Once, people teams had the luxury of time to plan, test and tweak approaches. Now, many of us are taking it day by day: ten-year plans have been scrapped, and ‘business as usual’ is a distant memory. Many TA teams and HR leaders are looking for guidance.

In times like these, we look to the experts for advice and predictions in an unpredictable landscape. Industry commentators like Hung Lee have their finger on the pulse of what it means to recruit in 2021, and can help make sense of a landscape that’s shifting every day.

Speaking in a recent PageUp webinar, Hung Lee outlined his 8 key talent acquisition trends for the new year. This is by no means an exhaustive list – but it is a good way to check that your organisation is on the right track.

Here’s what we know so far about what matters in recruiting in 2021:

• Everyone is an international recruiter
• Digital transformation and automation take centre stage
• There are new challenges and considerations for diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)
• Alumni (former employees) become an organisation‘s greatest asset
• Employer branding becomes a non-negotiable
• Internal mobility evolves into a key source of quality talent.

2020 was the year that HR truly stepped up and took a seat at the table. In 2021, it’s time to continue that momentum and take the lead in transforming workplaces for the new world of work.

Talent acquisition trend 1: The global talent pool

COVID-19 has accelerated once-distant trends and forced the world’s biggest work-from-home experiment. Even laggards have been forced to adopt remote tech – and organisations are realising it can work. In spite of organisational complexities and the challenges of remote work, up to 37% of jobs can now be done fully remotely. In the US, there was a 150% increase in remote jobs from 2019 to 2020. In the UK, there was a 342% increase in the same period (Iain Moss, Adzuna, 2020). In Australia, there was more than a 200% increase in remote work in some states (NSW, ACT and Victoria).

Organisations are getting into the groove of remote work, and this has opened up possibilities for a global network of talent. No longer constrained by brick and mortar offices, organisations can hire the best people in the world – not just their city. In 2021, everyone is an international recruiter.

“Moving the job to where the people are is increasing,” says Hung Lee, curator of recruitment industry newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. Lee observes that “remote means anywhere” – and with technology improving and C-suite leaders enjoying the cost reduction of work-from-home arrangements, TA will shift from on-premise to remote hiring.

This brings about major changes:

• Moving away from the traditional full-time hiring cycle, remote workers can be freelancers and contractors. This trend lends itself to a “try before you buy” approach, according to Lee.
• There is zero friction for talent to move from company to company – which means the employee experience is more important than ever
• Compensation is set by elite organisations. No longer confined to local salary benchmarks, smaller players may struggle to compete with salaries offered by large organisations. For many jobseekers, the ability to live in their hometown but get paid a New York-level salary is appealing – and makes it hard for local organisations to compete
• Competition for top talent is global.

Talent acquisition trend 2: Digital transformation and automation becomes a priority

In a year of constant disruption, even the most progressive companies have had to think on their feet. They’ve achieved this agility through workforce automation. Research shows that 92% of senior executives agree that the lockdown period has made digital transformation a priority.

COVID-19 has forced the automation of in-person human roles, where possible. At the same time, remote working has flourished and given way to a raft of digitisation and automation. RPA (recruitment process automation) has delivered unparalleled efficiencies in the recruiting process, spurred on by reduced TA headcount and recruiters simply having to do more with less. What was once paper-based, manual and resource-intensive (multiple recruiters and interviewing rooms, onerous rounds of shortlisting and assessments) has become streamlined and fully digital.

Talent acquisition trend 3: Alumni form part of the talent community

“Retain the relationship, not the employee” recruiting guru Bill Boorman advises. This year, cash-strapped and time-poor recruiting teams are turning to the ‘talent community’ – alumni, silver-medalists and internal talent – as a source of pre-vetted, quality hires.

The return of the talent community creates a new job for recruiters – engaging talent even after they’ve left the organisation. In the past, once someone walked out the door they were often gone for good. Now, HR teams are acquainting themselves with the concept of ‘Boomerang employees’ – those that leave the business then eventually return. These people are an invaluable source of qualified talent, external referrals and, when treated well, should become lasting employer brand champions.

As people flow through the company from candidate to employee and eventually alumni, someone has to own and track this experience to ensure it’s a great one. Some organisations are approaching this by having a community manager that manages and engages people outside of the company. Others are developing alumni networks and using their career site as a leveraging point to attract alumni back.

Hung Lee shares key ways to engage alumni:

• Make relationships the entire point
• Bridge community & company. Careers sites are a great way to do this
• Treat talent mobility the same as career development
• That development might exist outside the company
• Not a single career path but career optionality

Talent acquisition trend 4: DE&I

In a year that’s brought us a global pandemic, political unrest and a worldwide shift to remote work, it would take a lot to capture our attention. And yet in 2020, DE&I did just that. As Black Lives Matter protests spread awareness and action around the world, the importance of racial equality, diversity and inclusivity in our own organisations captured the spotlight.

Lee says “DE&I has gone from being de-prioritised to re-prioritised” as organisations do the work in “rebuilding institutions that have been historically unfair.” Technology is helping to attract diverse candidates and reduce systemic bias in the hiring process, helping organisations to meet their DE&I goals at-scale.

Remote working increases accessibility for roles, but it also presents new hurdles to overcome. Technology opens the door for people from different backgrounds, geographies and ability to land roles, but access to good technology is not universal. Digital inequality – poor internet connection or older tech – can introduce a new set of unconscious biases for candidates.

Lee points to a recent study by researchers from USC, who found that audio quality has a direct impact on perceived reliability and expertise. When they presented identical conference presentations in high and low quality and asked participants to evaluate the researcher and the research, people evaluated the researcher and research less favourably when the audio quality was low. As we enter a new remote world, new biases appear which require attention and awareness. According to Lee, addressing these issues of inequality requires “mitigating with more tech, not less”.

Talent acquisition trend 5: Employer branding becomes a non-negotiable

Where once a great employer brand was seen as a “nice to have”, it is now a necessity for organisations to compete for talent on a global stage. Lee says that “This is a once-in-a-lifetime period for organisations looking to fortify their employer brand.” The way organisations respond to this crisis will affect and define their brand for decades to come. This means providing a great experience: caring for employees with trust and transparency, and caring for your candidates with open and regular communication. Maintaining this level of care will become a core TA responsibility and expectation — and technology will help time-poor hiring teams to facilitate this at scale.

Talent acquisition trend 6: Internal mobility

With lockdown restrictions forcing widespread layoffs, and with reduced recruiter headcount forcing hiring teams to do more with less, organisations are redeploying staff to cut costs and keep valued skills within the business. According to LinkedIn insights, internal hires increased by 19% in April-August 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019. Internal hires now make up almost 20% of an organisation’s workforce on average.

But according to Lee, “COVID revealed we don’t do internal mobility well.” In a recent survey by HR.com, over a third of respondents say that no one owns the internal mobility process. And over a quarter of employees are unaware of available job opportunities.

In 2021, it will be up to TA teams to gain full visibility of their workforce and identify hidden skill sets or opportunities for development. Technology can help to provide this visibility, and a powerful ATS can even provide smart recommendations for redeployment opportunities.

Lee posits that “TA will be known as ‘Talent Access’ – they will ensure the availability of the entire talent universe to the employer.” Managers will transform into ‘career coaches’ and rely on performance management technology to facilitate everyday feedback and on the go learning opportunities. According to Lee, TA will take ownership of internal mobility and talent delivery, signalling a move away from hiring-manager led placements.

Final thoughts

These six talent acquisition trends point to a future of work that’s tech-enabled and automated, but that also uplifts the human aspects of Human Resources. With technology automating manual and repetitive tasks, TA teams are freed to do the real work: building meaningful DE&I programs, engaging valued alumni, raising up internal employees to greater heights. As we embark on this uncertain journey together, go safe in the knowledge that the HR world and your talent communities will always be there to share wisdom, support and guidance.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of our clients first-hand. Her experience ranges from sales and marketing, change management, consulting and people development.

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2020 has been a challenging year for people around the world, regardless of age, background or geography. HR professionals have had it even harder, supporting teams in times of crisis, while also working through these challenges themselves.

But hope springs from adversity, and this year HR has truly stepped up as a leader in the new world of work. Talent management has become everyone’s business, and talent teams are getting the attention they deserve from C-suite leaders that now fully appreciate their worth.

Old, outdated systems have been digitised, processes streamlined and centralised, virtual hiring and remote work practices accelerated overnight. Armed with the business buy-in and technology solutions to make it work, HR is ready to take a seat at the table as we forge ahead into the new decade.

As we look back at the year that was, we can see how closely HR trends and challenges mirror our society. From a global pandemic and economic downturn, to racial upheaval across the globe, HR is the first responder and the first line of defence organisations have to help their teams make sense of the world around them.

2020 will be remembered as a turbulent, tumultuous year. Let’s not forget how HR responded:

1. Employee communication and care

When the first wave of lockdowns rolled out around the world, many organisations were forced into remote working arrangements overnight. HR teams had to figure out how to make it work, developing policies on the fly and ensuring teams were supported during this tough transition. With so much uncertainty in the air, HR stepped up and showed real leadership, reminding us what the ‘human’ aspect of human resources stands for. Talent teams used different strategies to shift to remote work and support their teams in times of change.

2. Mastering remote hiring and onboarding

As organisations got into the groove of remote work, some hiring teams found themselves faced with a dilemma: how to provide a great, fully virtual recruitment experience. Even the most progressive organisations had probably met candidates in-person at one stage of the hiring process. Now, recruitment teams had to ensure a streamlined, fully tech-enabled experience that left applicants and candidates wanting more. No problem, right? There were 3 key considerations for organisations looking to find great talent in the time of COVID; these included understanding your video interviewing needs, adjusting your approach to screening and prioritising onboarding.

3. Addressing COVID-19 challenges

Our Head of Customer Insights and Market Research Rebecca Skilbeck and SVP Global Talent Deborah Mason tackled how HR could address COVID-19 challenges. They discussed supporting employees, encouraging engagement, redeploying staff, managing remote workers and shared their thoughts for the future.

4. Supporting internal mobility

With the pandemic ramping up and an economic recession looming, many organisations put a freeze on hiring. But that didn’t mean skills gaps went away. Roles still needed to be filled by skilled workers, and organisations started to look within to find this talent. Many organisations are leveraging internal mobility to meet their hiring needs, while also keeping employees engaged and developing in their careers.

5. Scaling up recruiting to meet COVID-19 demands

Not all organisations were halting their hiring. Some were ramping up recruitment to meet demand: many retailers providing essential products were inundated with customer demand as lockdowns dragged on across the globe. Some PageUp customers processed as many as 55,000 applications in one recruitment campaign. To quickly hire the staff they needed at-scale, organisations turned to technology to automate candidate care and process bulk applications. Talent teams needed to establish processes to set up and run effective recruitment campaigns at scale, while remaining agile enough to respond rapidly to change.

6. Proactively rebuilding recruitment strategies after COVID-19

As we adjusted to the new COVID normal, organisations started to look to the future and wonder how they would rebuild. A crucial component of this was their recruitment strategy: what would it look like going forward? As the business landscape shifted, what new skills should they be recruiting for? And what new roles would emerge? Many organisations began rebuilding, starting with their recruitment strategy. This required a step by step approach, examining how COVID has affected the business landscape, identifying emerging skills gaps, and targeting the crucial behavioural traits you should be looking for in a top candidate.

7. Virtual recruiting tools

HR processes have been accelerated years into the future thanks to the overnight shift to remote working. We shared 17 must-know tools to support online recruiting; from voice-based and text-based AI-interviewing and online testing, to online assessments, video interviews and reference checking.

8. Workplace diversity, equity and inclusion

This year will be remembered not just for COVID-19, but also as the year the world stood up, spoke up and took action on racial inclusivity, diversity and demanded equal opportunity for people of all backgrounds. With organisations around the world turning a spotlight to their own DE&I strategies, many began prioritising and establishing the building blocks of a successful DE&I strategy.

9. Data-based recruitment strategies

What recruitment metrics should savvy hiring teams be tracking in 2020 and into the future? A lot has changed in the past year, and many talent teams have started to review and revise the recruitment metrics they track in line with their organisational goals. The best recruitment metrics to track in now, in 2021 and beyond include offer acceptance rate, applicant-to-hire rate, candidate-to-hire rate, sourcing channel effectiveness, and mobile application and time-to-apply rates.

Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of our clients first-hand. Her experience ranges from sales and marketing, change management, consulting and people development.

The post 9 things HR cared about in 2020 appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

“Build a team that can respond to whatever challenge is thrown at them, and you’ll be well-placed to weather any industry disruption.”

These are words of advice PageUp shared back in 2018 – and today, they hold truer than ever. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are fundamentally rethinking their people strategy: whether that’s freezing hiring, standing down their workforce, redeploying staff or hiring to fill critical skill gaps. In this uncertain, rapidly changing landscape, internal mobility takes centre stage.

Internal mobility allows you to build a clear view of key skills in your organisation, then establish internal pipelines of talent that can be deployed as needed to respond to shifts in the market. It also allows you to keep valuable employees working, rather than standing them down.

To survive these challenging times, organisations need to be fast, agile, and mobile. Internal mobility arms HR teams with the tools to respond to this challenge, leverage the skills at their disposal (without having to spend time and money on recruitment) and quickly respond to change.

Organisations are using talent mobility to survive this crisis

Many organisations are finding they need to redeploy people (to avoid having to stand them down) in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Internal mobility plays a key role by giving HR teams a complete picture of their existing talent so they can understand what skill sets are available in order to pivot and become dynamic.

Internal mobility provides a timely picture of employees’ aspirations and skillsets. Things like internal expression of interest forms and employee profiles help to build a comprehensive picture of the workforce to manage redeployment.

Not all industries are freezing hiring and standing-down workforces. Some companies are turning to redeployment to fill critical skill gaps in the wake of unprecedented demand. Supermarket retailers, for instance, are hiring hundreds of thousands of new staff to cater to demand from shoppers, while healthcare providers are ramping-up hiring to staff hospitals with much-needed healthcare workers. Call centers are bringing on more people as customer enquiries rise and hotlines ring around the clock.

Over these past weeks, PageUp has been helping our customers recruit at scale and process large volumes of applications, and redeploy existing resources. What we’ve seen from working with our customers is that internal mobility has a symbiotic relationship with hiring: and it can be a coordinated effort between multiple organisations.

Right now, there is more cross-organisational mobility than ever before. Woolworths has been redeploying staff from BWS and Dan Murphy’s, Coles has been working with Flight Centre to find work for employees who were stood down. One Qantas pilot found work in a hospital after being furloughed.

How organisations treat their workforce during this pandemic will impact their employer brand for years to come. Savvy organisations are thinking about skillsets in the business that could be impacted and using internal mobility to keep these people working.

The way employees work across teams, borders and now even companies has evolved since the start of the century. In the wake of COVID-19, it will continue to do so at an accelerated pace.

The implications that COVID-19 will have on a global workforce demonstrates the need for organisations to be adaptable, agile and accustomed to flexible ways of working. But it’s not just COVID-19 that’s necessitating the switch to increased internal mobility. Underlying this all is a skills shortage that’s growing more serious by the year.

Fighting a looming skills shortage

Although these unprecedented times are resulting in major shifts in the employment market, one thing remains the same: there is and will continue to be a skills shortage. Even with higher unemployment deepening the pool of available talent, this doesn’t necessarily mean the talent with the skills you’re looking for will be available.

With many organisations slowing down or freezing hiring right now, critical skills gaps still exist. By 2030, the Australian workforce will be 29 million skills in deficit. How will organisations fill these roles?

The problem isn’t limited to Australia: in a McKinsey Global Survey on future workforce needs, nearly 9 in 10 executives say their organisations either face skill gaps already or expect gaps to develop within the next five years.

Although most say their organisations consider it a priority to address skill shortages, few say their organisations understand how to find the workforce skills they will need most. In fact, according to recent research from McKinsey, only one-third of executives say their companies are prepared to cope with the workforce disruptions resulting from technology and market trends. In light of COVID-19, these numbers will likely fall even further.

How will you equip your organisation with the workforce you need for the future – especially if you’re not hiring right now? Look to your greatest source of talent: internal mobility.

The highest-performing companies are reskilling their existing workforce and leveraging internal mobility to address talent shortages and skills gaps. It’s why internal mobility is a crucial part of any savvy recruiter’s strategic toolkit. Instead of relying solely on acquisition alone, recruiters should strategically look both outside and within the organisation to fill roles.

To make a start, recruiters should split their time between EVP and attracting passive candidates, and focus on developing internal mobility and career paths. Not only will you save money on external recruitment costs, you’ll also reduce turnover when you give internal talent the opportunity to grow and develop. In every organisation there are great untapped resources; if you’re not developing them and giving them opportunities to grow, they will leave – and you’ll lose your best talent.

Take the below chart as an example: have you ever had a similar scenario unfold?

It doesn’t have to be this way. By investing in developing your existing people through internal mobility, you’re investing back in your organisation. Your top performers stick around for longer, your employer brand is defined by development opportunities, and you’ll create a culture that attracts motivated, engaged people who are seeking opportunities to grow.

In Bersin’s 2018 Talent Acquisition industry study, 3 out of 4 of the leading talent acquisition teams tapped into internal talent pools, compared with roughly one in 10 low-performing teams. These high-performing talent acquisition teams are five times more likely to offer a strategic approach to internal mobility.

All evidence suggests internal mobility is a vital tool to keep the best employees in your organisation. As researchers at McKinsey observe, “A 21st-century company should put as much effort into developing its talented employees as it puts into recruiting them.”

The business case for internal mobility

Internal mobility is a critical HR strategy, but other decision-makers in the business may not be aware of its benefits. How can you build the business case for internal mobility and convince C-suite leaders to invest in an internal mobility program?

So far we’ve talked about how internal mobility improves employer brand, keeps the best people inside your organisation, and helps recruiters be more strategic. But how does that relate in hard numbers to bottom line savings? In the following 4 ways:

1. Avoid recruitment costs by looking within
2. Avoid the cost of turnover by choosing someone already aligned with your culture
3. Improves employer brand so you can cut advertising costs
4. Avoid the ‘doom loop’ (more on this later)

The business opportunity with internal mobility is clear. First, you can avoid replacement and recruitment costs incurred when people leave – an especially attractive proposition considering many organisations are currently slowing down or freezing hiring. Second, you can reshape your employment brand and workplace culture to attract more of the right-fit candidates – making recruitment faster, more effective, and less expensive. And most importantly, you can avoid the “doom loop”.

Let’s explore further:

Internal mobility by the numbers

1. Avoid recruitment costs by looking within 

• Though most companies spend only 6 per cent of their recruitment budgets on internal candidates, these candidates fill 14 per cent of job openings.
• Internal mobility is a cost-effective way to find candidates, and bypasses the costs of onboarding, training, and other upfront expenses associated with external hiring.

2. Avoid the cost of turnover by choosing someone already aligned with your culture 

• New hire turnover is a major issue for organisations. Up to 20% of employee turnover happens in the first 45 days of a job. When you already know an internal candidate, there’s less chance you’ll choose someone who isn’t the right fit, less chance they’ll leave, and less chance you’ll have to start the hiring process all over again.
• Whose resume would you trust more: an external candidate or an internal candidate? The internal candidate has a demonstrated work history, performance reviews, and alignment with your organisation’s culture. The external candidate is an unknown.
• According to research by Harvard Business Review, it can take an outside hire 3 years to perform as well as an internal hire in the same role – even though it takes 7 years for an internal hire to earn as much as an outside hire.
• According to Deloitte research, organisations that promoted internally are 32% more likely to be satisfied with the quality of their new hires.
• It typically takes 2 years for the performance reviews of an external hire to reach the same level as those of an internal hire.
• Compared with internal hires in similar positions, external hires are 61% more likely to be laid off or fired in their first year of service and 21% more likely to leave.

3. Improve your employer brand so you can cut recruitment advertising costs

As we touched on before, internal mobility improves retention and employer brand, which attracts more of the right talent to your organisation.

• Surveys show that all workers—especially millennials—expect the opportunity to grow within an organisation. Without this, they’ll likely look elsewhere.
• On-the-job development opportunities such as lateral moves and stretch assignments can increase engagement by up to 30%.
• People want to grow and build their careers rapidly. Internal mobility provides those opportunities, which keeps talent engaged and stops them from leaving. It’s a powerful employer brand magnet: jobseekers view your organisation as one that prioritises growth and development opportunities.
• According to Deloitte research, at many low-performing organisations, talent and strategy are seen as separate channels.
• At many high-performing organisations, recruitment and retention and internal mobility are linked. These organisations go out of their way to create employee experiences that encourage growth, learning, engagement, and communication by coaching and developing employees and creating cross-functional training opportunities – and that’s reflected in their employer brand.

4. Avoid the doom loop

• We’ve talked a lot about the cost-saving potential of internal mobility – better fit hires, high performers, and an improved employer brand. But what about the cost of not having an internal mobility program?
• Heavy turnover can significantly impact the company’s employment brand. Call it the doom loop: There’s no implied loyalty between employees and employers, so employers don’t want to invest in learning and development programs. Because there are no development programs, employees don’t have the skills to be considered for promotion—and there’s no internal mobility. Faced with a lack of growth options, the best employees keep leaving, damaging the organisation’s employer brand. This doesn’t have to happen!

5. Implementing a successful internal mobility program

So how do you establish an internal mobility program that works? Let’s cover the building blocks of a successful internal mobility program.

Champion internal mobility at the highest level

Many organisations struggle with internal resistance to internal mobility. Some even have a culture of ‘talent hoarding’ where managers are reluctant to give up their best talent – and hiring managers are actively discouraged from ‘poaching’ top performers.

To overcome this internal resistance, internal mobility needs to be championed at the highest level, and baked into the culture of the organisation. This will only work if you have buy-in from leaders.

Shift mindset 

Organisations need to think about internal talent as a long-term investment. This requires leaders to realise that losing an employee comes at a significant cost to the company: the loss of institutional knowledge, client relationships, and productivity alone is a huge loss, not to mention the costs of recruiting and training a replacement. If that valued team member was in a revenue-generating position, the cost of them leaving increases even more.

Encourage career ‘storytelling’

Career storytelling champions those who have climbed the career ladder, and gives people a narrative they can model their own careers on. In turn, this gives recruiters a pre-made pipeline of talent.

To inspire others to follow in their footsteps, business leaders need to make their career stories known. Some organisations hold ‘Town Hall’-style interviews with leaders in the business, to make them accessible to everyone in the organisation. Organisations like Deloitte prominently post the career journeys of their staff on their career site.

Mentor programs are another great way to promote inter-organisational opportunities and increase collaboration and visibility of skills within the business.

In these uncertain times, internal mobility is a key strategy to future-proof your workforce. Whatever the future may hold, people are still an organisation’s greatest asset. With many organisations slowing down their recruitment, hiring teams need to learn to leverage and develop the talent that already exists in their teams. The organisations that can do this successfully will be well-placed to weather whatever challenges come their way.

As Chief of Staff, Dayne is responsible for driving strategic initiatives across the organisation on behalf of the CEO and Leadership team. Having Joined PageUp in 1999, he has over 19 years experience in HR technology including all phases of design, build, sales, implementation and training.

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