Rethinking recruitment and reskilling

In this podcast

According to research, almost half of the skills used by the workforce today will no longer be relevant in a couple of years. Given this context of a fast-evolving workplace with shifting needs, it’s perhaps unsurprising that organisations are struggling to hire people with the right skills. What is to be done? Career mentor Laurie Macpherson joins us to discuss ways for HR and employees to begin to rethink recruitment and reskilling.

Introduction

Laurie Macpherson: We know that people want moves and changes and people are now seeking more since the pandemic fulfilment and purpose. So the way that employers can really tap into that is to look at the current workforce not as, you know, ‘This is the thing you do, this must be the thing you always do,’ but what other things might you like to explore.

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the Brightmine podcast, formerly known as the XpertHR podcast. Brightmine is a leading provider of people data, analytics and insight, offering employment law expertise, comprehensive HR resources and reward data to meet every HR and organisational challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com.

My name is Robert Shore, and today we’re going to be discussing the need to rethink recruitment. We’re hearing that organisations are struggling to find the right candidates for open roles. There may have been a slowdown in hiring due to economic circumstances but many companies are still looking to hire; they’re just not able to find the right people. This is a major blocker for business growth.

A key issue in all of this is that organisations are struggling to hire people with the right skills. Added to that challenge is the fact that organisations themselves are changing, as are the skills they need. What is to be done?

This would seem to be the moment, then, to introduce our guest, Laurie Macpherson. Laurie is a career mentor and associate consultant at Connect Three, a global leadership consultancy based in Glasgow that focuses on making the world a better place in which to live and work. Laurie, welcome. [0:01:34.5]

Laurie Macpherson: Thank you so much for having me.

Robert Shore: Now, before we get into the question of rethinking recruitment I just wanted to ask you a bit about your background and about the sorts of businesses you’ve been working with, as a sort of scene-setter. [0:01:46.3]

Laurie Macpherson: Yes, absolutely. So I am a career mentor. I come from a background of retail and travel, and then I moved into employability in 2015. So nine years ago now. And I’ve been working on it as part of my own business since 2019. And in that time I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a huge variety of individuals from so many different sectors, from marketing to tech to academic, and also as part of my associate role with Connect Three I’ve delivered training, outplacement support and support around equipment to a variety of small business accelerator. I’ve delivered training to local businesses as part of some of the local funding, and also delivered recruitment and out-placement support for businesses who needed that too.

So in my own work I’ve worked with a huge variety of types of business. I’ve been part of the Kickstarter programme after the pandemic. I’ve been part of Business in the Community’s overfifties programme, and I’ve also ran three mentoring programmes and a [unclear – 0:02:52.5] programme for the sustainable aquaculture and innovation centre here in Scotland. So a massive variety of different types of client and helping them all with skills, recruitment and understanding how to find new roles in this modern marketplace.

Robert Shore: Yeah. Can I just ask you there about aquaculture. I don’t think we talk much about that. So can you just sort of tell us a bit about what that is? [0:03:18.0]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, absolutely. So when I was asked to do this, I have to confess I said yes – ‘cause I’m a big believer in doing so – and then I went home and Googled ‘aquaculture’, and it’s all about fish, farming and the practices around that, how we get food on our tables, basically. Obviously a huge industry here in Scotland, one which I knew absolutely nothing about, but the point of it was about bringing mentors and mentees together, and that ran as a really successful programme over three different instances and iterations, and I put the mentors and mentees together and facilitated the programme. Got some brilliant results from it. But I’m fully a believer in saying yes and working out the details later.

Robert Shore: It sounds great. Actually, I think we’re going to come back to aquaculture at various points because I think in this question of recruitment we often think about people always having a computer in front of them and, you know, there’s an easy way to communicate with people all the time. I think some of the circumstances for working in aquaculture probably challenges that. You’re not always online. [0:04:19.5]

Laurie Macpherson: Yes. I did that work through a company called Skillful and they very much work with researchers and academics to get their work out into industry, and one of the reasons we needed the programme was because they’re so geographically spread out and in a way that we can’t even imagine, and the fact that they couldn’t understand what their next job move might be because it could be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on a totally remote part of the world, and they couldn’t just go and ask someone who does that, and they couldn’t just pop through to the next office and ask to shadow and help. It was literally they couldn’t see their next move because they just couldn’t physically see what was happening around them. So that’s why that programme worked so beautifully.

Finding people with the right skills

Robert Shore: Let’s begin somewhere near the beginning. How do you change the hiring process so that you can find people with the right skills? For saying there’s this hunt for certain kinds of skills, but what can you do in terms of, say, creating job ads or job descriptions to sort of achieve that kind of clarity so people really know what you’re looking for and they find themselves? [0:05:20.1]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, so it is all about being really, really clear about what you want. And before of course you can do that, Robert, you have to know yourself, and I think it’s something people rehire for the same job that they’ve always done, they’ve always had that particular role, and actually with a little bit more explanation they might realise that actually we need something a little bit different now. There’s a huge piece about not needing to reactively hire all the time because you’re creating a talent pipeline from within and, you know, promoting from within. But also a lot of it is really to do with the language in the job adverts and descriptions. I have had cases where clients have come to me and said, ‘Can we apply for this?’ and I’ve had to say no, as I have absolutely no idea what they’re actually asking. This is [unclear]. I have no idea what they want you to do, what they need you to do, and what you’d be doing on a day-to-day basis. Like, no. I can’t tell.

So make it really clear exactly what you want and exactly what you need them to have had previously. And you know, what is non-negotiable and what is up for discussion because so often I have clients who want to go for jobs because they like the look of them and they’re maybe nearly there, but make it really clear what are the bits that are going to rule them in and rule them out, I think is really, really important.

And I think also thinking about the talent pool in general, you know, make sure you’re using language because so many times, Robert, I hear from clients who…they just don’t know what some of the words are and they just don’t really [unclear] these lists of things they actually do and know how to do. And sometimes it’s a bit of a class or an expectation thing. So if you’re using really difficult language to talk about something quite simple, you’re going to rule out a tonne of people who could do it but just don’t know that they’re already doing it. A lot of it is down to language and clarity of the job description itself.

Skills requirements are changing

Robert Shore: We’re hearing a lot about the skills that people need in the contemporary workplace changing quite rapidly, and there are a lot of sort of figures about, 50% of skills that people currently have being obsolete within the next 5-10 years or even sooner. This obviously, as you say, there’s always that temptation to create a pipeline of people who might bring in the skills from outside, but there’s also the issue of reskilling, isn’t there, of getting people already within your workforce to develop themselves? And you’ve just written a piece for us, actually, about squiggly careers or zigzag careers, as we’re calling it. Can you talk to us a little bit about the way that the requirement for skills has changed and how, in thinking about recruitment, employers could think about that? [0:07:50.4]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, so I think that the old notion, you know Robert, of going to a career or a job and staying there until someone presented you with a gold clock, you know, has gone, and we know that. And that sounds either absolutely horrifying or great, you know, really exciting. Both are fine, it depends on how you look at it. But we know that people want moves and changes and people are now seeking more and more since the pandemic fulfilment and purpose. It’s something that clients speak to me about all the time.

So the way that employers can really tap into that is to look at the current workforce not as, you know, this is the thing you do, this must be the thing you always do, but what other things might you like to explore. And I use the word ‘might’ quite deliberately. You know, it’s not committing yourself or signing your name in blood. It’s sort of saying, ‘I might be interested in some other part of the business. Can I spend a little bit of time exploring that?’ and understanding that people may want to move and change and flex. And ‘squiggly career’ is a phrase coined by the amazing women of the Amazing If podcast, and they talk about, ‘Things would be amazing if…’ They have two amazing books – The Squiggly Career and You Coach You, which are all about career development and highly, highly recommended. They also have a brilliant podcast with episodes on everything you could possibly need, and they also produce sheets and notes around this. So a tonne of material, lots of free and paid-for training.

And they talk about that fact that we’re going to want to move as individuals. So if your employers are sensible and understanding about this, they can help you to move and you can move with them so that you bring the knowledge of the industry and the business with you. Unfortunately, if you’re not understanding about that and you expect someone to go in and fit into a box forever, they’re unfortunately quite likely to take the desire and the wish to do something a little bit different and take it somewhere else.

So people are often finding they have to go out of a company that they actually really like and they enjoy, and they enjoy the work and they enjoy the people they work with, but they’re just not getting those opportunities. There’s lots of carrot-dangling or what I call, you know, ‘This time next year, Rodney, we will possibly let you move and let you do something else,’ but actually it never really comes to fruition. So employers can and should realise that people’s identity is not fixed. People can move and change, and if they want to develop and support them within the business that’s all there for the taking and they’ll have a supportive and knowledgeable workforce, but they have to allow a little bit of moving and grooving to facilitate this.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So that sort of learning and development are is important for companies if they actually want to retain the best personnel. [0:10:21.6]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s about cross-skilling. What do people want to look at? What other things are they interested in? And how can we upskill them to do that, you know, as well as their own role, whether it’s something a bit more technical, whether it’s something more sales-based, you know, whatever it is that they want and you need. It just makes absolute sense to help them to do it as part of their role, rather than sending them off and finding someone else who doesn’t know your business, doesn’t know the industry and doesn’t know the sector.

Leveraging internal recruitment

Robert Shore: Yeah. And so one question that comes up quite a lot is, you know, you might know how to put an ad somewhere where people look, where they’re looking to move jobs. How do you let people know within your own organisation that there are things available and that they might be the right person for it? So just how do you do the whole business of promoting internal moves? What practically can organisations do? [0:11:14.5]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, I think again it’s that not waiting until it’s reactive, Robert. It’s not waiting until, ‘Ta-da, we have a new position!’ It’s, you know, ‘Who might be interested? Who’s working on that? Who’s showing keen and willing?’ And again, this is a twoway thing. It’s up to the employee to ask and to tell you that they’re interested and willing. But again, they might not know. So it’s also up to you to do a little bit of, ‘I’ve noticed that you’re particularly skilled at that. I’ve noticed that this is working really, really well. Have you thought about…?’ And hopefully together, between the employer and, you know, L&D and the employee, they can talk about these promotions before they happen so that people can act up, can do a bit of shadowing.

Quite often, if you’re going to step up, the things that are stopping you are not having experience of leading the team, not having exposure to certain documents, and not being in the right rooms, not being in the right meetings. So between you and your manager you can facilitate all that happening before the position comes up so that when it does come up you are ready to step in.

And it’s about having a bit of a network at the next level, and it’s about having skills at the next level, and it’s about being exposed and being allowed. Because quite often people will say to me, ‘I’m looking to step up. Here’s the thing I don’t have but I haven’t been essentially allowed to do that because that’s what my manager does.’ And sometimes there’s a little bit of hands across the jotter, Robert, you know, when managers are kind of protecting their own work a little bit instead of sensibly realising, ‘I can farm off some tasks to some keen person in my organisation, develop them and also decrease my workload at the same time.’ So there’s a real bit about doing it before and having it all ready.

Having someone ready to go to step in is obviously the dream. But we live in the real world and otherwise it is again about having those conversations where managers go to people and say, ‘This is coming up. You’re good at this.’ Because the person may or may not know because they may be so busy doing the do that they haven’t ever stopped to think about how this might work as part of their career longer-term.

Most people go into workplaces and stay because they don’t hate it and just kind of sit, and it’s all quite reactive. So can we actually start to help people to get a bit of a strategy?

Is internal recruitment and development improving?

Robert Shore: And from what you’re seeing, are companies changing? Are they beginning to get better at this? Do you think the message is being understood? [0:13:33.1]

Laurie Macpherson: Well, bearing in mind that I get a lot of people who want to move…so potentially, you know, I’m hearing lots about carrots being dangled and, ‘Oh, I might retire in ten years’ time.’ ‘How lovely! But actually, how does that help me?’ So I think it’s slow, is what I would say. Yes, there has been some progress around this, you know, career development piece.

But let’s be honest, there are many organisations where if you go and say, ‘I want to do this,’ they’ll basically tell you to get back in your box. But those are the organisations that I’m saying to people, ‘That’s
okay. We don’t have to work for them. We don’t have to stay in that place. We can absolutely look for organisations – within our working abilities, of course. And I think there is some responsibility on the part of the employee as well to think about their own job, career, future, and their potential next moves and not to always be thinking, ‘Oh, this has happened. Oh dear, let’s work around that,’ But actually, ‘But here’s what I might like to do next and here’s how I might work on that.’

So I think it is changing but it is slow and there are some industries where it’s painfully slow. And when I speak to people in these industries, they think that they’re asking for a unicorn when they ask for a bit of development and a bit of flex and I’m having to tell them, ‘No, it’s completely normal, just not in your industry.’

What about employees who aren’t at their desks?

Robert Shore: Yeah. So I want to get back to aquaculture here for a minute, actually, because we do assume that people have access to a computer and email so that actually you can get a message to people quite easily. In sort of working environments where that’s not the case, how do organisations successfully convey the kind of messaging they need to do around reskilling and a certain kind of, you know, innovative internal recruitment? How does that work if people are out fishing, for instance? [0:15:15.2]

Laurie Macpherson: In that industry it was very much needed that there was more around networking so that they actually could speak to…quite often their manager was the only person out with them, you know, so they weren’t able to have a delightful career conversation where you’re actually doing the do. Out in pretty rough sea conditions sometimes…you know, I’ve met people at conferences that I would have not got on a boat to come to. Yeah, so sometimes it’s that they’re only really with their line manager and someone doing the same thing as them. So that’s where the networking piece was massive, Robert, where they actually had a chance to step back and say, ‘Here’s what’s happening in the kind of wider world.’ LinkedIn is obviously the obvious place, and I know it gets a lot of negative press. It could be a bit dull but that depends on who you follow.

So what we really tried to do was get these people to create a bit of a community for each other and speak to each other and use each other’s knowledge and skills. And when we saw each other moving around to ask some curious questions about what’s happening and where they’d been going, so I think in that case when you’re not sort of seated at a desk and you don’t have anyone directly to talk to there and then, for us it was placing those mentees with the mentors, and the value add and the knowledge exchange was absolutely two ways so that everybody understood what the bigger picture was, what the landscape was, and what was on offer to them.

A lot of them didn’t know…’cause the first time someone said to me, ‘I don’t want to be stuck doing seaweed all my life.’ I thought, ‘Is that a thing? Is that like typecasting?’ But apparently in that sector it is. So you know, or, ‘I don’t want to just be landed with salmon forever.’ And again, I was thinking, ‘Is that a thing?’ But it is. So it’s about seeing that, you know, ‘Your skills are 100% absolutely useable by someone else. Here’s the sort of job I’m doing but I’ve also done this and that.’ And it’s literally, I didn’t know that job existed or that company existed. It’s joining dots and opening doors in an industry where those are not obvious to you because of the physical location and physical sorts of work that you have to do.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So as you say, LinkedIn is quite useful for that. What did you do there to build out that sort of networking piece? [0:17:14.5]

Laurie Macpherson: In terms of that particular programme, as I say, I ran that through a company called Skillful. We facilitated that everyone had each other’s contact details. We ran initial sessions with the mentors and the mentees, and then we ran a final session twice on Zoom so they could all sort of see each other. We encouraged them to connect with each other and not just their own mentor but also sort of threw the doors open. We had a small LinkedIn group.

It never worked particularly well but it let the ones in one of the small sections kind of speak to each other. And the last session we ran was actually a lovely sort of celebration of lots of the programmes that [unclear] had been running and we actually got everyone together in a room and there was time for networking where we actually spoke and did
the connection piece face-to-face, which I have to say there is nothing like. It’s just that it’s not always physically possible when people are literally all over the place. We opened it up and we made it really clear that we could, you know, I could do introductions if needed. Everybody sort of connected with me, essentially, and then I was connected with everybody so we could all see each other’s thinking popping up.

And it gave me great joy to see people out and moving jobs and seeing the congratulations and the change of role etc., and everyone could see where each other was going and get a bit of a, ‘Ah, okay. That’s an option. Where did she go?’ And I always encourage them to do a little bit of sleuthing and look back and ‘What did they do before and where did they do it and who did they have on connections?’ Follow them, connect with them, grow your network. There’s a bit of proactive stuff that has to go on here, as well as of course the times and the sessions that we set up for them.

Robert Shore: Yeah. And as you say, though, it’s important to set aside a minute or two for a bit of reflection as well, isn’t it, on actually what you’ve done, what came of the things that you did so that you actively learn? [0:18:51.5]

Laurie Macpherson: Absolutely. And one of the things I talk about all the time is that, you know, we don’t know what’s coming next. We can’t in this world or in careers or whatever. What we do know is we’re going to need [unclear] work and we’re going to need some evidence of the things we’ve done before. So would you ever just take a minute to get your evidence down? Yeah, tomorrow, so 3rd of the month, I’ll be sending a poster out into the world saying, ‘This is the time to sit down and write down the things you’ve done, tools you’ve used, and what you’ve been up to in April so that you have them ready, so when someone asks you to join a committee, there’s a board role, there’s a promotion, there’s a secondment, someone asks you to sit on a panel, you have some evidence to give them.’

The importance of facilitating internal recruitment

Robert Shore: And obviously if you’re working within a company, say you’ve got an HR role, it’s useful to have in mind these things so that you can also adopt them into what you do in the company in order to keep people happy within the company rather than having them always look out to go somewhere else for that next role. So it is quite important that actually organisations think about doing this for their own employees at the moment, would you say or…? [0:19:57.1]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, 100%. As I say, there’s a bit of two-way responsibility. But so often, as you know, companies do a yearly appraisal, Robert, and it’s kind of one-and-done. And actually, if I was a manager right now I would be encouraging my team to go and say, ‘Right, it’s the 2nd of the month, tomorrow at three o’clock I want you to finish half an hour early and write down…we’ll talk about the projects we’ve been working on this month, we’ll talk about some wins, we’ll talk about some learns.’ I do it in a business group that I’m in. We do wins and challenges every month and it just…the ideas just flow and the wins…so yes, employers can absolutely facilitate this. But that can become the norm, that we sit down every month and look at what we’ve been working on, you know, because it’s normal to you that you can use the systems.

You know, I had a lady yesterday looking for a new role and she hasn’t used a project management tool yet. She hasn’t used Asana. So I said, ‘Right…’ My rule is always is you see it on one advert, if one advert asks you to be able to tap dance or roller-skate backwards and you can’t, delete and ignore. But if every advert is asking for it, you would be wise to get it. So if you are already using a project management tool – WorkDay, Google, whatever you are using, Oracle, Sage, whatever – this is sellable and of value to someone else. If you’ve been working on a project around employee benefits, who did you look at? Who did you research? Why did you choose the ones you did? If it’s pensions, the same. What have you been doing and what was the impact and result? Or what will it be? You can start to construct that bit of a story.

Again, this can be to use internally and it can absolutely be great for HR and L&D teams to embed with employees that this is something that we do to support our development, not just leaving and going into something else, but also within the company so that when we need a champion for something, we need a panel, we’re looking for, you know, some internal content for the intranet, you can put your hand up ‘cause you have something to talk about and something to hook it on.

Common questions

What impact is flexible working having on recruitment?

Robert Shore: We’re talking about ways in which things are changing within the workplace, in relation specifically to recruitment. So I wanted to bring in a couple of other questions that get a lot of coverage at the moment. I mean, one is around the expectation of flexibility, changes recently to the law around requesting flexible working. What impact is this having on organisations that you can see, and also just on how workers are thinking about this? How is it working out as well? We hear a lot about the theory. [0:22:21.6]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, Robert. So we know for a fact that – and I was lucky enough to go along to a conference in Glasgow with Flexibility Works, who have done a recent study on this – and as we already know, people at the top of the tree, the more senior you are, the more likely you are to get flexible working. And you’re also more likely to have a better salary at that.

So my clients who are senior, mid to senior level, it’s a huge consideration. And I actually had a lovely conversation last week where someone said, ‘I want to work four days. I haven’t got young kids. I haven’t got elderly parents. I just want to work four days. Is that allowed? Can I do that?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely!’ And the more of us that ask for it, the more it will become the norm. So again, it’s that employees are wanting flex at the moment. They’re desperately looking for hybrid usually, though sometimes fully from home. I’m seeing an awful lot. I’m in all the Facebook groups around flexibility.

People are asking for that above anything else, like, ‘I just need a flexible job.’ They kind of don’t care what it is. And I’m always encouraging them to go back and actually work out, ‘What do you want?’ Now let’s assume that there’ll be a degree of flexibility and then let’s speak to them about that down the line, but that doesn’t always work. So employees expect it, and if you don’t offer it you will have many, many less responses to your adverts. The problem is, lots of folk don’t really describe clearly exactly what their flexibility is.

There’s lots of vague, ‘We’re happy to discuss.’ There’s lots of vague, ‘We operate a family friendly policy.’ Actually stating, ‘We need you to be four days or three days or two days in the office and this is Monday and Thursday,’ would make so many people’s lives so much easier, and they would just be able not to apply. So again, it’s about being clear. Employees want and need flex, and not just ones with caring responsibilities.

I always say this. I’m child-free. I still want a degree of flexibility. I still want to work from home, some of the time at least. And I need my employer to be okay with that. So if employers are not willing to do it, they will have people leave and they will struggle to recruit new ones because it’s something that people do want. I can’t remember the stat but it’s ridiculously high, the amount of people that want flex.

Robert Shore: So the clarity is important and also for employers to be creative and to think about really what’s possible. [0:24:37.8]

Laurie Macpherson: I always say to people, ‘Come with solutions.’ So you know, find your job-share partner, then present yourself as a whole person – you do two and she does three, you know, for example. I know that’s…people sort of think, ‘Oh, that’s a bit off the wall.’ Yeah, it is, but employers need you to make it easy for them or they’re not going to hire you ‘cause they can hire someone else right now.

But that can’t go on forever. And as I say, if they just said it’s certain days or it’s this and it’s that, you can make a decision. Again, the really vague stuff, what tends to happen is people get so far into the interview stage, it’s such a waste of everyone’s time, and then they say, ‘No, it’s fully from the office.’ If you just put that on your ad, people would either opt in or opt out. There are people out there who want to work in an office environment or want to work out of the home. They don’t have the space, they don’t have the piece, they don’t have the setup.

But just make it really, along with please, please, please state the salary. Make it really clear so that people can opt in and there’s none of this wasting time and messing about in this sort of unclear swamp of, ‘It might work for me or it might not.’ And I get asked lots of questions about, ‘How do I ask?’ as if it’s some unicorn again to ask for some flexibility. You know, ‘When do I ask?’ Waiting, you know, all the sort of awkward questioning. That could all be avoided by just telling people what it is that you expect them to do.

Are companies becoming more transparent about wages and salary?

Robert Shore: Yeah, you mentioned there transparency around wages and salary as well. Do you think that companies you’re looking at at the moment are becoming more transparent? There are various kind of, you know, from the EU there’s a big change that’s coming in. Do you think there’s already a bit of a shift? [0:26:08.5]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, I think it’s getting better. Again, one of the groups that I’m in, you’re only allowed to post your job if there’s a salary attached. Again, it’s just clarity, Robert. Why would I waste all my time and yours – and I’ve seen it, you know, with clients saying, ‘This looks really interesting,’ and I read between the lines and say, ‘They’re going to offer you £20,000 less than you’re on. Why are we going through this process? ‘Cause I can tell from the way they’ve written it.’ ‘Oh, are you sure?’ So I always say to them, ‘Do you know what? Go and ask the question. And make it as if it’s for their sake. “I really don’t want to waste your time on this. Looks fantastic. What’s the salary?” If they still mess around, I would pull out.’

I’m working on an out-placement piece at the moment for [unclear] and they’re a good position in terms of where they’re at with the consultation and I’m just, ‘If it doesn’t have a salary, don’t apply. Right now.’ Plan A is not to waste time. Go for jobs that you know what you’re getting. If we’re six months down the line then we might have to have a different conversation but right now, just do not apply. So these jobs might be absolutely fantastic but they won’t apply because they’re just not keen to waste lots and lots of time taking a hit on what they’ve got right now, which is a fairly sort of decent salary. And I’m advising them, you know, ‘Don’t do it.’

Robert Shore: Yeah. And as you say, it’s important for employers to do it because actually they’re potentially turning away or not getting applications from the sort of people that they would like to get applications from
as well. [0:27:29.8]

Laurie Macpherson: I don’t know what things are like so much down your neck of the woods, but the latest stat is that one in four Scottish employers are struggling to recruit. It’s not an insignificant number. So tell us what you want, tell us what you’ll give us in return, tell us where we’ll need to work. These are not…as the woman says in Steel Magnolias, ‘These are not difficult questions.’

Should recruiters adjust how they communicate to different generations?

Robert Shore: One other thing in terms of rethinking recruitment and how you might need to think about how you are phrasing ads or actually just describing to yourself what a job is, we hear a lot about the multigenerational workforce and workplace. Do you think that actually different generations – and obviously speaking in generalisations here, but there are nonetheless tendencies – do you think that there are different ways that you need to speak to different people in order to really get them to respond positively? [0:28:16.4]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, I think I’ve seen lots of ads that clearly want a younger person, the way that they describe the office culture etc., and I always say to clients, ‘If they talk about their beautiful shiny office and the fruit that they provide, they want you in it, right? They’re not going to let you sit at home while the fruit rots in the bowl.’ So we can glean a lot from the ad. But yeah, definitely.

You know, certain things are more important to the younger generation. Purpose and, you know, autonomy being massively important, but also just really clear…if you can make it really clear what it is that we want and what it is that we can offer, it means that people again can self-select. They can rule themselves in or they can rule themselves out.

And I always laugh and say, you know, we joke that people are not avocados but they seem to go from this really hard and they could take out your window to brown mush almost overnight, and I always want to know when they actually hit the sweet spot. Because the young folks can’t get in because they haven’t got experience, and then anyone over sort of 45 is like, ‘I wonder if I’m going to be hit with some ageism.’ So where is the happy place in the middle?

And actually, you know, we’re going to be working longer and longer and longer, so employers would do well if they are struggling to think about how they could potentially appeal to the older generation. The studies show that once they’re in, they tend to stay in. You know, again generalising massively, and the employers who try to recruit, you know, the older market, like your Waitrose and your B&Qs, they’re super loyal, experienced, skilled employees. We just need to speak to them a bit differently and make sure that certain things are being thought about and certain things are being considered in the way that we way offer sort of shifts in work patterns and the way that we speak to them.

But yeah, I think it’s just realising that there’s a valuable workforce at all stages out there, and how do we leverage that as an employer and make sure that we have a good balance and a good mix across what people can do and what people can’t do. It may not be, you know, in direct proportion to their age.

What is Gen Z looking for and how can HR engage them?

Robert Shore: You were saying there about a certain kind of ad, if it mentions this then it means they would want you to be in the office or whatever. With, say, Gen Z, if you want to make sure that Gen Z really engage with an ad and think about it is being for them, what would they be looking for, do you think? Again, it’s a generalisation. It doesn’t really speak for everybody but nonetheless… [0:30:32.3]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, it makes me laugh ‘cause I was reading one yesterday that was talking about the snacks and all of that thing. And actually, Gen Z have said, ‘Don’t bother buying me an apple. Just give me a wage that I can actually buy the apple for myself.’ And I think that’s really true. You know, rather than any sort of gimmicky things, like they’re really nice and pizza on a Friday. It’s lovely, but I would actually rather you gave me enough money that I could buy my own pizza. So wage is really important to them because of the cost of living, trying to get their first feet on the ladder to get out of their parents’ house is really, really difficult. Quite often they would quite like to work from home but there’s obviously the conversation around getting the learning and the knowledge from others, so usually hybrid is great for Gen Z and they’re quite used to working in that way. You know, they’re quite happy. They studied in that way, they’re quite happy to do it. And I think it’s just about a little bit of autonomy with a little bit of giving them some
experience as well.

What about Gen X talent?

Robert Shore: Do you think then that if we’re talking about boomers or older Gen Xs, is there a different way of talking to them that draws them in? [0:31:36.1]

Laurie Macpherson: Yeah, sometimes they like – and I’m generalising and I’m 45 so I need to be careful what I say here! – sometimes older folks like to know a little bit more about stability, you know, and maybe not as much career progression but sort of stability, long-established business, been here for a while. You know, all that stuff that sounds like you’re not…quite often people get really hacked off with, like, however many rounds of redundancy by the time they hit mid-forties, fifties and think, ‘I can’t go through this again. I would actually just like to go somewhere and sit.’ And I mean that in the nicest possible way, that they will provide a really valuable contribution.

They maybe don’t want to go up, climb the career ladder and maybe don’t want to necessarily do anything different. They’re just wanting to be a steady, safe pair of hands. And they might absolutely – people will be listening with hands in the air in horror – they might want to progress still. But quite often people get to an age and they think, ‘I’m just quite happy to…’ I have the conversation a lot, you know, ‘Do you want to [unclear]?’ ‘Absolutely not.’ ‘Do you want to manage people?’ ‘Please not if I can help it.’ You know? People are more interested sometimes nowadays – and it depends on the person – in managing a project or a thing rather than people. ‘Cause people management’s really, really hard. So maybe it’s about stability and sort of reward and recognition, understanding of their place rather than having to constantly be moving and chopping and changing, much as chopping and changing and moving is a fundamental part of career, isn’t it?

Robert Shore: That is also part of the idea of the squiggly career, though, isn’t it as well, that actually you might want to stay in a place but you still would quite like to learn new skills and also new skills are required all the time and so, yeah, it’s less about climbing the career ladder and it’s more about actually finding that, you know, still there is variety in what you do? [0:33:17.9]

Laurie Macpherson: Yes, and being open to that while sort of knowing that you can stay in that same place without having to constantly keep reinventing the wheel. As long as you’re prepared to learn the skills and take the training and the learning, you’re quite happy to stay in the overall environment. You’ve presumably built up relationships and friendships over the time as well, as well as your skills.

Robert Shore: So Laurie, thank you so much for your time today. There are, of course, lots of supporting materials on the Brightmine website. I’ll put a link to those in the show notes. That’s all we have time for today, so until next time.