7 Recruitment Trends for 2024

The start of the year is often a busy time in recruitment. It’s a time for people think about a fresh start in a new job and business owners to consider their staffing needs! A survey by CV-Library revealed that 86% of organisations in the UK have found hiring ‘quite’ or ‘very’ competitive in 2023, and 46% have lost out on hiring new talent in the last six months as they ‘can’t compete on salary and benefits’. If you are looking to hire this year there are a number of recruitment trends to bear in mind that could help you find that next great hire. They may also help ensure you retain the top talent you already have. We set out below 7 predicted recruitment trends of 2024.

Hybrid working

For a while it looked like coming into an office once or maybe twice a week was here to stay and that employers would miss out on top talent if they didn’t stick with this covid-induced trend.  Towards the end of 2023 the trend towards spending the majority of the week working from home has started to reverse. A number of large influential employers have recalled staff to work mostly from their offices again and even looked at reducing salaries of those who chose to work permanently at home. It is now more common to work 3 days a week in the office and this trend is likely to continue. If you are a smaller business you may have a competitive advantage if you are able to offer more attractive hybrid working arrangements for employees than your competitors.

Flexibility

In April 2024 the right to request flexible working will become a ‘day 1’ right for employees, so it is likely that this sort of request will become part of the recruitment process rather than being discussed down the line. It’s worth thinking in advance about what operational requirements you have and the levels of flexibility you are able to offer so you can anticipate any requests you may receive.

Candidate Experience

The days when an employer could simply respond to candidates they were interested in, or worse still, not come back to an unsuccessful candidate, are becoming less acceptable. It is not unusual to see this sort of behaviour called out by candidates on social media.  Whilst it is not likely to be an entirely candidate-lead recruitment market, those looking to attract top talent will need to pay attention to their recruitment process. It is worth reviewing your process to ensure it is quick and transparent. Enabling applications to be submitted by mobile phone is a great starting point.

Use of Tech in recruitment

The use of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in recruitment can improve the candidate experience as it can help you respond to all your candidates and provide them with timely updates on their application. This can save you time which is usually the reason why small businesses sometimes fail to respond to candidates.

It is also usually possible to link the ATS to more than one job board so you may then be able to reach a more diverse group of candidates.  It may also be possible to make some stages of the application process anonymous, which could help minimise any recruitment bias and signal your commitment to Equality Diversity & Inclusion (EDI).

If you aren’t already using an ATS system, 2024 may be the year to give it a go.

We predict that this will also be a year where Artificial Intelligence “A.I” will start to play a more significant role in the recruitment processes, to help with screening and filtering. It is already being used in some large businesses with bigger budgets but if recruitment is a big issue for your business this could the year to explore how this technology could help you in the future.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Making sure that you have inclusive policies has always been important and equality is of course a legal requirement.  EDI is also emerging as an important factor for candidates when considering job offers. It is therefore important to be able to showcase that you have all the correct policies in place and that you embrace EDI in your organisation. You can do this by reviewing your processes to ensure that they are up to date. You can also train staff on this area as a part of your onboarding process, this will help demonstrate to candidates that you are an employer that has a great culture.

Employee Wellbeing

We also predict that candidates will increasingly look for evidence of your commitment to employee wellbeing. Wellbeing strategies do not have to cost an employer much money. There are some competitively priced Employee Assistance Programmes out there that offer packages aimed at the smaller business. These can offer lots of wellness advice and often offer face to face counselling if an employee is struggling with any aspect of their mental health.  There are also competitively priced Health Cash plans that assist employees with the cost of day to day health care such as  dental treatment costs and eye testing. Offering these sorts of benefits can make you stand out from the crowd and demonstrate to candidates that you understand and want to assist with employee wellbeing.

Environmental Social and Governance (ESG)

This is another important area that is increasingly likely to  influence candidates choosing between job offers.  It is often the case that an employer does lots of things that make a positive contribution to the local community and is mindful of reducing carbon footprints etc.  If you haven’t yet thought about documenting your environment and sustainability or Corporate Responsibility efforts, a HR Consultant can help you tailor these policies to your business so that you are able to show case your efforts to candidates.

Getting on board with these trends will not only help you with recruiting top candidates they should also help you retain staff which is also incredibly important in the current competitive market.