Recruitment 2.0

This week’s roundup introduces three companies that give staff ‘puppy leave’, reveals the top 10 cities for recruitment this spring and asks whether the rise of the robots could lead to human job quotas.

As a potential NHS nursing crisis was averted at short notice last week, the lack of a comprehensive long-term workforce planning strategy was identified as a serious threat to the NHS’s sustainability by the Lord’s Select Committee.

As the skills gap grows, HR must pull out all of the stops to retain your new hires but in many cases, it’s not working. Up to one in four new hires leave their jobs in the first six months according to research from Korn Ferry and 90% of employers believe that retention of their new employees is a significant problem.

This week’s roundup features the 10 most bizarre notes left in office fridges, the news that the number of UK vacancies is out stripping candidates and asks if the UK is slipping into a digital recruitment hole.

As employers begin to look towards this year’s graduate intake, here’s our advice for how to improve your hiring success:-

Today sees the historic triggering of Article 50 by the Prime Minster and the start of two years of Brexit negotiations. If all goes to plan, the UK will no longer be a member of the European Union by April 2019.

HR software plays a critical role in supporting and improving hiring processes but KornFerry’s FutureStep Survey[1] found that nearly half of talent acquisition professionals (48%) are not using applicant tracking software in recruitment.

There was good news on the tech front for the UK this week. It is now officially the ‘digital tech capital of Europe’ according to Tech Nation’s third annual report[1].

Attracting qualified candidates to job posts is becoming more of a challenge for UK employers. Last week, unemployment fell to its joint lowest level since 1975. According to the Office for National Statistics, employment now stands at a record high of 31.85m after 92,000 new jobs were created in the three months to January 2017. More people secured full-time positions too, suggesting that the quality of available jobs is also improving.  

Can apprenticeships bridge the skills gap that Brexit is expected to create? That’s the suggestion made by the 5% Club last week which was set up to encourage action to address the skills shortages and reduce unemployment among young people.