HUDDL3 PRESENTS…
Navigating the post ‘Talent-Shortage’ era
Re-thinking how to attract and secure the right talent now and for the future.
There is no denying that the global pandemic brought about by the Coronavirus has had a significant impact on all aspects of our lives. One of the pillars significantly impacted is the job market. Not only has it affected how we work and relate to our colleagues and clients, but also how we plan and recruit during this time.
Prior to COVID-19, we were facing a talent shortage, where it was critical to do all we could to attract the best candidates and be creative in our offerings to secure the perfect candidate.
During the pandemic, many have lost their jobs; and businesses have had to rearrange their organizational structures and ways of doing business to maximize their resiliency to the effects of economic closures, lockdowns, and in many cases, significant loss of revenue.
Therefore, workforce planning and design have even greater significance, and understanding the large-scale shifts to the employment landscape is imperative. Distinguished Vice President of Gartner, Brian Kropp, stated in a recent Forbes article, concerning the changing work landscape that “HR leaders who respond effectively can ensure their organizations stand out from competitors.”
In this vain, Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, recently met with Tony Restell, Founder of Social-Hire, to discuss the effects on the employment landscape and how to plan appropriately to maximize organizational resiliency, positioning your company for growth when things improve. During this discussion, they took a deep-dive into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ to engaging your talent pool after a long period of talent shortage and the benefits of active workforce planning and team design.
What to consider when planning your workforce during COVID-19 and beyond
As CEO of Huddl3 Group, a Human Capital solutions company, and with a solid background in the staffing and recruitment industry, Dane Groeneveld has had extensive experience helping clients plan to meet their workforce’s immediate and future needs.
Groeneveld suggests that while we have come out of a very talent-short market and face a lot of business disruption, there are also opportunities for change, with companies getting better at working remotely and changing some of their supply chain strategies. He suggests HR leaders need to focus on three main areas to ensure successful workforce planning to meet business’s changing needs.
1. Take a broader approach to talent pooling.
Staying with historical viewpoints on the type of talent you engage and within the same locations you have always engaged in could be limiting. There is now an excellent opportunity for companies to pick up talent from other industries and other geographies to supplement the remote team. Essentially given the ‘new normal’ with most employees engaged remotely, you can start with a fresh canvas, employing the best employee for your business, not just your locality.
2. Think about your messaging!
When engaging a wider talent pool, you need to think more carefully about your messaging. This year we have not only had COVID-19, but we have also had significant social and political changes, particularly here in the United States, with the Black Lives Matter movement and ethos. We have also had other key and fundamental shifts that we’re currently experiencing, including diversity and inclusion and sustainability drivers that all companies should keep in mind when crafting their messaging.
Therefore, it is essential to make sure that your message is right if you’re going out to a broader talent pool, especially when targeting people in markets and disciplines, and industries that may not know your brand as well. By understanding the wider talent market and framing your messaging correctly, you will have a greater chance of being relevant and attracting them as potential employees. Taking the time to craft your messaging correctly will ensure you get the best return on your investment.
3. It’s all about the follow-up! Develop and maintain a continuous engagement program.
At this time, many companies will not have the opportunity to go out and hire people immediately. For many organizations, the road ahead will be a long and bumpy one. Many HR Leaders are still navigating the road ahead as we all continue to work out the ‘new normal.’ Candidates similarly are trying to make sense of what this means for them. Many are stressed, strained, and anxious about not being in work or being underemployed.
It is crucial that you continue to be relevant to them during this time. Once you engage the right talent with the right message, you need to follow-up regularly and check-in with them about your plan, providing candidates with updates as to where you are at in the process and what they might be able to do to position themselves for a role with you in the future. Being upfront with candidates will help position your candidates appropriately for when positions do become available. It will also help you maintain your brand equity in the job market and increase the likelihood that they would want to work with you in the future. Developing a continuous engagement program is now more critical than ever.
The benefits of active workforce planning and team design
Groeneveld states ‘It’s interesting you know, we’ve worked with a lot of major projects and big companies, as well as some smaller projects and companies, and we often find that those that have a longer outlook on their talent needs create more opportunity to design the right team, the right role and attract the right person.’
It is still necessary to be talking to your team about their human capital needs and talking to outside talent or your staffing provider to ensure you are all having the right discussions and have those resources ready to hire when the condition becomes urgent.
With the pandemic, however, those companies that are thinking robustly and creatively about workforce planning will also have the benefit of being flexible in not only whom they bring on, but how they get them in, the technologies they use, the partnerships they might form, and even how they might structure their office.
There’s value right across the board right now to workforce planning, and it’s more of an art than a science. Right now, there are not great tools out there to drive it, but it’s a conversation piece that’s important across multiple functions for those reasons.
One of the key but maybe unexpected benefits of developing talent pools for your business is the enhanced networking opportunities.
Developing talent from within your business and networking with the talent you wish to engage in the future is valuable and can drive powerful network effects. It might mean that you get some insights into your business that help you decide before moving ahead with a hire. It might mean that you get introduced to a new customer, a new vendor, or partner through that network. Or it could mean that you get the opportunity to steer someone who is an excellent fit for your company towards some external experiences or training that will allow them to come and step into a role in the future. So, there are many concrete and indirect benefits of talent development for those inside and outside the organization.
In particular, in this current period, we are going through with COVID, driving that goodwill and employee engagement is even more imperative!
What to do next?
If your organization is keen to maximize its available talent and get ahead of the workforce planning curve. SmartSearch, HUDDL3 Group’s technology brand, can help you. SmartSearch is currently driving much innovation with its career center offering and its ‘private talent pool’ feature. While this feature is new and still under development, we are already working with some of our customers to help them have more continuous engagement with potential talent and to show department Managers and HR teams across their organization some real-time data on the people that they’re speaking to that aren’t currently employees.
