For many years now, the team at Heat Recruitment in Bristol have been collating retrospective analytical data from their in-house software systems. These allow them to create a comparative salary data set across all the sectors that they work within. This year, they decided to formalise this data and make it more widely available, and asked their Associate Directors to pull together what they believe are the key take-outs and industry observations in their sectors. The links across our respective industries are apparent and we thought you would find the emerging trends very interesting.
In the first of a four part series, Managing Director Steve Preston takes us through his overview of a tumultuous year, but one from which common themes have emerged as we build back to our pre-pandemic economic levels.
As well as the very real human suffering over the past two years, I’m sure we would all agree that the Covid-19 pandemic has created huge chaos and uncertainty. Yet, for all that uncertainty, there are now green shoots emerging across businesses.
When considering the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on business and hiring, it’s important to remember that before the pandemic hit, companies were not necessarily in a bad place. In fact, many were already planning on growing their businesses, and we are now back in the position where we need to push forward. Because of this, we have seen many companies adopt somewhat of a catch-up mentality in their approach to recruitment.
But as well as changes to approaching recruitment, there have also been important changes to how we work and the lessons we’ve learned from the pandemic. Most notably, the widespread adoption of hybrid working, along with the use of online tools and apps for meetings and remote conferencing. Both of these changes have generally been seen as beneficial for everyone, as many of us are grateful for no longer having to travel two hours on a train in order to attend a meeting that is only an hour long.
That said, remote working has its downsides too: a common theme emerging which companies have been highlighting to us is a growing training and skills shortage. These days, when we speak to a company, they are far more likely to be looking to hire rather than not; this is largely the result of the period of approximately 8 months where ‘in office’ training has been impossible. I call it the ‘osmosis learning mentality’, where people sit amongst more experienced or senior colleagues and learn through watching and listening and often subliminally adopt their working practices and in-house procedures. We have noticed a void of this type of adaptive training and skill sets as a result of this missed time in the office environment that we believe will unfold over the next year or so. Identifying shortages in adaptive training is key for companies, and those who are working to avoid a growing skills gap should be looking to implement corrective moves quickly.
[contact-form-7 id=”373636″ title=”Heat Recruitment Salary Survey 2022″]
