Read time: 4 min read
Most small firms have struggled to recruit in the past 12 months, blaming a lack of experienced candidates, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.1
The reasons recruiting has become so difficult are acute and wide-ranging. According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis, there are fewer employees in the UK workforce due to poorer health. Meanwhile, vacancies remain at historically high levels.2
As an SME owner, you can’t fix the nation’s health, but there is still much you can do to boost your recruitment success. Here are six tips to help.
Develop an empathetic engagement strategy
With inflation still raging, you may need to hike your pay scales - but they’re just one factor. An employee-engagement strategy looks at all the reasons people join and stay with your business and put in extra effort. Addressing all these factors will make you much more effective in attracting and retaining talent.
A CIPD study identified wide-ranging reasons for the record number of resignations post-pandemic - from work-life balance to health, wellbeing and relationships at work.3 One notable factor was ‘being unhappy with the leadership of senior management’.
Look at all the ways you relate to your employees, and introduce values and actions that support a more empathetic relationship. Focus on areas such as personal growth, flexible working patterns, physical and mental wellbeing, and inclusion. Aim to make employees feel autonomous, trusted, valued, heard, included and integrated.
Recruit managers who can manage business goals while also showing empathy. Assess their empathy levels directly during recruitment. For example, interview answers should show how much they care about other people's all-round growth and wellbeing – not just their own. You could even consider calling them coaches rather than managers.
Create targets that engender deeper connections with staff – radical flexibility, personal growth, holistic wellbeing and shared purpose are all things to think about. Track these through measurements such as recruitment success, retention, employee feedback and net promoter scores. If you can excel in all these factors, it will shine through when attracting talent.
Develop radical flexibility
Candidates have become much more concerned about work-life balance. Derek MacFeate, Founding Managing Partner at MM Search, says pre-pandemic, requests to work from home were rare but now they’re commonplace and a potential deal breaker. “Businesses are trying to make roles as attractive as possible by offering more things like working from home and four-day weeks,” he says.
Consider developing your own version of radical flexibility, which means trusting people to work how, when and where they want - and meeting their expectations through flexible work schedules, shared purpose and advanced communication processes.
Map career-development opportunities
Showing how you can help staff achieve career goals is critical to recruitment success and retention. Be ready to spell out the detail and logic of advancement opportunities to candidates – don’t rely on generic statements.
These opportunities are often more constrained in SMEs, but they can still be compelling. For example, SMEs can allow employees to develop new skills in multiple roles; be close to the action; and have an outsize impact on customers and business performance.
Make workers feel valued
Research by consultant McKinsey shows more than half the employees who left their job in the previous six months lacked a sense of belonging or didn’t feel valued by their organisation or manager.4
Many said they wanted to work with people who trust and care for each other. They want to learn, grow and feel they’re contributing to something meaningful. And they want to feel physical and psychological safety, so they can be themselves at work.
But many companies still treat employees as workers with productivity targets, rather than rounded individuals. For example, some are forcing workers to come back into the office. Instead, they could create an environment workers want to be in by addressing their social and wellbeing needs. McKinsey also advises focusing on personal contact and avoiding relationships that feel transactional.
Set a recruitment communication strategy
Once you have your recruitment and employee-engagement strategies in place, communicate them. Tracy Heatley, Small Business Marketing and Networking Specialist at Tracy Heatley, says: “For the first time, I'm being approached to help organisations market to potential employees. Firms want to differentiate their employment packages from competition because they cannot find suitable applicants.
“Many forward-thinking organisations are boosting employment packages with training allowances, wellness packages and flexible working - and developing a marketing strategy around that.”
Use technology to promote the human touch
In the initial stages of recruitment, MM Search exchanges recorded elevator pitches between candidates and employers. That helps bring the CV or job description to life and adds insight into the individuals from both sides, says Derek.
If you use video calls for first-stage interviews, he advises practising to project yourself and avoid coming across as lacking the human touch.
Also use HR technology to gather employee-engagement information and improve onboarding and off-boarding experiences, plus data and analytics so you can be more specific about what you need and why. This should make recruitment practices faster and more effective.
But remember, the key is empathy. No matter how good your technology, it’s vital to maintain strong empathetic communication throughout the recruitment process and beyond.
Read time: 4 min read
Most small firms have struggled to recruit in the past 12 months, blaming a lack of experienced candidates, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.1
The reasons recruiting has become so difficult are acute and wide-ranging. According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis, there are fewer employees in the UK workforce due to poorer health. Meanwhile, vacancies remain at historically high levels.2
As an SME owner, you can’t fix the nation’s health, but there is still much you can do to boost your recruitment success. Here are six tips to help.
Develop an empathetic engagement strategy
With inflation still raging, you may need to hike your pay scales - but they’re just one factor. An employee-engagement strategy looks at all the reasons people join and stay with your business and put in extra effort. Addressing all these factors will make you much more effective in attracting and retaining talent.
A CIPD study identified wide-ranging reasons for the record number of resignations post-pandemic - from work-life balance to health, wellbeing and relationships at work.3 One notable factor was ‘being unhappy with the leadership of senior management’.
Look at all the ways you relate to your employees, and introduce values and actions that support a more empathetic relationship. Focus on areas such as personal growth, flexible working patterns, physical and mental wellbeing, and inclusion. Aim to make employees feel autonomous, trusted, valued, heard, included and integrated.
Recruit managers who can manage business goals while also showing empathy. Assess their empathy levels directly during recruitment. For example, interview answers should show how much they care about other people's all-round growth and wellbeing – not just their own. You could even consider calling them coaches rather than managers.
Create targets that engender deeper connections with staff – radical flexibility, personal growth, holistic wellbeing and shared purpose are all things to think about. Track these through measurements such as recruitment success, retention, employee feedback and net promoter scores. If you can excel in all these factors, it will shine through when attracting talent.
Develop radical flexibility
Candidates have become much more concerned about work-life balance. Derek MacFeate, Founding Managing Partner at MM Search, says pre-pandemic, requests to work from home were rare but now they’re commonplace and a potential deal breaker. “Businesses are trying to make roles as attractive as possible by offering more things like working from home and four-day weeks,” he says.
Consider developing your own version of radical flexibility, which means trusting people to work how, when and where they want - and meeting their expectations through flexible work schedules, shared purpose and advanced communication processes.
Map career-development opportunities
Showing how you can help staff achieve career goals is critical to recruitment success and retention. Be ready to spell out the detail and logic of advancement opportunities to candidates – don’t rely on generic statements.
These opportunities are often more constrained in SMEs, but they can still be compelling. For example, SMEs can allow employees to develop new skills in multiple roles; be close to the action; and have an outsize impact on customers and business performance.
Make workers feel valued
Research by consultant McKinsey shows more than half the employees who left their job in the previous six months lacked a sense of belonging or didn’t feel valued by their organisation or manager.4
Many said they wanted to work with people who trust and care for each other. They want to learn, grow and feel they’re contributing to something meaningful. And they want to feel physical and psychological safety, so they can be themselves at work.
But many companies still treat employees as workers with productivity targets, rather than rounded individuals. For example, some are forcing workers to come back into the office. Instead, they could create an environment workers want to be in by addressing their social and wellbeing needs. McKinsey also advises focusing on personal contact and avoiding relationships that feel transactional.
Set a recruitment communication strategy
Once you have your recruitment and employee-engagement strategies in place, communicate them. Tracy Heatley, Small Business Marketing and Networking Specialist at Tracy Heatley, says: “For the first time, I'm being approached to help organisations market to potential employees. Firms want to differentiate their employment packages from competition because they cannot find suitable applicants.
“Many forward-thinking organisations are boosting employment packages with training allowances, wellness packages and flexible working - and developing a marketing strategy around that.”
Use technology to promote the human touch
In the initial stages of recruitment, MM Search exchanges recorded elevator pitches between candidates and employers. That helps bring the CV or job description to life and adds insight into the individuals from both sides, says Derek.
If you use video calls for first-stage interviews, he advises practising to project yourself and avoid coming across as lacking the human touch.
Also use HR technology to gather employee-engagement information and improve onboarding and off-boarding experiences, plus data and analytics so you can be more specific about what you need and why. This should make recruitment practices faster and more effective.
But remember, the key is empathy. No matter how good your technology, it’s vital to maintain strong empathetic communication throughout the recruitment process and beyond.
Read time: 4 min read
Most small firms have struggled to recruit in the past 12 months, blaming a lack of experienced candidates, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.1
The reasons recruiting has become so difficult are acute and wide-ranging. According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) analysis, there are fewer employees in the UK workforce due to poorer health. Meanwhile, vacancies remain at historically high levels.2
As an SME owner, you can’t fix the nation’s health, but there is still much you can do to boost your recruitment success. Here are six tips to help.
Develop an empathetic engagement strategy
With inflation still raging, you may need to hike your pay scales - but they’re just one factor. An employee-engagement strategy looks at all the reasons people join and stay with your business and put in extra effort. Addressing all these factors will make you much more effective in attracting and retaining talent.
A CIPD study identified wide-ranging reasons for the record number of resignations post-pandemic - from work-life balance to health, wellbeing and relationships at work.3 One notable factor was ‘being unhappy with the leadership of senior management’.
Look at all the ways you relate to your employees, and introduce values and actions that support a more empathetic relationship. Focus on areas such as personal growth, flexible working patterns, physical and mental wellbeing, and inclusion. Aim to make employees feel autonomous, trusted, valued, heard, included and integrated.
Recruit managers who can manage business goals while also showing empathy. Assess their empathy levels directly during recruitment. For example, interview answers should show how much they care about other people's all-round growth and wellbeing – not just their own. You could even consider calling them coaches rather than managers.
Create targets that engender deeper connections with staff – radical flexibility, personal growth, holistic wellbeing and shared purpose are all things to think about. Track these through measurements such as recruitment success, retention, employee feedback and net promoter scores. If you can excel in all these factors, it will shine through when attracting talent.
Develop radical flexibility
Candidates have become much more concerned about work-life balance. Derek MacFeate, Founding Managing Partner at MM Search, says pre-pandemic, requests to work from home were rare but now they’re commonplace and a potential deal breaker. “Businesses are trying to make roles as attractive as possible by offering more things like working from home and four-day weeks,” he says.
Consider developing your own version of radical flexibility, which means trusting people to work how, when and where they want - and meeting their expectations through flexible work schedules, shared purpose and advanced communication processes.
Map career-development opportunities
Showing how you can help staff achieve career goals is critical to recruitment success and retention. Be ready to spell out the detail and logic of advancement opportunities to candidates – don’t rely on generic statements.
These opportunities are often more constrained in SMEs, but they can still be compelling. For example, SMEs can allow employees to develop new skills in multiple roles; be close to the action; and have an outsize impact on customers and business performance.
Make workers feel valued
Research by consultant McKinsey shows more than half the employees who left their job in the previous six months lacked a sense of belonging or didn’t feel valued by their organisation or manager.4
Many said they wanted to work with people who trust and care for each other. They want to learn, grow and feel they’re contributing to something meaningful. And they want to feel physical and psychological safety, so they can be themselves at work.
But many companies still treat employees as workers with productivity targets, rather than rounded individuals. For example, some are forcing workers to come back into the office. Instead, they could create an environment workers want to be in by addressing their social and wellbeing needs. McKinsey also advises focusing on personal contact and avoiding relationships that feel transactional.
Set a recruitment communication strategy
Once you have your recruitment and employee-engagement strategies in place, communicate them. Tracy Heatley, Small Business Marketing and Networking Specialist at Tracy Heatley, says: “For the first time, I'm being approached to help organisations market to potential employees. Firms want to differentiate their employment packages from competition because they cannot find suitable applicants.
“Many forward-thinking organisations are boosting employment packages with training allowances, wellness packages and flexible working - and developing a marketing strategy around that.”
Use technology to promote the human touch
In the initial stages of recruitment, MM Search exchanges recorded elevator pitches between candidates and employers. That helps bring the CV or job description to life and adds insight into the individuals from both sides, says Derek.
If you use video calls for first-stage interviews, he advises practising to project yourself and avoid coming across as lacking the human touch.
Also use HR technology to gather employee-engagement information and improve onboarding and off-boarding experiences, plus data and analytics so you can be more specific about what you need and why. This should make recruitment practices faster and more effective.
But remember, the key is empathy. No matter how good your technology, it’s vital to maintain strong empathetic communication throughout the recruitment process and beyond.