Cost of living crisis: can employers afford to do nothing?
Just as we were starting to get back to normal post-pandemic, a new crisis has emerged. Employees are now struggling with living costs–including the cost of travelling to work. Can employers do anything about this–and should they?
Rolls Royce has offered 14,000 workers £2,000 and a 4% backdated pay rise. While 4% is lower than the rate of inflation (currently 9% in the UK), it at least shows that the company is aware of the crisis and looking to boost employee retention and attraction in the current candidate-short market.
Some employers have found the crisis has already affected productivity, with a recent study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) showing that 10% of employees have missed work because of financial problems. Companies that do nothing risk financially stressed employees becoming disengaged and distracted, with increased levels of mental illness and sickness absence.
While not every employer has deep enough pockets to hand out pay rises like Rolls-Royce, there are plenty of more creative ways to support employees, including:
• Increasing staff discounts
• Reviewing profit share arrangements
• Selling back unused holiday entitlement (make sure employees still take the statutory minimum)
• An emergency fund
• Interest-free crisis loans
• Season ticket loans
• Hybrid working to cut travel costs
• Staff food banks
• Financial wellbeing assistance
• An income streaming service like Wagestream so employees can access pay early
• Salary sacrifice schemes where employees can get childcare vouchers or buy a bicycle through a cycle-to-work scheme
Like the pandemic, this is uncharted terrain where employers need to learn as they go. Some employers may say they simply can’t afford to support their employees financially, but in the current talent drought, the real question is: can they afford not to?
Why employers need marketing flair more than ever
In the current skills shortage, attracting top talent is at least as important as attracting new customers—which means marketing needs to be part of every recruitment strategy.
Job ads alone will no longer cut it—in today’s market, you need to be targeting passive talent, people who are already in jobs. That means it’s no longer just a matter of employers interviewing candidates—in the new normal, candidates interview you. So how do you ace that interview?
First of all, you need to define your employer brand and proposition—the company culture and values and the opportunities you offer—and embed this in all your marketing and recruitment materials. Effective storytelling will get your message out there; content is king.
Make sure your company website and social media are as engaging as possible. Investing in professional video content to bring more personality to your brand can be well worth it. Your LinkedIn page should feature organic content like staff profiles, and feature the careers page prominently instead of hiding it away.
As well as refining your content, you need to understand your audience—what kind of media do your target candidates consume, what do they want in an employer, and what do they do with their free time? Get insights from your current employees on their interests and goals, and use these to develop candidate personas for each role. Be aware of your diversity, equality and inclusion messaging too, and make sure all the content you share reflects your company values.
Once you’ve got all this established, you can use marketing and strategic ad placement to target your ideal audience. This is why you need to get your marketing functions aligned with recruitment, whether that means bringing in outside expertise or upskilling in-house staff. Don’t let recruitment slide to the bottom of your marketing priority list; attracting customers means little without the staff to serve them.
Marketing and recruitment are both about attracting people. Knowing the latest, most relevant tools to attract targeted audiences can really set you apart from the competition. If your budget allows, working with a recruitment marketing expert is the best investment you can make in today’s competitive recruitment market.
Why Gen Zs need employers’ support more than ever
The first members of Gen Z graduated from university during COVID. These youngsters, the next generation after Millennials, are now aged 10-25. They are the workforce of the future.
Recent studies show Gen Zs and millennials already make up 38% of the global workforce; this will rise to 58% by 2030. What do employers need to know?
The outlook of the Gen Zs now entering the workforces is defined by the disruption caused by the pandemic. These workers saw the last critical months of their education disrupted, took their final classes and exams isolated in their rooms, and started their first job searches at a time when hardly anyone was hiring. After all that, they faced the challenges of remote onboarding and mentoring–difficult enough for anyone, let alone for a young person in their first job.
It’s important to remember this as you interact with Gen Z workers. While employers have always needed to support young people into the workplace, this is more vital than ever after the pandemic. Social interaction skills have taken a battering and confidence levels are low. Engaging with local employers helps to build young people’s confidence.
But don’t make the mistake of seeing Gen Zs as victims. They have skills and qualities that make them uniquely suited to dynamic, fast-changing environments, challenges and opportunities.
As digital natives, they’re beyond adept with technology, viewing it as an extension of themselves. They tend to have culturally diverse mindsets and broad horizons. And since workplace flexibility tops their list of employee benefits, they tend to adapt faster to remote working than older workers.
However, remote working does mean structured mentoring is vital to make sure they get enough coaching and guidance to internalise the company culture. Digital learning and pairing them with more senior employees will help them adjust. And the mentoring can go both ways, with the younger workers supporting their older buddies in learning new digital skills.
For a generation that loves flexibility, you can build trust and improve outcomes by setting expectations and accountability in a way that enhances the working-from-home experience, such as giving them KPIs based on quality of output rather than quantity of hours.
Just like people of any age, Gen Zs can also suffer from loneliness and mental illness. However, they may not readily cultivate meaningful face-to-face relationships or respond to feedback the way older generations do. However, their behaviour tends to be very much influenced by their peers, even if they haven’t met in person. Stress and anxiety can sap their morale and lead to absenteeism and attrition.
This means it’s vital not only to provide structured mental health support but also to be aware that Gen Zs may not show stress in the same ways you do and may need more proactive checking on their wellbeing.
Action steps for the Gen Z Workforce
In the book Working with Gen Z: A Handbook to Recruit, Retain, and Reimagine the Future Workforce after COVID-19, authors Nishizaki and DellaNeve asked what Gen Z’ers want from their employers. This is what appeals to them most:
- Feed them! Gen Z’s top perk is free food, especially healthy snacks. Remember many of these workers have been in poverty during the pandemic with parents losing jobs, and are only just learning to manage their own budgets and meal planning: the reality is that sometimes they’ll show up to work hungry.
- Align passion with mission. 85% of Gen Zs say the social impact or mission of their employer is an important factor when choosing a job.
- Target professional development. 97% of Gen Zs want job opportunities outside what they were originally hired for. Job rotation programmes will keep them engaged and teach new skills.
- Optimise in-person expectations. Surprisingly, Gen Zs prefer in-person training. Break the ice during onboarding for a good hybrid experience.
- Keep them interested. Gen Zs love employers who take steps to eliminate boredom in the workplace.
- High touch. Gen Zs want their manager to check in with them for 5-30 minutes at least once a day
- Mentor them. Gen Zs want a manager who acts as a mentoring coach and a friend.
- Open your mind. Gen Zs really need authority figures who aren’t set in their ways.
- Let them have their videos off. Gen Zs often work best by multitasking and don’t like being forced to be camera-ready.
Ultimately, how well you engage with Gen Zs will depend on your appreciation of their unique strengths and vulnerabilities. Older generations have much to learn from them as well as much to teach. By focusing on the benefits they bring to the workplace, you can build a stronger, more diverse and inclusive workforce.
Cloud computing: which way is the wind blowing?
Two decades ago, cloud computing was slow, inflexible and expensive. It’s now evolved into a sophisticated world of ‘cloud native’ software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based technologies, which have never had a terrestrial version.
Early cloud vendors were more interested in locking customers in than in supporting interoperability. That’s changed–the new cloud is democratic and open. Vendors of all sizes are striving to make cloud services more user-friendly and consistent across platforms: what specialists call a simplified unified platform experience.
This new ethos is also echoing across enterprise software platforms like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). And it’s not hard to see why. Enterprise software is often unusably complex thanks to acquisitions, product launch sprawl or the relabelling of existing services.
The cloud industry offers a promise: vendors understand that in the era of home working, customers need to be able to work across public and private clouds with a simplified application and more straightforward billing for data services. The industry has put a great deal of work into simplifying packaging, metering and pricing–one example is ‘reserved instances’, where customers can buy the amount of cloud they know they’ll need.
However, we’re still some way away from cloud that can simply be turned on and off, and Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 complaint that cloud is too expensive will still resonate with some. Enterprise cloud customers need to budget for ongoing support services like advanced security monitoring, testing, upgrades and system maintenance–and some of those costs may be unpredictable.
This means that despite the dramatic shortening of deployment windows thanks to COVID and the home working revolution, organisations shouldn’t move to the cloud without a solid plan. Cloud computing offers scalability, flexibility and changeable manageability, but only if you’re prepared for some rough weather.