The Great Resignation shows no sign of slowing and may represent the biggest crisis that HR professionals face in their careers. New research shows that two in five workers could leave their jobs within 6-12 months. Whilst the pandemic might have triggered these resignations, that shouldn’t blind employers to underlying systemic problems.
Some sources attribute this unprecedented churn to a shift in employee expectations, linked with the introduction of hybrid working policies or burnout. But it also points to a failure on the part of businesses to engage their employees, a mistake they can't afford to make during the downturn.
Engagement and recruitment are two sides of the same coin, yet organisations often treat them as independent processes, and this disconnect is fuelling the attrition problem. Instead of retaining and growing talent or diversifying the talent pool, businesses are shooting themselves in the foot by rushing to fill vacancies, and compromising recruitment effectiveness in the process.
Thomas’ global survey of nearly a thousand HR professionals found that 6 in 10 new hires fail within six months, an increase on last year’s figures. With budgets under scrutiny, getting the employee lifecycle off to the right start will be crucial for limiting churn and driving your business forward.
The same study found that soft skills are the key to workforce productivity, the absence of which currently costs businesses £1 trillion a year. According to nearly a thousand HR leaders worldwide, 'soft’ skills are also fundamental for building agile, resilient and motivated workforces.
Economic uncertainty and rising living costs will only make it harder for HR to secure, engage and empower top talent to deliver results. This calls for talent culture transformation. HR must move from intuitive to scientific talent strategies, and continually review and improve their effectiveness.
Most businesses believe that they have less than two years to transform their talent culture before suffering competitive or fiscal consequences. Find out how you can transform your talent culture today in the free research report ‘The Talent Culture Timebomb’.
Watch our Director of Science Jayson Darby and Canonical’s Head of Global Talent Acquisition Hanna Neuborn present global research insights from the report in our talk at CIPD ACE, ‘The Talent Culture Timebomb’.
