It is almost four years since the first pandemic lockdowns, and even now, it doesn't seem long enough to get a proper perspective on how much the pandemic has changed things. It is already pretty clear that expectations of and attitudes to work have shifted considerably, with significant implications for recruiting and retention.
My Guest this week is Annette Andrews, Founder & Director of Acaria Coaching and a former Chief People Officer. Annette works with large organizations to help them adjust their people practices and policies to align with the post-pandemic perspectives of their employees and future employees. She has some valuable insights on what employers need to do to attract and retain the talent they need.
In the interview, we discuss:
- The current challenges for employers and why these are different from what we've seen in the past.
- Benefits, culture and wellbeing
- Showcasing the employee experience
- Implications for retention
- The human impact of a deteriorating candidate experience
- Five generations in the workforce
- Dealing with systemic ageism
- Talent mobility across industries and disciplines
- Changing the structure of the people function.
- How technology will shape the future
[00:00:00] Support for this podcast comes from Harva, the industry-leading hiring solution,
[00:00:05] helping organizations optimize their talent decisions.
[00:00:09] Rooted in over 35 years of rich data insights, backed by I.O. psychology and cognitive science,
[00:00:18] Harva delivers a suite of automated solutions that enable have shifted considerably, with big implications for recruiting and retention. My guest this week is Annette Andrews, founder and director of Arcaria Coaching and a former Chief People Officer. Annette works with large organisations to help
[00:01:41] them adjust their people practices and policies to be the past? I think post-pandemic, there's been a huge amount of change. It's not just a single change,
[00:03:03] it's multiple changes and it's the pace of a two-way street now and candidates are taking just as much a good look at you as you are at them when recruiting and they
[00:04:21] will choose, they will make a choice as whether you're somebody they organization, the culture and particularly the employee experience. So make the information you share, your website etc really feel that you know create that connection and chemistry with people that are potentially going to join you but are also employed by you. So it's showcase your employees and hear their
[00:05:40] voice, tell their stories as well.. It's really important to keep that relationship going. Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit more about the whole candidate experience, the issues around candidate experience in a second. Before we do, though, obviously, employee experience,
[00:07:01] culture, all those kinds of things, they sure you talk about it, identifying the gaps if they're not there, because quite often we're doing stuff, we've just sort of taken it for granted that people know about it and appreciate it. But also I'm saying to organisations now, what you had pre-
[00:08:20] pandemic as a workplace environment, benefits, policies, meetings etc has that pace of change has taken many of us by surprise. Gosh, isn't it tough being a manager or a leader at the moment? You've got to cope with all of this yourself and what it means for you and your family. You've got to cope with it for what it means from a business delivery and customer perspective. And then you've also got to make sure that your team and your business are
[00:09:41] performing with all those changes on. So it's that group that I think we should really spend to be like touch points. People need to know where they stand in the process at each step of the way. And for me, there is a quid pro quo. If you go through a recruitment process, you deserve feedback at the various stages of that process. One, to help you with the ongoing process
[00:11:00] if you're still in it for our organization,
[00:11:02] whichever that might be.
[00:11:04] But actually, you know, really negative impact on the brand
[00:12:23] because that individual is gonna share their experience
[00:12:25] with everyone else, friends, all in theark and attitude. Subscribe today wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.
[00:15:01] One of the other key things and key changes that is going to keep all that skill set and experience and the volume that we need. Now, it's not just as easy as recruiting because I spot all the time that adverts, recruitment consultants are focused on the youth end, shall we say, apprentices, graduates, people that have had below management experience
[00:16:23] or early stages of management experience, they retiring half the time and with us half the time and like why not it's a great way to have really valuable skills and
[00:17:41] experience but equally to upskill others, the culture, the environment, etc. And that is all possible. I think people miss out on talent because they thinking about moving forward? I am a passionate advocate for everyone is your talent in the organisation and any role that you're advertising externally should be open to your internal talent as well.
[00:20:21] And we should be actively encouraging people to apply is literally talent management by integrating all of those day-to-day routine operational activities optimized by technology that frees up HR resource to be doing the fun stuff in terms of strategy, talent development, etc. We also need the data and we need data from end to end of the employee life cycle so we can really track how successful our policies, our programs are,
[00:23:03] etc. And again I'm a great believer in in dashboards and working those through You can search all the past episodes at RecruitingFuture.com On that site you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track about everything that's coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I'll be back next time and I hope you'll join me.