Significant jump in the number of employers
struggling to hang on to their staff
11/06/2007 10:13:00
There has been a significant rise in the number of
organisations struggling to retain their staff over the past year and
recruitment difficulties persist, according to a new report from the Chartered
Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). But this research also shows
that recruiting from overseas, targeting migrant workers, training existing
staff and better use of employer brand will help UK employers tackle these
problems.
The CIPD's annual Recruitment, Retention and Turnover Survey finds that almost
eight in ten organisations struggled to hang on to their staff in 2006,
compared to nearly seven in ten in 2005.
While the large majority of organisations (89%) providing additional training
to internal staff so that they can fill vacancies say that it has a positive
impact, only 29% of employers currently use this initiative.
Nicola Monson, author of the report, says: "Employers will continue to
struggle to find suitable candidates and keep staff turnover under control if
their approach to recruitment and retention fails to take account of both
business and employee needs.
"Only half of employers currently have a formal resourcing strategy,
which suggests many are not planning for the future skills requirements of
their organisation. This is particularly worrying given that specialist skills
and required experience is still in such short supply.
"All organisations rely on talent so employers need to take a proactive
approach to talent management and tap into the skills of the people wanting to
contribute and progress.
"Actively developing employees should not only increase the internal
talent pool, in turn reducing their reliance on external candidates, but also
see problems retaining staff ease due to new career opportunities."
The following initiatives are also very effective in helping organisations to
overcome recruitment difficulties:
· Using the employer brand as a recruitment tool (75% say it has a positive
impact but only 31% currently use)
· Offering flexible working (74% say it has a positive impact but only 30%
currently use)
· Targeting migrant workers from EU countries and recruiting staff from
abroad (75% say it has a positive impact but only 14% currently use)
The research will be discussed at the CIPD's Annual Talent Management,
Recruitment and Retention Conference, on 19 - 21 June 2007, where delegates
can hear what other organisations are doing to tackle their recruitment and
retention difficulties.
Recruitment difficulties
· Key reasons for recruitment difficulties are lack of necessary specialist
skills (65%), followed by higher pay expectations (46%) and insufficient
experience (37%).
· Only the public sector has seen a drop in recruitment difficulties which
reflects the pressure on the public sector to make efficiency savings (80% of
public sector organisations say they experienced recruitment difficulties,
compared to 89% in the 2006 survey).
Migrant Workers
· Organisations are continuing to look beyond the UK to fill vacancies - 14%
are targeting migrant workers from EU accession states. This was seen to have
a positive impact on recruitment difficulties by 75% of organisations,
compared to just 48% in the 2006 survey.
· A further one in ten (11%) are recruiting in foreign countries and bringing
workers over to the UK.
Working with recruitment agencies
· 73% of organisations still engage recruitment agency services to help fill
job vacancies.
· Most respondents agree or strongly agree that using agencies considerably
increases the cost of their recruitment spend (76%).
· Nearly six in ten fail to evaluate agency performance (59%).
· A third of employers don't possess a preferred supplier list.
· 81% of those employers using recruitment agencies do so for hiring
temporary workers and 78% for seeking permanent staff.
· The key driver for organisations' move away and decline of agency usage is
to cut down on recruitment costs (72%). Adopting a direct-hire strategy is
also identified as another motive for not using or reducing the use of agency
services (53%).
www.cipd.co.uk
Source - www.onrec.com
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