 Richard
So adding people into the mix now is probably not the best thing to do, even though that's what you want to do.
00:01:41 Richard
The best thing to do now, I think, is to sort out your existing team. Make sure that they're engaged and infused, that they want to work for you, they want to do their best job. And once you've got them to a place that you're happy,
00:01:51 Richard
then you can go out to the markets.
00:01:53 Clare
Thanks Richard. So Victoria, Sophie. Has that been your
00:01:56 Clare
experience at Moore Kingston Smith?
00:01:58 Sophie
I mean, I think that really does summarise what we do internally. So Victoria and I both look after the people function, but from two different angles.
00:02:07 Sophie
So incorporating the recruitment and the retention part. That holistic viewpoint of the people function. So I think Rich is completely right. That's what we need to be doing ourselves
00:02:19 Sophie
as an organisation and we try to do that by having a one-size holistic people strategy rather than separating out into its silos. So yes, I would be saying the same.
00:02:30 Clare
And Richard, does that resonate with the conversations that you're having with your clients?
00:02:35 Richard
It does, and that's right. So it is a view of everything. I don't think you can just look at recruitment and internal like that.
00:02:42 Richard
It's not that flat. I think you need to look at the people that you've got and if you're going to promote them, how you're going to promote them, or you know how you're going to make sure that they're trained, and how you're going to make sure that they're actually going to be good leaders.
00:02:56 Richard
Not every great employee is a great leader, and unfortunately when people leave, they don't actually really leave the company,
00:03:02 Richard
they leave their manager. So if you're promoting people internally, you need to make sure that doesn't happen to you.
00:03:07 Richard
I think companies have lots of great initiatives that they want to put in, because they think that's what their employees want, but that's not what their employees want and they don't actually ask them or try and attempt to find out.
00:03:17 Richard
So they put in all this great stuff and it just gets
00:03:19 Richard
lost in the mix. And then I think that at that point, you've got to look at what are you doing long term for your employees.
00:03:27 Richard
Well, the short term is great, because you've got to keep them during this period of growth.
00:03:32 Richard
00:03:32 Clare
And I guess coupled with that, businesses are moving to a new way of remote working, which does make the development piece more tricky. As time moves on, are there any further challenges you see employers facing?
00:03:44 Richard
I think the fear is that people aren't invested if they're working from home. I think that's the worry and at the moment it's probably not so difficult, because people were already in teams before we sent them off to work from home. But as we start to onboard people now that are predominantly working from
00:04:01 Richard
home, their hybrid is more swinging that way. They're in the office very little. They don't tend to get the relationships that they would have done before, and I think actually it's our job as business leaders to make sure that doesn't happen,
00:04:13 Richard
and to make sure that people do feel part of a team. And then actually there is a process that they can they can formulate when they join so that we've got a mechanism in place,
00:04:22 Richard
and it's the people team's job to make sure that that happens. We shouldn't just leave it to chance.
00:04:28 Clare
Learning by osmosis happens naturally in an office environment. How do we replace that in the hybrid environment?
00:04:36 Richard
I completely understand it. There's this huge fear that we're going to lose something when everybody starts working hybrid and they're not in the office all the time, and they're going to lose that osmosis bit where they hear people saying things in a certain way and that actually rubs off.
00:04:50 Richard
And it's quite good. But I think what it's done is given people teams a real opportunity to look at that. What's being harnessed
00:04:56 Richard
from the osmosis and make it more structured? So that people are picking up the best bits and not all the bits, because they obviously through osmosis, there may be some poor habits that they're picking up, or some poor techniques that aren't working in the way that the company would want it to work, but that teams adapted over time, but it's it is steering them away from what they want.
00:05:15 Richard
So I think we have an opportunity now to almost reset it, learn it in a different way, or teach in a different way and then actually structure it.
00:05:24 Richard
So for the next round of people that get recruited, we can recruit in exactly the same way, and they'll be as good as the next lot.
00:05:31 Sophie
Yeah, completely agree. I don't think we have to reach this point of replacement for learning by osmosis, but what a lot
00:05:38 Sophie
of the research is suggesting is we just need to put in place more formality, which in the short term probably isn't going to be
00:05:47 Sophie
what many of us would actually be thinking that we'd encourage. But you need to formalise more of the learning in the short term so that you can find a new process or evolve the approach
00:05:58 Sophie
moving forward. So some of those informal connexion points where you're sitting with a team
00:06:04 Sophie
that we're missing, we need to formalise opportunities to have them when we're working in a hybrid, and we might have to think slightly differently, but I do think we haven't caught up yet with what's going to replace learning by osmosis, whatever that might mean. We haven't evolved our method yet to know exactly what's going to replace it, so this is
00:06:24 Sophie
our period as we transition into hybrid to learn what works best for our organisation and our people. So I think there's been a lot of talk around learning by osmosis and to Richard's point,
00:06:36 Sophie
it's not always the best. But how do we harness what we had, make it more formalised, and then trial and error as we work
00:06:42 Sophie
our way through hybrid.
00:06:44 Victoria
Yeah, it's a real challenge this one, isn't it? For a different way of working, for hybrid. What we're trying to do as as employers, is to ensure that we're offering a really individualised, flexible workplace for people to pick and choose how they see fit to work. But at the same time
00:07:05 Victoria
ensuring that people are able to attend the office frequently enough to be able to continue to develop their teams
00:07:13 Victoria
within the office environment. So it's about finding that balance between what's right for an individual and then what's right for the broader team, and ensuring that people understand that.
00:07:23 Richard
I think now as companies-- so employees now want more flexibility, because we've given it to them for so long,
00:07:29 Richard
And if you're a firm that's going to say, well, actually we want you all back to the office. You run the risk of those employees leaving, so they'll go and they'll join a firm that has hybrid working.
00:07:37 Richard
But if that hybrid working is still leaning against osmosis, they're not going to learn anything, they're going to
00:07:43 Richard
fail and they're going to either leave of their own accord, or you're going to fire them, because it's not working. So you have to replace it with something and find a mechanism to train them in a different way.
00:07:54 Clare
We know talent management and recruitment challenges won't fit the one size fits all strategy. How can business leaders develop or align their people strategies to the overall business strategy?
00:08:06 Richard
There's loads of things. This goes back to my point before, where you have to sort out your current employee base, so you have to have your current employees working there and being happy to work there.
00:08:15 Richard
So actually there is almost like the message is coming out that you are the best place to work.
00:08:20 Richard
And then when people come to interview with you, you've got to make that process as great as possible. They can't have a terrible recruitment experience.
00:08:28 Richard
Otherwise, they're never going to join. And I think you're not just up against the other people where they're interviewing (or those other companies rather), so they'll be interviewing with you, and there may be interviewing with three others. You also run the risk of the counter offer
00:08:40 Richard
from their
00:08:40 Richard
current firm. So that when you offer them, if you're only offering, and I know it's not only about money, but if you're only offering a small increase with very few benefits, and then what's the
00:08:51 Richard
motivation to leave? As their current company, where they're comfortable, they've got leg for service, they they're invested, they like working with their team. They're gonna offer them £2000
00:09:00 Richard
to stay and your offering 2000 pounds to leave. It's not enough, it has to be more to it and I see it's not money, it's just money.
00:09:08 Richard
There has to be this career progression. We're going to invest in you. It's a great place to work. We're going to give you these perks.
00:09:12 Richard
There's more holiday and, actually, when you join here, you're going to have a career.
00:09:17 Victoria
Yeah, completely agree. It's about the employee value proposition, isn't it? Which is essentially the value that you offer to your employees in exchange for what they bring back to you in the workplace.
00:09:29 Victoria
So what is it about your particular company that makes you stand out? What's unique to you? And that's what you really need to be thinking about. And that's all of those things
00:09:38 Victoria
that Rich has just mentioned.
00:09:40 Sophie
But I think there's a point
00:09:42 Sophie
in here that you have to be mindful of your own mindset as you go
00:09:45 Sophie
into this, because
00:09:48 Sophie
yes, there's a talent wall, but that doesn't mean
00:09:53 Sophie
the desperation of getting talent should be seeping through and into the way that you process your recruitment. Because that's the thing that I worry about that you still want to be able to attract
00:10:05 Sophie
the talent that you require within your organisation in order to be successful and you need to really think
00:10:12 Sophie
through what you are doing, what is this process of recruitment? And not just, "I need to quickly get people in the door, because I've got loads of work and people need to be doing the job". And it's moving away from the mentality that your HR function hires and fires people, and start to think about it much more holistically around: Why are we bringing these people in?
00:10:32 Sophie
What do we want them to do and how do we give them the best experience from interview all the way through
00:10:39 Sophie
to them joining you and then potentially one day leaving you? So I would encourage people not to just think it in the moment,
00:10:47 Sophie
"this is a really quick decision, we need to get people in", and think about it much
00:10:51 Sophie
more broadly than that.
00:10:52 Richard
I know. I find it bizarre that when you talk to a client and if your clients are going to go buy a £50,000 machine,
00:10:59 Richard
they'll think about it for three months. They'll talk about it. They'll have numerous meetings about it. They'll deliberate it forever, and then they may make a decision to purchase it. When it comes to hiring somebody, they do a 45 minute interview and they go, "Yeah, they'll they seem alright."
00:11:12 Richard
And it's a 50 grand salary. And for somebody that they're not going to invest in, they're not going to really train,
00:11:18 Richard
and they know they're probably not a good fit, so they're probably going to leave anyway, but we've
00:11:22 Richard
got the vacancies, so we'll just fill it.
00:11:23 Clare
Yeah, I think it's important for businesses to think about the cost of this fallout of recruitment in both time and money.
00:11:30 Sophie
It's also incredibly difficult to develop people when you bring them
00:11:30 Clare
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:34 Sophie
in, and you know that they don't fit into your organisation. You don't really have a great idea of what they're bringing from a skill or behavioural point of view. And so what you're saying is, we want to have this great employee experience,
00:11:46 Sophie
but how do we develop individuals that we've bought in in a really rapid decision making process? And we don't really know what we're getting. So how do we know
00:11:54 Sophie
how to develop them, because we don't know where their starting point is, where they want to get to and how we're going to help get them there.
00:12:00 Richard
I still think growing your own is a much more logical approach, because it means that you can get the people that you've got and the people that you've got working for you.
00:12:08 Richard
You can promote them through the ranks. Obviously if they're good and they're keen and you can support them and they've got that management potential, they can move up and then you can recruit at the lower level and therefore you're not really recruiting on the skill, you're recruiting on the will.
00:12:21 Richard
So you're recruiting on that enthusiasm, and that's a lot easier to recruit for when you can train
00:12:26 Richard
them up.
00:12:27 Victoria
I do agree with what you're saying, which I think grow your own is great, but where does that sit with people who don't want jobs for life anymore?
00:12:36 Richard
No, they don't. But why don't they? Why don't they? And so I say this all the time: So you know you've got five people that leave university and they go off and they're go get jobs and they meet in the pub five years later.
00:12:47 Richard
No one wants to be the one who says, I'm still doing the same job, in the same company I did five years ago.
00:12:52 Richard
They all want to have this progression and they all want to say that they've had it. But you can still have that progression
00:12:56 Richard
in the firm that you joined when you graduated, you don't have to leave. We're just conditioned to think that we should, and historically it was always better to leave because you got a bigger pay
00:13:05 Richard
rise. And companies always, you know, we've done it. We're people leaders. We understand it. You just give them a 2% rise, because you think it will keep them happy.
00:13:13 Richard
But then someone down the road if going to offer them10 grand and then you'll take the risk. But really, that's because we're undervaluing people and we're exploiting them to a degree.
00:13:21 Richard
And we shouldn't
00:13:22 Richard
do that. We need to look after them and make sure that
00:13:25 Richard
this is a place where it's a job for life if they want it.
00:13:29 Victoria
And it comes back to a point that was raised previously around ensuring that we understand what motivates and incentivizes them as individuals. So there might not be one career path or one progression opportunity that fits all, you need to really get to the bottom of what it is that the individuals want and allow them to progress in that way.
00:13:50 Richard
Like I don't think you could do a one size fits all anything. I think that when it comes to even appraisals and one to ones, if you've got somebody who does a very transitional job where they do the same thing every day, do you really need to have a one to one with them every two weeks to make sure that they're OK and they're supported? We'll probably not. If you've got somebody who's new to a role
00:14:09 Richard
and it's very challenging, and there's lots of things happening then yes, you probably do.
00:14:14 Clare
Thanks all, now turning to recruitment, but we know that demand of talent is incredibly high and we know it's not all about the money. What else can businesses do to ensure that the employer of choice for strong candidates?
00:14:28 Richard
But businesses evolve and they you know, I remember years ago I was working with a really small and really small marcomms company and there was only about 20 of them. They're all very
00:14:37 Richard
young, they went to the pub every night. They had Friday drinks. They went on weekends away. They had a week retreat and as the company started to grow, and those people started to get older and they started to have families and kids, they don't want to do that anymore.
00:14:49 Richard
But the business owners thought that was the ethos of the firm. So they almost like forced it on them. And then they all started leaving and going to
00:14:57 Richard
other companies. I think you have to evolve, as your people will change over time and all your people will develop and you need to develop with it and change with people strategies as well. You know, two years ago we wouldn't have even had a conversation
00:15:10 Richard
about hybrid working.
00:15:11 Sophie
Fundamentally, come back to how we understand our people as well as the time that we take,
00:15:18 Sophie
not just within the people function, but as business leaders, to understand the humans that we have hired into our organisation.
00:15:26 Sophie
Because I think a lot of this boils down to yes, we want to make sure there's alignment between what the business is trying to achieve and what our people are looking for, and that we want everyone to feel like individuals. We can only
00:15:37 Sophie
do that if we actually understand what they want. So having a connection and a communication and a dialogue within the business, so that we can understand what people
00:15:45 Sophie
are looking for
00:15:46 Sophie
was fundamental to that, and I think that's a
00:15:48 Sophie
lot of what Victoria and I are trying to do from a retention point of view is understand what our individuals are looking for. So rolling out techniques of collecting that information, whether that be engagement surveys or polls surveys or actually spending much more time with the people
00:16:07 Sophie
that are doing the job, and in hybrid that's going to be challenging. Because we've got to try and mix up how we do that, but I think it's all about understanding who we have working in our organisation and what do they
00:16:17 Sophie
really want.
00:16:19 Sophie
And I think we have to do that in order to be able to allow them to be treated as individuals.
00:16:25 Richard
I think we have to make sure we listen to what they say and not what
00:16:27 Richard
we think they are saying, because well--
00:16:29 Sophie
Yeah, don't make assumptions.
00:16:31 Richard
That's right, so pulse surveys. I love pulse surveys. I think employee surveys are great. I think you've got to be really careful about when you do the timing of them.
00:16:38 Richard
If you're going to do them in the first week of January, don't expect them to be glowing. I think if you're going to do a pulse survey, be careful what you're asking.
00:16:44 Richard
I had a client. I asked him if we were a fortune cookie, what would it say on the inside?
00:16:51 Richard
And somebody actually wrote "redundancies are coming", and they didn't even look at it or acknowledge it. So they just ignored it. So that person now thinks redundancies are coming.
00:17:00 Richard
But they just left it. So you've got to be really careful what you do with this stuff. And when it comes back you've either got to do an action and you've got to respond to it, or you've got some acknowledgement where you say, yeah, we understand that's what everyone is asking, but we can't do it for this reason or we're looking at it or something like that. You cannot ignore it.
00:17:19 Clare
Turning to the market, what other solutions are you seeing businesses use to develop their people strategy?
00:17:24 Clare
OK.
00:17:25 Richard
Yeah, so people don't know what they don't know and I think even established people teams really you get you get lost in your own environment.
00:17:33 Richard
You get lost in your own company. You don't necessarily see the wood for the trees all the time. You know, sometimes you need a reset and you just need to look at everything again and you sometimes need somebody to
00:17:44 Richard
help you and we developed a tool, which is at our Talent 360, and we go in and we talk to clients about eight key areas and we spend pretty much a day with the senior leadership team discussing all these different techniques and tactics that they've got to try and retain their talent.
00:18:00 Richard
Some of them think that everything is OK and then when we talk about it, we dig into it, we
00:18:05 Richard
find out there's a bit more. We were doing with a with a company a few months
00:18:09 Richard
ago and they said that their commission structure was quite difficult to understand, but their sales guys were fine with it.
00:18:15 Richard
And when we looked at it, we talked about it a bit more. We had the HR manager in there and we were talking about the sales guys and they were all leaving and we were asking why they were leaving and it was all money. And then when we delved into it, actually the commission structure being confusing wasn't
00:18:29 Richard
working, so they needed to simplify it, but that was one minor change that we worked on them with, which actually meant that they could retain their sales guys, which is obviously what they needed to grow.
00:18:40 Richard
And it's very hard sometimes to to be critical of your own organisation I think.
00:18:45 Victoria
Yeah, it goes back to that point
00:18:46 Victoria
you made a minute ago, about you should not make assumptions. So to Clare's question around leadership, the leaders absolutely need to understand how people feel and not
00:19:00 Victoria
to make assumptions
00:19:01 Victoria
and react accordingly.
00:19:03 Richard
The tendency to make assumptions and we don't want to know. So when we do a staff survey, we ask questions in a way that we want to get a positive response, and that's ridiculous.
00:19:14 Richard
What you really need to do is ask the questions so that you get a response that's slightly negative that you can do something with, and I know that when I've spoken to clients and said, why don't we do a survey? They say,
00:19:24 Richard
no, no 'cause we've done this and this and this and it's really unsettled at the moment, so we better not ask them 'cause it will come back all negative.
00:19:31 Richard
Well, when do you want to ask them? Then when you've done something really good? Let's find out what's negative and work on it. Once they're leaving, I know.
00:19:35 Sophie
Once they leave.
00:19:39 Richard
I know the only time you tell people that they were valued is when they've resigned. It's bananas.
00:19:44 Victoria
Yeah, and you focus on exit interviews rather than on stay conversations
00:19:49 Victoria
about what people really value whilst they're in the job.
00:19:53 Richard
Actually, it's so true. Let's say you maybe should ban the exit interview and replace it with the please stay interview.
00:19:59 Victoria
Well absolutely. 'cause then you've got an opportunity to fix whatever it might be that might lead them to resign further down the line.
00:20:06 Richard
Yeah, I know. Well, it's funny that actually, because I think we we don't really encourage people to talk to us before they're thinking about leaving, and it would be great if they did and it would be great if they came and said to us:
00:20:16 Richard
I'm really thinking about my future. I'm thinking about leaving, because I'm not getting this, this and this out of this company or I'm feeling like this. But because
00:20:25 Richard
we don't encourage that and we don't encourage employees to be that
00:20:29 Richard
open, they feel like if they do do that, there's going to be some negative repercussions. And maybe there is, and maybe we need to train our people managers to deal with that differently.
00:20:38 Richard
So actually we can fix it. And if somebody you know we know, 'cause we're part of a global network, if somebody comes to us and says I really want to go to America, so I'm going to resign, we could probably help them stay in the network and move them that way.
00:20:50 Richard
If somebody says that they're not getting what they want out of it 'cause they wanna go into a different part, you know they're in HR, they wanna go to marketing.
00:20:58 Richard
Surely you could try and help them move to marketing internally. At least you can keep them in the business and I think that we don't encourage people enough to to be honest, I don't think.
00:21:08 Victoria
Yeah, or to have enough regular conversations with their managers.
00:21:12 Victoria
Because hopefully that would be picked up, and when we talk about stay conversations which would be implemented like for structurally.
00:21:18 Victoria
But actually, if there were regular conversations between individuals and their line managers, we wouldn't need to have a structural conversation around it, because they would automatically know even when they've picked up in their one to ones that they have with their teams.
00:21:31 Sophie
But does this not come back to just organisational culture? Because are we not saying here that this is fundamentally about psychological
00:21:38 Sophie
safety? So if we had psychological safety within our organisations, people wouldn't worry about making mistakes or having open conversations or this whole idea of you'd have the obligation to dissent.
00:21:51 Sophie
You would want to say to someone that you know there's something that's wrong here. We need to do something about it, but you have to create an environment where it's safe
00:21:58 Sophie
to do that, and people feel trusted and encouraged to speak up and have candour. And I think that's potentially where some of these things don't
00:22:08 Sophie
work so well because we haven't created that environment for employees to be their authentic self and speak up when they need to.
00:22:15 Victoria
Do you think that hybrid working or or the pandemic with complete remote working has sort of forced a bit more of a culture of trust around those things though?
00:22:26 Richard
I think hybrid working's meant that we've had to
00:22:28 Richard
trust people and because we've had to trust people, they felt a bit more empowered to do things that they wouldn't normally do, and I think that's had a benefit to teams and individuals alike, I believe.
00:22:40 Sophie
Do you think that this is long lived trust?
00:22:44 Sophie
Well, do you think this is individuals thinking? Well, when the the pandemic ends and we go into hybrid, we'll just tell them to come back in and that will solve all of our problems.
00:22:54 Sophie
'cause we're just getting back in the office and once they're back in, you know we go back to the old way of working. And that's where I think we need to be considering, you know.
00:23:03 Sophie
Those individuals that might want to encourage their teams to go back to the old way of working and getting more office time.
00:23:11 Sophie
And then the journey of how trust is actually intrinsically built. And what does that really mean in a hybrid world?
00:23:18 Sophie
'cause I think there's a lot of people just looking forward to it. Going back to the way it was.
00:23:23 Richard
But I don't think you can go back to the
00:23:25 Richard
way it was.
00:23:25 Sophie
No, I don't either, but I think they're deluded when they think it. But I think that's what some of them think will happen.
00:23:31 Richard
Well, one of the High Street banks this week has come out saying that everybody loves the office and he wants them all back
00:23:37 Richard
(you know the CEO) and the grim reality is we're going to be leaving because they don't want to go back there. I think the danger is, is that we've been in a pandemic.
00:23:45 Richard
Where people have been locked in their homes and they haven't been able to go out, things are now going to open up. And what are we going to expect them to do?
00:23:52 Richard
You get on the train and commute, not go to the pub. Not go out for dinner or do the things that they want to do.
00:23:57 Richard
We're expecting them to sit on a train. Well, that's not going to wash, and I think the fact is that as the market opens up and there's more jobs available, people are looking at those jobs that are offering hybrid working.
00:24:06 Richard
And if you look at the job boards now and you look at the ads, crikey it's unbelievable. People, literally
00:24:12 Richard
in the headers where it's got the job and the title of the job, it's saying how flexible people are willing to be to get the right people. And every job is a London job, so you could live in Liverpool and have a London job, because no one's expecting you really to go there that often.
00:24:26 Richard
That is a two hour commute and you can do it once a week or once a month, or something like that, and that's acceptable.
00:24:32 Victoria
Yeah, completely agree. Flexible working arrangements have got to be at the forefront of any recruitment strategy that you have surely otherwise you're never going to get the talent that you want.
00:24:43 Richard
No, you're not because everyone else who's got the flex for working is going to get the talent. And this is the problem.
00:24:45 Victoria
Will take the talent.
00:24:48 Richard
So anybody who's felt slightly mistreated during this pandemic by their employer is going to leave, and that's not because they were necessarily put on furlough and forgotten about. That could be the people that weren't put on furlough and had to do everyone else's work.
00:24:58 Richard
And now they're feeling aggrieved, and they're going to go somewhere else, and someone offering them more money, more holiday, better flexibility, work from home.
00:25:06 Richard
Well, they already agreed. No counter offer is ever going to make them stay for that company. So really your advice now is, if you are that company, you need to do something about that before they start moving and you need to try and work on it and
00:25:18 Richard
almost show them that they are valued and demonstrate that and give them the things that they're looking for if you can.
00:25:24 Sophie
Does this go full circle back to what you said Richard about how
00:25:28 Sophie
we need to be
00:25:29 Sophie
looking after the people we have in the business first?
00:25:32 Sophie
Because actually it's all well and good that we talk about these flexible working patterns and this approach to hybrid, but we haven't actually been in hybrid before and we don't really know what it's going to work like. We've got an example of working from home,
00:25:44 Sophie
from the pandemic, but we don't know what the future will hold, and so we need to ensure that the people we have within our organisation understand how flexible working works for them so that they can live and breathe it. So then as people are coming into the business they can see
00:25:59 Sophie
that it actually exists. Because a lot of my fear is, you see in the press organisations that have become completely flexible,
00:26:07 Sophie
but then you're hearing from the employees that work there that they're working 70-80 hours a week. So what's truly flexible
00:26:15 Sophie
if you're working 80 hours a week? And so we have to make sure that the people within our organisation
00:26:20 Sophie
get to experience those benefits of the flexible working. So when new people come in, they can see what it really means in practise.
00:26:26 Richard
But don't you think we've got real opportunities now about that? I think so. People we know that sickness absence has dropped hasn't it massively and one of the reasons for that is actually people don't have a massive commute.
00:26:38 Richard
And if you wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go to work, and you feel a bit under the weather, you're probably going to go sick and without hybrid working, you wouldn't be able to do anything.
00:26:46 Richard
You wouldn't have your computer or anything like that, so you literally can't do any work. Whereas actually now you could get up at 5 to 9:00,
00:26:53 Richard
and if you've got real flexible working, it could be 5 to 10, because you're allowing people to work from 10 o'clock or their core hours.
00:27:00 Richard
And actually, you know, and I know that you feel a bit groggy in the morning. You perk up in the afternoon. You feel a bit fraudulent, and because you're sitting at home and you're sick, then actually you feel better.
00:27:08 Richard
And so if that is the case with hybrid, you can actually just start working. And if you feel like
00:27:13 Richard
you need to go for a lie down. you go lie down. It's a completely unwritten rulebook now that we can help write.
00:27:23 Clare
Is there an impact on incentives and benefits?
00:27:25 Richard
So that goes back to Victoria's point that you have to look at everybody
00:27:28 Richard
as an individual, and I think with hybrid working, we're not limited now.
00:27:32 Richard
We've already said about Liverpool and hiring people further afield, but we can go global because there's no reason not to, and that there are going to be some tax implications in that.
00:27:41 Richard
And there's going to be some very tricky contract implications in that as well, but actually also what you're offering is
00:27:46 Richard
going to change because you know 30,000 pounds
00:27:51 Richard
over here is going to be very different to what 30,000 pounds is going to be worth in Latvia.
00:27:57 Richard
But you're right, you can't give a specific benefit that's only a benefit over here to somebody in Latvia. That's crackers. That's not going to help them. You've got to find something that's compatible and motivational for them over there.
00:28:09 Victoria
And it's very difficult to do that as part of a recruitment process. As you said earlier, you only get a short amount of time with the individual that you're speaking to, so you really need to try and find a way to work out in that time what it is that incentivizes them.
00:28:22 Victoria
'cause if we're talking about making an offer as part of an employment package, you haven't got that lead in time to try and work out what it is.
00:28:29 Victoria
That is going to incentivize
00:28:30 Victoria
them to try and use the time in an interview process to understand what exactly is going to motivate and incentivize that individual, and then try and work a way of building that into the package that you give them.
00:28:44 Sophie
There's a lot of complexity behind this, though isn't there? So
00:28:47 Sophie
if
00:28:50 Sophie
organisations are listening to this and thinking about actually these things sound great. There's a lot of complexity behind extending your workforce out globally, and that's exactly why they would require something like
00:29:04 Sophie
the support of Richard and the 360, because you need to understand that complexity before you can even get to that interview process.
00:29:10 Sophie
But I was just going to say to Richard's point
00:29:12 Sophie
about what you
00:29:14 Sophie
put out there as a reason to attract,
00:29:16 Sophie
(talk about your holiday package or flexible benefits). This is why you need to also be talking about what the growth opportunities are.
00:29:23 Sophie
So to your original point where you were talking about the five mates down the pub and their
00:29:27 Sophie
path of progression.
00:29:28 Sophie
Now we need to be telling people from the attraction stage. What can we give you that is more than the monetary, more than the benefit package? We can help to create your career for you. We can help
00:29:41 Sophie
to upskill you to the point that you're so employable, everyone is going to want you, you know that's the kind of thing we need to be saying.
00:29:48 Richard
McDonald's nailed this years ago, didn't they? Because they rewarded people with stars, so that
00:29:55 Richard
it literally was a badge of honour, wasn't it? And people wanted to get to those five stars, but there was not necessarily any monetary value to it. But it was recognition for how they were developing and stuff like that.
00:30:09 Clare
It's a challenging market and as the saying goes, how long is a piece of string? I mean, how long do you think current conditions will last?
00:30:16 Richard
I think if you want to look at the future, you have to look at the past and the last time where we had a period of time like this where we were in colossal amounts of debt and the market picked up very very rapidly was back in the 40s and we didn't actually fall into a recession until the 70s. So for the whole of the 50s and
00:30:36 Richard
Or, well all of the 50s and the 60s and a bit of the 70s. We're actually quite buoyant. And you know, if you recall back some of us--you probably can't remember this--
00:30:45 Richard
but back in the 1960s, you could walk out of a job in the morning and have another one in the afternoon, and we run the risk of going back to that, and that could be for the next 20 years.
00:30:54 Richard
So unless something major happens like a war or another
00:30:57 Richard
pandemic, this could
00:30:58 Richard
be running on for this could just be
00:31:00 Richard
normal for a long long time.
00:31:02 Victoria
One thing that is inevitable. The longer it goes on, the more the wages are going to go up, and so that's why it's really, really important that we take a good look at what other things other than base salary we can use to reward people, because otherwise we're going
00:31:15 Victoria
to get this big
00:31:16 Victoria
war of of salaries against one another.
00:31:21 Richard
No, you won't.
00:31:21 Victoria
For a better way of saying it.
00:31:22 Richard
No, but you're right. I think that's why we've got to expand that. That's why I think we've got to now say, well, actually we don't have to recruit this.
00:31:29 Richard
Certainly we don't have to recruit and staff these. We can go further afield and I think that going further afield will balance that out a little bit.
00:31:36 Richard
I believe.
00:31:37 Clare
But that investment in learning and development should ultimately create more benefit for the organisation, making the business more productive and effective in the long term.
00:31:45 Richard
Can't do that without a budget and you need to have that. Where before, we would say to Pete, you know our clients would traditionally say to their managers, you know, train your people and if you need some external training, that's fine, but it wasn't structured
00:31:57 Richard
enough, and now what we're seeing is actually we need to have more structured training and we're inviting actually people to apply and become L&D specialists who work for companies to advise in that.
00:32:08 Richard
To link it all together and I always say that actually when you've got a job or a person in a job, you have the job spec and you have the competency so you have the job
00:32:18 Richard
role that they should be doing. The competency that they possess in order for them to do the job role and you align all that to training
00:32:24 Richard
and development, so that if they don't completely have the full competencies to do the role, then you lean on the training and development side to make sure that they can do it and you do that every level.
00:32:34 Richard
So when you promote people, you move them to the next job up what you're saying to them is, well, this is the job role we want to put you into. These are the competencies that you need to do that job successfully.
00:32:44 Richard
But rather than do the old way of we're going to promote you and wait for you to fail. What we're gonna do first, before we promote you, is give you the training to give you the competencies to allow you to do the job, and you can't do that without having a structured L&D approach.
00:32:58 Sophie
I mean and from my perspective, from my own network, budgets are increasing rather than decreasing. So when you've looked at events in the past where times have been challenging, L&D is usually one of the early ones to
00:33:12 Sophie
be cut and actually this time, it's quite the opposite because we need to re-skill
00:33:18 Sophie
and upskill at the same time. Learning and development budgets are typically on the increase, but we're also pushing towards more tailored learning.
00:33:25 Sophie
And actually that requires a bit more of a budget than the previous time when we might have invested more in training. We're producing much more
00:33:32 Sophie
one to one tailored learning experiences. So that does actually require more time and monetary investment. Actually, if you want to get it right.
00:33:43 Clare
Are we seeing an increase on
00:33:45 Clare
learning and development budgets?
00:33:47 Richard
We're training them in how to do their job better so that we want them to perform better. So whether that's because they want to be better sales guys, we want them to be better marketeers.
00:33:55 Richard
We want them to be better managers. We do that because we get a return from it and if we don't do it, they will leave and
00:34:02 Richard
they'll go somewhere else where they will do it.
00:34:04 Sophie
And that's why it kills me when we rip out a learning and development strategy from the people strategy and do it in isolation.
00:34:11 Sophie
Because you need it to be a fundamental part of your people strategy, because it ties into everything. The quality and calibre of the candidate coming in the door to how you off-board someone is all impacted by your learning and development journey.
00:34:25 Richard
I think even when you off-board people, it's done in a positive way. I think the best thing is that people go and they say I worked for this firm.
00:34:32 Richard
It was great. I got everything out of it that I could possibly get out of it, but I was at the point in my career where I needed to go in a different direction and they
00:34:39 Richard
couldn't do it for
00:34:40 Richard
me, but I would recommend anybody to work there. That's what we want.
00:34:42 Victoria
Completely, completely and then you keep in touch with them for a really good alumni programme. And hopefully they'll come back to you.
00:34:50 Richard
And be recommended.
00:34:50 Victoria
Bringing more yeah, bringing more skills.
00:34:51 Sophie
Yeah, I was gonna say that, bringing referrals.
00:34:54 Richard
Yes, it's a great place to work at if you're at this juncture of your career. This is the best firm for you.
00:34:54 Richard
It's a great place to work at if you're at this juncture of your career. This is the best firm for you.
00:34:59 Clare
Thanks all. I mean, the war on talent is clearly a big topic for business and I'm sure there are many conversations to come across boardroom tables. To wrap up, what would be your top three tips for a successful people strategy?
00:35:13 Richard
I think you need to do a full review of where you are and where you're going, and without that you're never going to get anywhere because you can't implement everything, and I think you really need to understand your people and what it is that they're looking for and then see if you can match that up with what you can offer.
00:35:28 Richard
And I think you really need to think about the future now and about what your future talent looks like.
00:35:33 Richard
So you don't just think about this year and next year, look way into the future.
00:35:39 Sophie
I think Richard just took the words out of my mouth. And so just to kind of repeat, because I think they're important, is humanise your processes.
00:35:49 Sophie
Remember that this is about people. I would try and encourage you to think more holistically. So to Richard's point of having,
00:35:59 Sophie
you know the whole plan,
00:36:00 Sophie
And this isn't just about hiring and firing, there's much more to it. And so to make sure that you understand the entire people experience. And probably going back to some of the things we've already talked about is to help create an environment within the current organisation with your current people and and not just think about those that you're bringing in. It's not
00:36:22 Sophie
just about the recruitment piece.
00:36:25 Victoria
Think about your employee value proposition. Think about hybrid or flexible working patterns. And remember one size doesn't fit all.
00:36:36 Clare
Thanks everybody. A review is so important and I'm certainly recommending to my clients the importance of a 360 review and sending them on to Richard for his help.
00:36:49 Clare
And thank you to my panel, to Richard, to Victoria and Sophie. And thanks to you all for listening. And if you'd like to find out more about the issues that we've discussed today and the Moore Kingston Smith HR 360 review, please do visit the Business Doctor Hub on the Moore Kingston Smith website. Many thanks.