PEOPLE
How to get smarter around recruitment and retention By Fiona Scott, Features Editor
One of the major challenges faced by small business owners is around recruitment and retention. How do you overcome this issue when it’ s unlikely to go away any time soon? For some sectors, including financial services, hospitality and social care, it’ s an ongoing headache.
How do you overcome this issue when it’ s unlikely to go away any time soon? For some sectors, including financial services, hospitality and social care, it’ s an ongoing headache.
This challenge has come into sharper focus as the fallout from the increase in Employers’ National Insurance really trickles down. That extra cost has had an impact for some local employers, with some making redundancies and others calling a halt on recruitment.
When challenged on his visit to Swindon, the Prime Minister( yes, we did ask about this) said he recognised that it had been difficult to deal with, yet the money was needed to support public services. There’ s no indication in the medium term that this measure will be reversed.
According to the Global Payroll Alliance, the effect has been clear to see with 163,000 fewer employees on the payroll between October last year to July this year. For the South West, that’ s an estimated loss of over 9,000 roles, which is about 0.36 per cent.
Nationally, the overall loss of roles is estimated to have been about 0.53 per cent. The South West, so far, has seen less of an impact than many other areas of the UK.
However, there has been an impact, as Jon White, founder and owner of RWB Auctions, explains.
“ Like many other businesses, we found the changes announced in last Autumn’ s Budget incredibly challenging. The increase in Employer National Insurance Contributions placed a significant financial burden on us when costs were already rising across the board. Unfortunately, this left us with no option but to restructure and reduce our employee headcount.
“ These were not decisions we took lightly. As a significant employer in Royal Wootton Bassett, we value
10 www. tbeswindonandwilts. co. uk our team and our role in the local economy, but the reality is that measures like this force businesses to make difficult choices to remain sustainable. We hope future policy decisions will consider the cumulative impact on SMEs, which are the backbone of the UK’ s employment landscape.”
One area which has struggled with recruitment for many years is social care. It seems that this challenge could become greater as the Government has closed applications for the skilled worker visa to try to encourage care providers to recruit from within England. In fact, the Government has now said that care providers must prove that they have tried to recruit locally before they will be allowed to look for overseas workers to fill vacancies.
Janet Shreeve of Shreeve Care Services, based in Devizes, believes this‘ stick approach’ to force the care sector to recruit local talent won’ t work.
“ I cannot believe this Government seriously believes we are able to recruit carers from the
UK without resorting to any overseas carers.“ Any care provider that I know is always trying to recruit locally, but faces challenge after challenge with regard to finding people. This is particularly true within the domiciliary care sector, as so many find the rushing from one call to another with so little time stressful due to not having enough time to spend with clients.
“ The strict demands we have for our carers make it more difficult with so many regulations to follow. As a nation, we assume other people will look after the sick or elderly, whilst so many overseas workers have grown up looking after people as they get older.
“ Most media focus is on the NHS, with care being a poor afterthought and without the recognition at the same level, how do we hope to retain the workforce?”
While the Government seems to be taking more of a‘ stick approach’ to social care – possibly to silence voices around issues of immigration- there are things that employers can do to recruit and keep staff, according to recruitment specialist Ashlea Fisher.
She runs iRecruit4 based on the Whitehill Industrial Estate in Royal Wootton Bassett and works mainly in recruiting for bluecollar roles, often temporary. This forms about 70 per cent of the team’ s work. She has seen recruitment drop significantly in logistics, warehousing and related industries.
“ What we’ re finding is small businesses are really struggling because of the increase of costs, which is having an impact on the jobs that they’ re recruiting for.
“ What businesses are doing now is they’ re trying to get much more for the money that they’ re offering. Recently we had a client come to us and say‘ We need someone who can drive a van, operate in the warehouse, has got a forklift licence, but also is IT literate and can do all of the stock on the computer.’
“ I think the pinch point with it was when they told us that they were paying minimum wage for a job like that. If you position that in the market at minimum wage at £ 12.21, and you compare that with what some competitors are paying, you’ re asking a lot for not a lot of money. It’ s actually like trying to find a unicorn sometimes.”
For Ashlea, two answers to attracting the right staff include offering training to upskill and offering benefits – and not classing an employee’ s legal rights as a‘ benefit’.
“ Companies are going to have to start getting realistic about time frames. We are saying to them,‘ I can find you someone who ticks three boxes out of your four. Are you prepared to train box four, yes or no?’