This recent article by Dr George Giuliani highlights the thinking that Employment Services provider leaders need to be doing to address how they approach attraction and retention within their organisations. Dr Giuliani cites the well-known and worrying statistic of 50% turnover of staff within the ES sector, the mismatch between the reasons people join the sector and the reality of the job they do. This mismatch is often quoted to us by candidates as the reason people want to leave their roles.
With the NESM fast approaching, we suggest that now would be a very good time to map the duties within current job specifications with the skills and characteristics required in successful candidates for the contract. With the current skills shortages and candidate driven recruitment market, it is vital that organisations push out all the stops to attract the right people and manage their expectations.
Let’s take an Employment Consultant role as the means of demonstrating how to go about this re-examination of what is actually required in a role under NESM.
The process needs to start with a thorough examination of the current Job Description (JD) and questions need to be asked. Examples of these questions include:
- How is the new contract different from the old – what will be measured and what is the focus of the role?
- Will some skills be more important than others in the new contract? What are your non-negotiables and is there a balance between emotional intelligence, target focus and compliance?
- How vital really is previous experience in the sector?
- Is it more important that successful candidates have the right skills or the right characteristics?
- What qualifications are people required to have – are there new qualifications better suited?
- How are we going to test this during the interview process?
- Are we able (from both a financial and resource perspective)) to train new staff? And what commitment can we make to their ongoing personal development?
- How are we going to measure the potential candidate’s motivation for applying for this role?
Once the answers to these questions are thoroughly understood, advertisements can be written to ensure that the right calibre of person applies for the role, which is likely to result in much more successful outcomes.
Whilst HR people, and anyone else involved in recruitment, have more than enough to do at the moment, Benjamin Franklin’s well-known saying ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’ has probably never been truer. Changing something as fundamental as Job Descriptions and advertisements could lead to an exciting new kind of candidate who will help organisations meet the ambitions of the NESM.
If you would like to talk through any of the points in this article, please contact Samantha Smith at Parkhouse Bell for a confidential and obligations free discussion.
