Category: Talent Advisory

Reskilling for Tech Roles Results in $2.5M in Savings for Global Bank

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Reskilling for Tech roles Results in $2.5M in Savings for Global Bank

Talent Consulting

Reskilling for Tech roles Results in $2.5M in Savings for Global Bank

PeopleScout helped a global financial services company in their digital transformation efforts with a reskilling program to move employees from declining customer service roles to tech and digital roles.

150 customer service staff redeployed to tech roles in pilot program
5,000 more employees will be reskilled following the successful pilot
70 % reduction in reskilling cost-per-person achieved

Situation

A large global financial services company needed to undertake a major digital transformation program, which required new digital and tech skills. With the growth of online and digital channels, in-person transactions through bank branches and call centers have declined. The organization needed to acquire hard-to-find tech and digital skills to grow and maintain digital banking tools while leveraging the existing company knowledge of employees in declining customer service roles by reskilling them into new high-growth roles.

Reskilling efforts focused on developing new hard skills, so finding the best candidates meant identifying those with the soft skills most aligned with the new job opportunities. Previous efforts by the financial services organization to assess candidate suitability for reskilling were led internally and included multiple, time-consuming line manager interviews. Of even greater concern, around a quarter of those who began the reskilling
program dropped out.

Solution

As their long-term RPO partner, PeopleScout worked with the client and skills-platform provider Spotted Zebra to create a skills-based approach to reskilling, helping the organization to assess customer service staff in bank branches and call centers to find ideal candidates for its tech skilling program.

We identified individuals who had a strong motivation to reskill, high levels of adaptability (a predictor of future potential) and a strong alignment with the behavioral skills required for success in the role. A skills profile was created for all the growth roles, and employees were assessed against them to identify which role was the best fit.

Results

  • Through an initial pilot, the company redeployed over 150 people from declining roles who would have been made redundant to tech jobs, saving around $2.5 million in exit costs.
  • The company is expanding the reskilling program to move over 5,000 employees into new roles with one year.
  • By identifying those individuals who are a better behavioral fit for reskilling opportunities, the number of dropouts from the training program dropped dramatically, resulting in a savings of in training and development costs.
  • The new approach is more effective, simplifying the process in a fair and consistent way. The company has saved a considerable amount of manager time and reduced the reskilling cost-per-person by 70%.
  • Crucially, the reskilling program means the organization’s digital transformation project is on track, with reskilled individuals moving into mission-critical digital roles that would otherwise go unfilled.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Global financial services company
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
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The Skills Crisis is Coming: Are You Ready? [Infographic]

Posted on by akessler

Skills in the workplace are evolving faster than ever thanks to advances in AI, the greening of the economy and shifting demographics. But, our latest research, The Skills Crisis Countdown, shows that HR leaders seem oblivious to the urgency of the coming change.

Nine out of 10 of HR pros surveyed said up to half of their workforce will need new skills within the next five years. Yet, only 7% are actively investing in reskilling programs right now, and 45% admit they have no plans underway to prepare their people for the shifting skills landscape.

Our data quantifies the massive disconnect between awareness of looming skills gaps and action being taken to reskill workers. Check out the infographic below to see the stats and get ahead of the curve on developing a future-ready workforce.

Check out this infographic with key findings highlighting the worsening skills crisis.

Countdown to Skills Crisis? What Our Latest Research Tells Us About Skills Gaps

Posted on by akessler

By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory Consulting

The workforce skills landscape is transforming at blinding speed. Automation, AI, sustainability initiatives, demographic shifts—global forces are conspiring to make skills gaps and talent shortages more acute by the day. Don’t think it’s moving that fast? Well, the World Economic Forum predicts that a jaw-dropping 85 million jobs could sit vacant by 2030, resulting in $8.5 trillion in lost revenue.

The very meaning of “skills” is shifting beneath our feet. Skills requirements have already changed 25% since 2015, and experts forecast 65% more change by 2030. However, companies still rely heavily on degrees and experience over skills when it comes to making hiring decisions. No wonder we’re careening towards a global skills crisis.

PeopleScout partnered with skills-based workforce management platform provider Spotted Zebra to survey over 100 senior HR and talent acquisition leaders globally, plus over 2,000 employees worldwide, to compare perspectives. Our new research report, The Skills Crisis Countdown, maps the skills landscape and diagnoses the disconnects between employers and their workforce.

Read on for some key findings from our report.

HR Leaders are Ill-Prepared for the Skills Crisis

According to a study by PwC, 40% of global CEOs believe their business will be economically unviable in 10 years unless they reinvent for the future. Our study revealed that nine out of 10 HR leaders believe that up to 50% of their workforce will require new skills to effectively perform their job in the next five years. Yet, when asked if they are currently undergoing or planning a workforce transformation initiative in the next three years, nearly half (45%) of HR leaders admit to having no plans to undertake one.

So, in other words, half of employees will soon be underprepared for the future, but most companies have no strategy in place to address the issue.

According to LinkedIn, 84% of members are in occupations that could have at least one quarter of their core skills affected by generative AI (GAI) technologies, like ChatGPT. So, how are HR leaders preparing for this digital transformation and the AI era? Shockingly, a full third (34%) say they have no preparations in place to prepare for new technologies. Those who are preparing emphasize bringing in outside talent rather than reskilling existing employees.

Industry Composition by GAI Segment
Percentage of LinkedIn Members by Industry

Impact of GAI on workplace skills
(Source: LinkedIn Economic Graph Research Institute)

This is likely because they lack an understanding of the skills they have within their existing workforce. Our data revealed that 68% of organizations identify skills from manager feedback, which is highly subjective. So, it’s no surprise that 56% of employees think their skills are underutilized in their current roles, and 61% think there are other roles in their organization where their skills could be utilized.

An unprecedented skills revolution is barreling down the tracks, but companies are fast asleep at the switch. It’s time to wake up and get employees future-ready or risk a global skills crisis and talent scarcity for decades to come.

Digital & Tech Skills Gaps are Widening but Tech Skills are Viewed as Unimportant

Both employers and employees dangerously underestimate the importance of tech and digital skills. In our survey, both parties listed tech and digital literacy skills with low importance. With the skyrocketing demand for tech and digital talent, this does not bode well.

skills in the workplace

Mobile apps, ecommerce and digital transformation have made technology integral to every corporate strategy. However, supply isn’t keeping up with demand. McKinsey analyzed 3.5 million job postings in high-tech fields and found there’s a wide divide between the demand for tech and digital skills and the qualified talent availability. The most sought-after skills have less than half as many qualified professionals per posting compared to average global figures. 

No wonder 63% of HR leaders in our survey admit they struggle to recruit the skills they need. Closing tech and digital skills gaps through recruitment alone is no longer sufficient. So, we were concerned when our research showed that 73% of the workforce haven’t been offered opportunities to reskill.

Organizations must invest in helping their employees evolve their skills via reskilling and internal mobility to cultivate digital and tech literacy across their entire workforce.

Case Study: Reskilling in Action

The Challenge:

A large global financial services company needed to undertake a major digital transformation program. The organization needed to acquire key digital and tech skills while leveraging the existing company knowledge of employees in declining customer service roles by reskilling them.

Previous efforts by the organization to assess employees’ suitability for reskilling were led internally and included multiple, time-consuming line manager interviews. Of even greater concern, around a quarter of those who began the reskilling program dropped out.

The Solution:

The bank worked with their long-time RPO partner, PeopleScout, and Spotted Zebra to assess customer service staff in bank branches and call centers to find ideal candidates for its tech and digital skilling program. Skills profiles were created for tech roles, which employees were assessed against to find the best fit.

The Results:

  • Redeployed 150 people, saving over $2.5M in exit costs
  • Saved over $350,000 in training and development costs
  • Reduced time investment by hiring managers
  • Reduced the reskilling cost-per-person by 70%

Employees Don’t Feel Confident in their Skills for the Future

A third (34%) of workers have doubts about how their skills will keep pace with new technology and automation. Meanwhile, just 17% of organizations are offering targeted reskilling programs for existing employees.

Where are HR Leaders Deploying Skills-Based Practices?

Skills-Based Practices in the workplace
(Source: PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra)

This imbalance spells disaster. As change overwhelms existing skill sets, most workers will begin to feel unsure of their career paths or left struggling to stay relevant.

Investing in reskilling makes solid business sense. We must bridge the gap between workers anxiously facing uncertainty and leaders failing to invest in their resilience. HR leaders who empower their workforce with adaptable skill sets today will drive continued success in times of swift and sweeping change.

Finding a Talent Partner to Support Your Skills Transformation

The agility to match emerging skill requirements will soon become a competitive necessity. If you haven’t started your skills-based transformation, now is the time.

In our survey, one in two HR leaders admitted to a lack of understanding of skills-based practices. If you’re struggling to understand how to take advantage of skills-based practices in your organization, PeopleScout is here to be your guide.

As a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) partner, we can help you understand the skills within your existing workforce as well as the external market supply and demand. We offer solutions across the skills agenda, from skills-based talent intelligence and market insights, building skills frameworks, and creating skills-based success profiles to redesigning recruitment processes, skills-based hiring strategies, and helping you maximize the potential of your existing workforce.  

To learn more about PeopleScout’s skills-focused talent solutions, get in touch.  

[On-Demand] The Ticking Talent Clock: Is Time Running Out to Address the Skills Crisis?

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[On-Demand] The Ticking Talent Clock: Is Time Running Out to Address the Skills Crisis?

With the rapid advancement of AI, accelerated digitalization and the greening of the economy, businesses are grappling with the changing nature of work—how we work and the types of jobs we do. In fact, a new research report from PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra, The Skills Crisis Countdown, reveals that nine in 10 HR leaders believe that up to half of their workforce will need new skills to perform their jobs in the next five years. Yet, only less than one in 10 say they are actively investing in reskilling programs.

Are HR leaders running out of time?

Join PeopleScout’s Global Head of Talent Consulting Simon Wright and Spotted Zebra’s Chief Customer Officer Nick Shaw as they delve into the key findings from the research, lay bare the skills crisis and show why the clock is ticking for HR leaders.

In the webinar, Simon and Nick cover:

  • How organizations are addressing the mismatch in skills demand and supply
  • The current state of skills utilization, skills-based hiring and the need to expand talent pools
  • Strategies for improving talent mobility (including case studies and success stories)
  • Practical steps you can take to transition to a skills-focused model
  • And more!

 

The Skills Crisis Countdown: The Clock is Ticking on Tackling Skills Gaps

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The Skills Crisis Countdown: The Clock is Ticking on Tackling Skills Gaps

Our latest research reveals, nine in 10 HR leaders believe that up to 50% of their workforce will need new skills to perform their jobs in the next 5 years. Yet, only 7% say they are actively investing in reskilling programs, and 45% admit to having no plans to undertake a workforce transformation initiative to prepare for the changing skills landscape.

PeopleScout partnered with skills-based workforce management company Spotted Zebra to survey over 100 senior Human Resources and Talent Acquisition leaders from organizations around the global and 2,000+ employees globally to compare perspectives on workforce skills. The resulting research report, The Skills Crisis Countdown: The Clock is Ticking on Tackling Skills Gaps, provides a detailed picture of the current skills landscape and the disconnects between the perspectives of employees and businesses.

Download our free report for the latest research exploring:

  • The current state of skills in the global workforce and outlook for the future
  • How HR leaders are preparing for the impending skills crisis
  • How employees expect their skills will need to adapt to new technology or automation.

Plus, you’ll get a roadmap of actionable steps to help your organization become more skills-centric.

Talent Predictions: How Talent Acquisition Will Navigate 2024

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By Simon Wright, Head of Global Talent Advisory Consulting 

We are in one of the most transformative periods in the history of work. Between technological disruptions, societal shifts and global events, the talent landscape five years from now will likely look very different than it does today. However, even in times of uncertainty, we can discern key trends that will impact the way organizations source, recruit and retain talent. 

As a leading talent solutions provider, PeopleScout has a unique vantage point to view the forces shaping the future of work. Based on our experience and industry insights, we believe there are eight core areas talent acquisition leaders should embrace in 2024 to up-level their strategic importance within the business.  

1. Talent Leaders Will Look to New Models to Ride the Economic Waves 

The power balance has now shifted back to the employer amidst a tight labor market, fewer vacancies and a cost-of-living crisis. But if you think it’s time to pause investment in your talent programs, think again.  

Talent acquisition teams shrunk during COVID-19 and then grew quickly as part of the bounce back only to shed jobs again this past year. With continued uncertainty, TA leaders must showcase the value they bring to business by minimizing the impacts of economic fluctuations.  

It’s time to leave behind the boom and bust and embrace agility through a strategic approach to workforce planning and forecasting. Talent solutions like recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), including modular RPO solutions, offer responsiveness to help stabilize operational delivery amidst unpredictable economic waves.  

2. Business Transformation Will Shape the Workforce 

The specific skills and capabilities companies need are shifting rapidly, which means the jobs and roles employers need to fill are changing too. According to McKinsey research, one-third of new jobs created in the U.S. in the past 25 years were types that barely existed previously, particularly in high-demand areas like data analytics, software development and renewable energy. According to Totaljobs, despite a general slowdown in hiring, the demand for green jobs continues to go up, skyrocketing by 677% between 2019 and 2023. 

However, this business transformation is being hampered by the lack of talent and relevant skills. Economic, social and labor market changes are evolving faster than workforce training and development systems can keep pace. There simply aren’t enough workers with experience in emerging fields and new technologies.  

TA leaders must work proactively to build the reputation and influence of their employer brand with potential talent now—ahead of the hiring they need to do in the future. This means being able to recruit the best talent in the market, not just the best talent in your pipeline. Investing in candidate nurturing and employer branding strategies now will ensure organizations can hire first—and fast—when the time comes. 

3. Employees Will Continue to Reevaluate Their Relationship with Work 

TA leaders must be the eyes and ears for their organization, tuning in to the candidate market and shaping the employer value proposition (EVP) to meet the changing needs and expectations of candidates. Today’s employees are demanding more, and the one-size-fits-all EVP approach must evolve to keep up.  

Organizations that refresh their EVP with a more human-centric approach that recognizes employees as people, not just workers, will go beyond traditional offerings to provide exceptional life experiences that match employee needs. Delivering a positive emotional connection will be crucial for improving retention, overcoming the productivity vacuum and attracting quality talent in 2024.  

4. Data Will Be the Key to Overcoming Talent Scarcity  

The labor market has shrunk due to the retirement of Baby Boomers, and companies face an enormous brain drain of institutional expertise. Not only is the upcoming population smaller and not replacing the Boomers who are leaving the workforce, but they lack the some of the soft skills of the departing generation. With this double depletion at play, organizations will need to work hard to attract and train Gen Z in order to keep their workforce development on track for the future. 

Additionally, long-term illness, including lingering complications from COVID-19, has sidelined many working-age adults. The latest ONS data shows that the number of people economically inactive because of long-term sickness is now over 2.5 million in the UK alone. 

The key to reducing the impact of talent scarcity in 2024 is data. It’s time for TA leaders to treat talent intelligence as business intelligence, bringing it to the C-suite to drive decision making and inform strategy. Organizations must leverage data to understand both internal and external talent pools, maximizing ROI on talent attraction and retention efforts. 

Talent Acquisition Predictions

5. Skills-Based Practices Will Take Center Stage 

In order to keep pace with changing roles and dwindling talent pools, leading organizations are taking a proactive and holistic approach to adapting their workforces. They are investing in upskilling and reskilling programs while also leveraging RPO partners to find professionals with the most in-demand and future-proof skills. 

More organizations will look to expand candidate pools and tap into diverse skill sets through skills-based recruitment. To do this, organizations must evolve their candidate assessment practices to focus on skills rather than credentials or pedigree. We’ll see more organizations follow the likes of Google and drop their university degree requirements. This will have the added benefit of promoting greater diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace.  

6. Internal Mobility Will Receive Big Investment 

More than a third (36%) of HR professionals surveyed identified employee retention as a priority in 2024. Internal mobility will become the key to retention as well as filling open roles and skills gaps. Focus will shift from building external talent pools to internal talent pools, putting methods in place to identify transferable skills that can be boosted to support business transformation.  

We saw an uptick in labor hoarding in 2023 talent trends. In 2024, organizations must invest in transforming the skills of the workers they’ve kept on board in order to ensure they’re ready for what’s on the horizon. 

In 2024, career moves won’t take a linear path but will weave across departments and disciplines, providing workers with variety and rewarding work. Organizations must train hiring managers to look at candidates, not just for their fit for a specific role, but for the value they can bring to the organization.  

7. Long Overdue Tech Upgrades Will Happen for HR 

The Josh Bersin Company estimates the HR technology is a $250 billion market. 2024 will be the year of recruitment tech stack upgrade.  

Organizations will look to capitalize on AI-powered features to do the heavy lifting so their teams can focus on more valuable recruiting activities. TA leaders should look to technology to augment human touches throughout the candidate experience, to identify opportunities for streamlining through automation, and to help them better interrogate data for a more agile resourcing model.  

This is also an opportunity for TA leaders to demonstrate they can deliver digital transformation and deliver ROI from these investments. This has been a criticism of talent acquisition and HR in the past, and it’s time to dispel that narrative.  

8. AI Fever Will Hit an All-Time High 

And finally, it wouldn’t be a 2024 talent acquisition forecast without a mention of AI. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools, like ChatGPT, were on the tip of our tongues in 2023. As organizations grapple with the ethics of AI, most will succumb to the transformative potential and begin to test and experiment with how AI can benefit their workforce and operations in 2024.  

The role of technology will keep evolving within talent acquisition, but it’s primed to have a pivotal role in streamlining recruitment tasks and improving efficiency in everything from screening to assessments to interview scheduling.  

Organizations should take a principled approach to leveraging AI and automation to augment recruiting, while ensuring human oversight and care for people remains central. Starting with a small project or two will clear the mist so you can see clearly where AI will add value to your recruitment tech stack and candidate experience. 

The Importance of the Right Talent Partner to Help You Ride the Waves 

The future of work holds exciting potential, but also some uncertainty. However, while individual trends are difficult to predict, TA leaders that embrace agility, skills practices and tech innovation will find themselves in a strong position to prove their value in driving business performance. As your talent partner, PeopleScout will be ready to support, challenge and inspire you for whatever lies ahead. 

By staying on top of key shifts like these and working with an expert talent solutions provider like PeopleScout, companies can build workforces with the skills, mindsets and diversity of experiences to thrive in the next era of business. 

Talent Trends: 2023 in Review

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By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory Consulting  

Earlier in 2023, we highlighted six key areas that would impact how companies attract, retain and develop talent. With the year wrapping up, we’re revisiting these critical topics to examine what transpired in the talent landscape and what may be on the horizon for 2024.  

From closing persistent skills gaps to offering more work flexibility, companies continue to face pressing talent challenges. Economic fluctuations have led some employers to pull back on hiring and remote work, while others doubled down on upskilling programs and expanded their talent pools.  

In the following review, we trace how the 2023 predictions played out amidst an uncertain economy and ever-evolving workplace. 

1. Closing Skills Gaps 

What We Said: 

With rapidly evolving technologies requiring new skills, companies are making upskilling and reskilling their workforce top priorities. Most employees feel unprepared for future jobs, so it’s important for organizations to invest in development to retain employees, build confidence, and help them adapt to changing business priorities. 

What We Saw: 

Skills gaps, and the upskilling and reskilling that must happen in order to close them, are still very much top of mind for HR leaders. The economic slowdown has increased candidate availability, so in the short term there has been more tech talent available, for example. But long term, there is still a skills crisis, and organizations are largely yet to shift to skills-based practices. 

We’ve seen front-runner organizations investing in skills development initiatives to grow the workforce they need. For example, Amazon’s program Career Choice is part of a wider initiative to invest over $1.2 billion by 2025 to provide 300,000 U.S. workers with the training they need to pursue careers in whatever field they choose.  

The average shelf-life of skills is now less than five years. So, the skills conversation is only going to get louder. If the World Economic Forum’s prediction is correct that over 85 million jobs will go unfilled by 2030 due to a lack of skilled talent, resulting in $8.5 trillion (USD) in annual lost revenues, then this is the most pressing issue facing talent leaders today.  

2. Offering More Flexibility 

What We Said: 

Amidst the acceleration of remote work, companies are facing mounting pressure to offer greater location and schedule flexibility to attract and retain talent.  

What We Saw: 

The return to the office debate is still raging. Employees want greater flexibility, but more and more employers are pulling people back into the office. Even Zoom, the video communications company that helps us all work from home, announced in August that it will start tightening its restrictions on remote work. Amazon, Disney and more have all reduced remote-work days. 

While power has shifted back to the employer, this issue won’t go away. If you really think your employees love coming to the office just because you’ve introduced free snacks, you don’t understand what flexibility means to your workers. Flexibility is not just about where you work. True flexibility is about giving more autonomy to your employees about the kinds of work they do and when and where they do it. 

3. Shifting to Contingent Workers 

What We Said: 

As the desire for work flexibility drives more professionals into freelance and contract roles, organizations are increasingly utilizing these temporary workers to fill pressing skills gaps and specific project needs while maintaining financial and strategic workforce flexibility. 

What We Saw: 

The economic uncertainty this year has made organizations less likely to make permanent hires. Plus, freelancers, consultants and contractors have developed into an essential part of the workforce as skills requirements become more complex. Maintaining a mix of traditional and flexible talent is crucial for businesses to stay ahead in today’s dynamic climate. 

With the enormous interest in ChatGPT and generative AI, it’s not a stretch to think the pace of business transformation will only accelerate in 2024. And demand for contingent workers will continue to rise. Indeed, according to Ceridian, 65% of organizations plan to increase their reliance on contingent workers in the next two years. 

Talent Trends 2023

4. Tapping into New Talent Pools 

What We Said: 

Facing workforce shortages, organizations are expanding their applicant pool by targeting untapped talent like Generation Z, unretiring Baby Boomers and boomeranging ex-employees.  

What We Saw: 

In 2023, the UK government launched a “returnership” initiative to inspire those over the age of 50 to come back to work. The goal is to help older workers retrain and learn new skills, providing them with a roadmap back to the workplace and encouraging organizations to hire them.  

We also saw organizations turn their attention to the talent pool sitting right under their noses. Internal mobility was a hot topic for talent leaders in 2023 as recruiting new talent became more and more challenging and costly.  

We were also reintroduced to the concept of labor hoarding, a term coined in the 1960s. This practice refers to organizations forgoing head-count reductions now, so they’re prepared when business picks up. In an era of labor shortages, organizations are keeping their workforces to avoid the risk of losing good talent to a competitor and to skip the costs associated with hiring again. 

5. Rallying Around the Mission 

What We Said: 

Our Inside the Candidate Experience research revealed that for 50% of candidates, an organization’s mission and purpose are a key influence on their decision to apply. Yet, when evaluating career sites, we found details on the mission or purpose of the organization less than half (48%) of the time.  

What We Saw: 

Employees are more dedicated than ever to finding an employer that shares their values and offers them a sense of purpose. However, workers within organizations that lack a sincere commitment to improving the community and supporting climate initiatives often report disengagement.  

According to Gallup data from June 2023, 59% of global workers say they’re not engaged at work. This is worrying as we move into a labor market that favors employers, as they will inevitably become less motivated to keep their employees engaged. Yet, a key reason why someone quiet quits hasn’t changed—and it’s down to a lack of connection to the company culture and purpose. 

A lack of engagement in the workforce is a leading factor in the productivity vacuum. Going into 2024, my hope is HR leaders will go beyond simply thinking about wellbeing to view their employees as whole people—not just workers. Updating your employee value proposition (EVP) to be more human-focused can help strike the right balance between compassion and business interests. Shifting to a Personal Value Proposition (PVP), and customizing offerings so that each employee feels valued as an individual, can help in fostering a positive emotional connection. 

Learn how to evolve your EVP to a human-centric PVP and increase productivity 23%.   

6. Engaging Outside Talent Acquisition Solutions 

What We Said: 

Despite economic uncertainty, business leaders foresee revenue growth in the coming year, but may need flexible and agile workforces achieved through contingent staffing to meet their top challenge of filling critical roles amidst a shifting talent landscape. 

What We Saw: 

We saw an increase in talent acquisition teams looking for quick wins. At PeopleScout, we are investing heavily in talent solutions designed to boost agility for employers of all sizes and across all industries. This includes offerings like our Amplifiers and PeopleScout Accelerate solutions launched this year. 

Amplifiers provide modular, targeted recruitment process outsourcing tailored to specific hiring needs. Clients can implement RPO support for just part of the talent acquisition lifecycle, whether that’s filling the top of the hiring funnel with high volumes of qualified talent or gaining deeper insights to guide strategic workforce decisions. This “as-needed” model is ideal for companies that want to remain nimble. 

Additionally, our PeopleScout Accelerate technology-enhanced RPO solution is purpose-built for fast-scaling organizations that need to ramp up recruiting quickly. We can implement PeopleScout Accelerate in just two weeks, providing access to our proven recruitment methodologies and our industry-leading Affinix talent acquisition technology suite right out of the gate. 

As we close the books on 2023, it’s clear the talent landscape continues to shift in new and uncertain directions. In the coming year, agile organizations that invest in the longevity of their workforce and truly connect with their people on a human level will maintain an edge. Rather than recoiling from change, forward-thinking talent leaders have an opportunity to guide their organization’s evolution. Now is the time to build workforces that can pivot on a dime while staying true to their purpose. 

Authenticity in Action: 6 Things Candidates Look for in Your Employer Brand

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By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory Consulting

As businesses have stabilized post-pandemic, the conversation in the C-suite has shifted to balancing productivity and empathy—how to drive business performance while addressing the evolving needs of the workforce.

The secret lies in your employer value proposition (EVP).

Your EVP must place individual employees firmly at the heart of their own experience. This new approach to EVP—a Personal Value Proposition or PVP—is designed to resonate with employees as unique individuals with distinct motivations and aspirations.

Job seekers can see right through generic employer brands nowadays. Candidates crave authenticity and want to connect with a company’s true culture before joining. So, how can you craft an employer brand that both resonates with individual job seekers and showcases what your organization is authentically all about?

Here are six key areas today’s talent looks for when evaluating an employer brand’s authenticity.

6 Signs of an Authentic Employer Brand & EVP

Keep these priorities front and center as you shape your EVP to align both with your organizational priorities and employee needs.

1. Meaningful Connections

What Candidates Want:

In today’s job market, candidates aren’t just looking for a job—they want a workplace that helps them feel truly engaged and connected. A leading employer brand should attract top talent by cultivating genuine connection with peers, leaders and the overarching mission.

What Employers Should Show:

In our research report, Inside the Candidate Experience, we found that mission and purpose is a top three consideration for job seekers looking for a new job. Yet, less than half of employer show information about this on their career site.

By highlighting your organizational mission, you help candidates make an emotional connection to your employer brand. Amp up the authenticity through storytelling—how individual employees live your mission through their work, how your organizational policies reflect your brand purpose, how new hires can expect to make an impact when they join.

Purpose oriented employees are 47% more likely to promote their employer externally without incentive.

2. Holistic Development

What Candidates Want:

Employees are seeking work experiences that help them realize their potential beyond just job tasks. Workers are taking more control of their own professional trajectories, seeking opportunities that offer autonomy and alignment with their skills, passions and personal circumstances.

Work is no longer confined to a single job or career path. Instead, it is seen as a series of opportunities that facilitate personal and professional growth.

What Employers Show:

Development opportunities like mentorship programs, leadership workshops and reskilling bootcamps to support internal mobility are top of mind for employees—especially Gen Z. Training should address both hard skills (like coding, certifications or licenses and statistical analysis) and soft skills (like resilience, relationship building and empathy). However, we find that organizations don’t do enough to show the impact of this training on individuals and their personal and professional growth.

You can show this impact authentically by bringing it to life through telling the career stories of your employees. Watching a video of an employee sharing how they were able to go through a reskilling program and join a different department is far more powerful for a candidate than just reading about the program.

Here’s an example from Adobe showcasing their employees’ career paths on social with a global #AdobeForAll celebration.

3. Flexibility & Empathy

What Candidates Want:

Flexibility should no longer be the domain of people with children. Everyone wants more flexibility in where, when and how they work. It could be about caring responsibilities for parents, or it could just be having the time and space to pursue passions outside of work. Ultimately, this issue is about organizations demonstrating they trust their people and providing autonomy where possible.

What Employers Show:

Employees who are granted time and space to pursue their passions bring fresh energy, insight and creativity to the job. Yet, for our Inside the Candidate Experience report we audited the career sites of over 215 organizations and found that information on flexible working and work/life balance is mentioned just over half the time.

Help candidates experience this authentically by profiling employees who are embracing flexible work patterns. This helps them see how a role can fit into their own life. By understanding life outside work directly fuels innovative excellence within it, organizations can architect roles that let people show up as their best and truest selves every day.

4. Well-Being & Psychological Safety

What Candidates Want:

If this past era has taught us anything, it’s that employees require our care as much as any business strategy. The Great Resignation was fueled by individuals reprioritizing their well-being over their next promotion or paycheck. And Quiet Quitting is often the result of employees losing psychological safety and no longer seeing a return on their engagement.

Why Leaders Think Employees Quit: Looking for better jobs Compensation Work-life balance Why Employees Actually Quit: Not feeling valued by their organization of by their individual managers Not feeling a sense of belonging at work
(Source: McKinsey)

What Employers Show:

To keep employees healthy and productive, employers must start constructing safe spaces for people to bring their whole selves to work. That means prioritizing both physical and mental health, with an emphasis on creating environments where employees feel safe to both express ideas and dissent and even discuss failures without fear of backlash. It also means creating a culture of gratitude in which employees are given the opportunity to recognize and reward their peers for a job well done.

To communicate to candidates that your focus on well-being is more than lip service, include information on specific actions your organization is taking to support employees whether that’s wellness benefits or financial support programs. Don’t just state you have work-life balance programs—showcase how you empower people to utilize them through things like extra PTO days around major life events and even showing leaders modeling using your well-being perks to set the tone.

5. Diverse & Inclusive Environments

What Candidates Want:

Employees want to be a part of an organizations that celebrates true diversity, promotes cultural intelligence and fosters a workplace where multiple traditions, rituals and ways of thinking lead to innovation. These conscious cultures go beyond attracting candidates from underrepresented groups. They amplify their voices and put them into positions to reshape industry norms altogether. When asked how hearing from actual employees would influence their job search 86% of job seekers said they value stories from employees.

What Employers Show:

We found that 35% of organizations don’t feature a diverse group of real employees on their career sites. In addition, 60% of career sites don’t contain any video content in which employees share their personal journeys and stories. Often, we see that organizations mention their employee resource groups (ERGs) but fail to share the work these groups are doing and the impact they make within the organization and community. Employees want to see action, not virtue signalling.

Candidates find the voice of an average employee more credible than what companies say about themselves, so featuring real employee stories throughout the candidate experience is a proven way to engage candidates on an emotional level, building authenticity and brand trust.

35% of organizations don’t feature real employees on their career site

6. Community Engagement & Purpose Over Paycheck

What Candidates Want:

Employees are becoming more socially conscious and looking for employers that provide avenues for engagement with environment social governance (ESG) issues, with as many as 80% of workers in some industries saying that community and sustainability concerns play a role in whether they will resign from or remain at certain organizations. Two-thirds of candidates use social media to research companies during their job search, and they will look to your posts to see how your organization is backing up its promises.

74% of employees say their job is more fulfilling when they’re given the chance to make a positive impact on social and environmental issues

What Employers Show:

Employers must take purpose beyond platitudes. Yet, we found that a one in three organizations are not posting employer brand related content to their social channels at least on a week.

A great example is Ben & Jerry’s. The company actively engages in social justice campaigns like Advancement Project, including on their social media channels, and gives employees time off to volunteer in community projects.

Include social media posts of photos and videos of corporate volunteer activities or ERG-sponsored events. Seeing images of real employees giving back makes your purpose-driven culture tangible for candidates. Even a corporate post of an individual employee who ran a marathon in support a charity close to their heart can show what purposeful empowerment looks like at the individual level.

The Power of Storytelling for an Authentic Employer Brand

Injecting authenticity into your employer brand is about moving past broad statements of intent, to the actions that back it up. Follow the old adage—show, don’t tell.

Your brand should remain as dynamic as your people. Don’t shy away from evolution when new priorities emerge. So be bold, stay real, and let your employer brand reflect what truly makes your organization shine.

Employer Brand Hacks: 10 Tactics to Steal from Consumer Marketing 

Posted on by akessler

By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory Consulting 

Consumer marketers have honed their brand strategies through decades of tracking detailed customer analytics, optimizing digital experiences and crafting emotionally compelling messages. When it comes to leveraging data and analytics, consumer marketing is ahead of employer branding. But it doesn’t have to be that way!  

Talent acquisition pros can adapt these same tactics to understand candidates, polish touchpoints and build strong employer brands. Your employer brand can steal a page from the consumer brand playbook to step up talent attraction and retention. 

Hacking the Employer Brand: 10 Tricks from Consumer Marketing 

To help you think outside the recruitment box, we’ve outlined 10 employer brand hacks below to infuse your candidate attraction strategy with consumer-savvy flair. From mystery shoppers to NPS surveys, these creative approaches will revolutionize your talent attraction strategy.  

1. Engagement Analytics 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Measure engagement metrics on ecommerce and social platforms to gauge product resonance. 

Employer Brand Hack: Consumer marketing is as much science as it is art these days. Take page from your marketing peers and leverage analytics tools to monitor engagement levels with your content across digital platforms and third-party sites. You can gain valuable insights into how potential candidates perceive your employee value proposition (EVP) by monitoring the types of content that talent interacts with on sites like LinkedIn and your career pages. 

For example, heavy traffic and shares of content spotlighting your company’s flexible work options, learning and development programs or commitment to DE&I indicates these subjects are important to candidates. Likewise, you can identify red flags where pieces of your EVP are falling flat or even turning candidates away. 

By analyzing these engagement metrics, talent acquisition teams can refine outward-facing messaging to better reflect and emphasize the cultural elements already igniting passions. 

2. Sentiment Analysis 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Analyze customer conversations on social media to gauge sentiment around products. 

Employer Brand Hack: Job forums and social media channels have become backchannel focus groups, where in-the-know candidates exchange intel and impressions of potential employers. The everyday dialogue happening online shapes perceptions of your organization and EVP outside your control. Are you listening? 

Immerse yourself in these dynamic discussions by using social listening tools to assess the narratives being woven about your company culture and their sentiment. Pay special attention to the emotional tone. What feelings are sparked at the mention of your organization? Is it warmth, intrigue and affinity? Or perhaps skepticism, frustration or even antagonism? 

These unfiltered insights should inform your talent marketing strategy in real-time. Where positivity and praise emerge, double down on those messages. When you uncover misconceptions, course correct. Talent will continue to chatter, but plugged-in talent leaders can help guide the tone. 

3. Feedback and Review Platforms 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Closely monitor customer reviews on sites like Amazon or Trustpilot. 

Employer Brand Hack: Employer review platforms like Glassdoor, Indeed or kununu have become gold mines for candid insights directly from current and former employees. Monitoring these key sites should be a standard pulse-check for talent acquisition leaders and CHROs alike. But be warned—this is where you’ll find the unvarnished truth. 

One way to improve your employer brand is through employer review sites. We recommend a quarterly audit digging into themes and analyzing sentiment over time. Are certain departments or practices called out repeatedly? Do some locations have better scores than others?  

Used strategically, these insights provide CEOs, talent acquisition leaders and hiring managers at every level with an unfiltered mirror into the inner workings of company culture as employees are actively experiencing it. With this invaluable intelligence in hand, you can address problem spots through policy change or manager coaching. You can also double down on what’s working—the perks, flexibility, and cultural elements making employees stay. 

4. Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Use NPS to gauge product loyalty and word-of-mouth potential. 

Employer Brand Hack: Implementing employee NPS (eNPS) and candidate NPS (cNPS) surveys offers a valuable pulse check for recruitment and retention alike.  

With existing employees, these surveys quantify the likelihood of recommending your organization as a workplace. Low scores signal disengagement. Likewise, surveying candidates during the recruitment journey provides an understanding where expectations aren’t matching up with realities, helping you to refine your talent screening practices. Candidate NPS surveys can be sent post-interview and again post-onboarding for insights into both the recruitment and induction process. 

Your employer brand health hinges on aligning the candidate experience with the employee experience and delivering on your brand promises throughout the talent lifecycle. Both eNPS and cNPS metrics offer evidence-based insights to inform your talent program strategy. 

How does your Candidate Experience Quotient stack up? Learn all about our new method of calculating candidate experience as well as the hard truth about candidate expectations versus reality in our report, Inside the Candidate Experience.  

5. Focus Group Discussions 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Dive deep into consumer preferences using focus groups. 

Employer Brand Hack: When was the last time you picked the brains of candidates who have recently been through your recruitment process? As you refine your employer branding strategy and before you evolve your candidate experience, these individuals offer invaluable, straight-from-the-source insights. 

In addition to surveys, organize quarterly listening sessions with a mix of talent segments: recent new hires, employees in their first year, candidates who made it to advanced stages but ultimately declined offers, and even short-listers you opted not to hire. In a judgment-free environment, empower them to share candid impressions about their journey with your organization pre- and post-hire. 

Use this time to dig deep. What excited or deterred them about your employer brand initially? How did the interview or communication style align with their expectations of company culture? What workplace elements inspire their loyalty or doubts now as employees? Are perceptions consistent or disparate across genders, generations and ethnic groups? 

These focus groups go beyond what a survey can fully capture. As a result, you can pinpoint what’s resonating or missing the mark in talent attraction, selection and retention. Bonus—it also demonstrates that employee input spurs action. 

6. Mystery Shopping 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Deploy individuals to assess the customer experience—incognito. 

Employer Brand Hack: Another way to get the insider perspective on your candidate experience is to use an old trick from consumer marketing—mystery shoppers. This involves engaging individuals to navigate the recruitment process undercover, reporting on their experience from start to finish. 

Equip your “mystery shopper” to navigate the application, screening and interviews as authentically as possible, jotting detailed notes along the way. Instruct them to assess logistics around communication cadence, process efficiency and technology glitches. But more importantly, they should capture the emotional highs and lows they felt when interacting with your employees, content and brand at each step. 

When you debrief, try to uncover interactions where your employer brand deviates from the actual experience across key variables like location, department, seniority level and demographic background. These behind-the-scenes findings will prove invaluable as you seek to optimize recruitment ROI and evolve the candidate journey. 

7. Competitive Analysis 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Assess the brand vis-à-vis competitors. 

Employer Brand Hack: Benchmark your employer brand against competitors to grasp areas of strength and improvement. 

In today’s transparent talent marketplace, candidates have unprecedented visibility into everything from compensation to culture at your organization as well as your closest rivals. They are comparing you on everything from your work environment to DE&I commitments. 

This means your employer brand strategy can no longer happen in a silo. Formal competitive intelligence monitoring can help you benchmark your employer brand against competitors to understand strengths and opportunities. 

Audit the career sites, social media channels, job boards, industry reports and review site profiles of competitors to understand what messages and claims they’re leaning into with their employer brand. The goal here is not copying others’ employer brands but to understand how you can stand out and where you can bring sharper focus to what makes your culture uniquely attractive.  

8. Deep Dives into Unstructured Feedback 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Sift through customer service calls and chats to identify common themes. 

Employer Brand Hack: In their focus on surveys, employer review sites and focus groups, talent acquisition leaders often overlook the wealth of qualitative feedback hiding in plain sight internally.  

Sources like exit interviews, town hall meetings and other internal platforms can offer genuine glimpses into how employees view your employer brand. You’ll uncover grounded narratives around things like which leaders inspire employee pride or skepticism, or real-talk on workloads affecting mental health and work-life balance. 

This intelligence takes your employer brand strategy from reactive to proactive. It empowers you to intervene early before issues become viral Glassdoor threads. But just as importantly, you can also double down on what’s working, giving you an informed perspective to guide messaging, policy and experience in sync with employee values and expectations. 

9. Audience Segmentation 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Segment the customer base to tailor messaging and understand perception among different audiences. 

Employer Brand Hack: Employee perceptions within departments, roles, locations and tenure lengths often vary more than we realize. What engages your engineers may disengage your creatives. What excites recent college hires may fall flat for senior leaders. 

In today’s fragmented but transparent talent marketplace, one-size-fits all employer branding is no longer effective. By investing time and effort into audience segmentation, CHROs take big step in evolving their EVP to PVP, personal value proposition.  

Like customer personas, developing talent personas are a great way to engage in a targeted, personalized approach to talent attraction. These nuanced profiles allow you to sharpen your employer brand and talent attraction content for niche talent pools beyond one generic EVP message. Plus, you can tailor by regional expectations, whether in different cities in the same country or across continents.  

Getting segmentation right ensures candidates see your employer brand as a match for people like them from the start.  

10. User Behavior Analytics 

Consumer Brand Best Practice: Understand how customers interact with their website or app by using user analytics tools like heatmaps. 

Employer Brand Hack: Consumer marketing teams are increasingly adopting digital analytics tools to better understand customer preferences and behavior. Talent acquisition leaders can borrow this tactic too. Tools like heatmaps and click maps offer visual snapshots tracking precisely how users navigate and scroll career pages. These visual activity maps identify which content generates the most interest or engagement on your career site.  

Lingering on the mission statement? Scrolling past office photos? Double-tapping into stories on career mobility but glossing over benefits? These granular insights reveal which candidate attraction content holds the greatest appeal for your candidates. 

By understanding where your high-traffic areas and natural user flows are, you can guide candidates with attention-grabbing messages or entry points to more in-depth information. Likewise, you can weave in more stories around topics that are proving popular to leverage that momentum. These tools can also flag areas of friction, like errors or “rage clicks,” that could lead to candidates abandoning their application or leaving your career site.  

Employer Brand Strategy: The Value of Data 

Data and insights should always be the bedrock beneath an employer brand. Take time to gather feedback, analyze findings and track the impact of new initiatives. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new perspectives and unconventional approaches to stand out from the crowd. 

With the right balance of boldness and research, you can craft a magnetic employer brand that both resonates with candidates and drives critical recruitment metrics. So, take a cue from your marketing peers—be brave, think big, and transform employer branding into a discipline as sophisticated as consumer marketing.  

Driving Diversity: Transforming Graduate Recruitment for Road Maintenance Company

Posted on by akessler
Driving Diversity: Transforming Graduate Recruitment for Road Maintenance Company

Driving Diversity: Transforming Graduate Recruitment for Road Maintenance Company

A prominent UK road infrastructure organization partnered with PeopleScout to develop an early careers recruitment process that would boost diversity.

Situation

Our client faced a decline in overall applications from graduates, raising concerns about the availability of diverse talent, especially in the engineering space. To address this challenge, they partnered with PeopleScout to develop a recruitment process that would prioritize diversity and inclusion amongst graduates hires. The objective was not only to attract exceptional talent, but also to engage and nurture candidates from various backgrounds, ensuring an inclusive and representative workforce. 

Solution

PeopleScout collaborated with the company to design a successful early talent campaign strategy. One key focus was to target the ‘Gen Z’ demographic while actively reaching out to a diverse array of candidates from different locations and backgrounds. To accomplish this, our recruitment experts executed a process designed to reduce adverse impact for all ethnic groups. The candidate attraction campaign also utilized inclusive language and imagery in the media strategy, ensuring that the campaign resonated with candidates from diverse backgrounds.

Utilizing Media for Outreach

Employing their employer branding imagery, the campaign leveraged social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat as well as the Google Display Network. With images that represented various groups, the campaign generated an impressive 29,000 clicks, effectively driving traffic to the career site, which produced over 42,000 total click-throughs to view available roles.

Mitigating Adverse Impact

After candidates applied and completed assessments, an adverse impact analysis was conducted, particularly following the Situational Judgement Test (SJT) stage. The analysis aimed to ensure that the benchmarking process did not negatively affect any ethnic group.

SJTs, known for their robustness and unbiased assessment experience, were used to screen a high volume of candidates. The automated scoring process helped reduce bias compared to traditional methods like resume CV evaluations. They also have lower adverse impact compared to other selection methods, such as cognitive ability tests.

This assessment method, combined with ensuring the recruitment coordinators who managed the candidate journey did not receive any ethnicity information about the candidates, helped eliminate unconscious bias and resulted in greater diversity of the candidate pool. 

Results

The collaboration and communication between PeopleScout and the client yielded remarkable outcomes. Throughout the campaign, the PeopleScout delivery team handled over 2,000 calls and emails. Among the 2,656 applications received for the graduate scheme, 54 offers were made, with 39% of these offers going to female candidates and 36% to candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The successful partnership has significantly transformed their graduate recruitment process. By placing diversity and inclusion at the forefront, the company has paved the way for a more representative workforce. As they strive to achieve their strategic goal of 5% of their total workforce coming from early careers talent by the end of 2024, they continue to work with PeopleScout as their recruitment partner, ensuring a future that is diverse, inclusive and innovative.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Road infrastructure company
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 50+ early careers positions
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