How the pandemic has shifted candidate decisions

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my name is aaron halbert so i'd like to open by welcoming you all to today's event on behalf of my colleagues
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in the cipd northwest region and it's wonderful to see so many attendees today
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i'm delighted to introduce our speaker today paul o'donnell who's the ceo of hrm search partners
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we've been established over 30 years and partnered with all types of organizations and some of the world's most recognizable brands to solve their
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leadership challenges i'm thrilled to have them speaking for us today not least because we previously partnered
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very closely together on all things hr during my time at hrm so paul and the
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team have recently completed a very considerable and very interesting body of work uh surveying over 800 800 leaders and
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professionals deep diving into the the drivers and the expectations of candidates when considering a move to a new
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employer as we begin to exit the pandemic so he's going to talk to us today about some of their key findings
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paul welcomes any questions um so please pop them into the question and answer box and paul will
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answer them in real time as we go along throughout the presentation over the course the next 20 to 25 minutes
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so i'm delighted to hand you over to paul o'donnell thanks very much aaron um i our time is
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brief enough actually today so i i might just get straight into it if that's okay and maybe i might start by running
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through the timing of the research and why we felt it was important to gather this data
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and just bear with me two moments we started as we felt what we understood
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about employee preferences when choosing a new employer i think it's been turned on its head
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by the pandemic and it's been a time that's changed people's perspectives on
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lots of things security and safety i think dominate as concerns in general and we're seeing this in our research so
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we felt this was a critical juncture in terms of redesigning employee value proposition around these
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change perspectives that candidates now have i think there's been a lot of discussion
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about what people really want after the pandemic in the media which on balance is very healthy
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but we felt probably there was a fair bit of noise and distraction too that can be very unhelpful when you're trying to manage
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people within a business in particular the remote working change i think that's captured the imagination
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of the media quite a bit and this creates an awful lot of noise around that topic some of it's helpful
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some of it's not i've seen several articles recently telling me that the new expectation is that after the pandemic
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everyone will bring their dog to work um so again it's lots of noise is it helpful does it
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reflect the reality we don't know so i suppose what we wanted to know was what will really matter to candidates
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when the dust settles on all of this and what are the real expectations that people have around remote working
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for example because people leaders we're interested in facts and empirical evidence to back up
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decision making because the changes we're making are they're so fundamental and the environment is so unpredictable that
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having hard facts i guess to test these
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decisions all your image around me therefore
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just you just switched over thanks my apologies um so uh i think i might have caught out
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a second ago what we were saying was the survey was 2000 leaders and professionals
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and it looks at all of this their perspectives of candidates when moving to a new employer or staying with the
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new one and my hope is by the end of the session that you'll have a good sense of what the data is telling us about how they're
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making these decisions and that should i guess in turn arm you with the information you need to design
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a fully up-to-date recruitment and selection process or redesign your employee value proposition
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if if that's what you feel is needed so just to begin by acknowledging that
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for those of us who spend their time organizing people or organizing ourselves around people we've had i would say a very
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challenging year the problems with the pandemic i think that they the pandemic created or surfaced they were
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challenging and fairly unprecedented so well-being for example within the context of an employee value
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proposition went from being maybe a peripheral concern to being thrown very much
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center stage but if there's one thing that the report and the research is telling us is
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that there's no time to stop and take stock and maybe even rest a little
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i'm sure we could all do with the rest i certainly could but alas no uh the immediate landscape i
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think has two big concerns uh looming the first one is attracting talent in a highly
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competitive landscape where these candidate expectations have been turned on their head
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and then there's the more pressing issue that's upon us now which is this issue of talent churn or more large-scale talent churn and i
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think we can see a period of significant churn has already begun i think it's driven by seems to be
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driven by a mixture of a desire for change or maybe candidates taking back some degree of control over
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their lives at a time when so much control has been taken away but it's really been accelerated by the
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extent of remote working and what that clearly does to relationships and the cultural glue i suppose that binds
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people to companies i don't i don't really believe personally that remote has been remote
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working has been an entirely positive experience i think um from a productivity perspective it's been
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largely flying in most instances people don't seem to need close supervision in order to do their work
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but lots of other things have been lost and people don't feel really feel bound to the team in the way that they did
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before so making a move is that bit easier and i think the research shows
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while many of us are aware of these issues and probably working on them as we speak
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the candidates expectation is that they're resolved now so that they're not future decisions but
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instead imminent ones we're actually doing another piece of research on this at the moment and we asked the
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candidates on that uh how many of them their employers had a work from home policy in place
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from september onwards and 52 said no now that they didn't have a work
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from home policy in place and hadn't been communicated which it might seem reasonable perfectly
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reasonable because so much of this is still up in the air i mean we had the highest case numbers
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in recent months yesterday uh so we can't say when this pandemic is going to be over
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and government advice on this can oscillate quite a bit but regardless candidates candidates
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expect that the remote policy exists now and has been communicated as they need clarity on what their future looks
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like so i don't think a wait-and-see approach will be met benignly by them even though that might feel like a
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perfectly reasonable stance at the moment i think what they're what they expect is a picture of what
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working in a company will look like post pandemic because if you think about
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it so much of the pandemic has been about imagining better days ahead
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so people are ready for that now and they need to see the vision of what the days ahead look like or or this danger that they create their
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own picture elsewhere so we have these four challenges and that organizes in our organizations now
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face so we're going to run through them over the course of the next 15 or 20 minutes
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and i'll just start if you can move it on cloud to the next slide
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and to what the report says about designing employee value proposition in
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this new landscape and i'll take a break just after this if there's any questions popping up if not
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no problem at all so what's important now to existing employers
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employees rather so that they stay put and what's important to new talent to ensure that they join your company
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the first thing i think that appears clear in the research is that an awful lot of the current evps are being ripped up and
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that approach that calls for engaging office spaces breakout rooms or you know small
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park-based systems like subsidized canteens and so on they're no longer relevant for obvious
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reasons but what's clear is that how a company approaches the sustainable well-being of
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its employees is a dominant consideration amongst candidates if you think about it employees are
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thinking of their own physical and mental health now their safety and security and they want employers to be thinking of the
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same thing and of course that makes complete sense given the context of the last year and a half
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all of these things have been assaulted over that period of time so the question is will it change when
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the pandemic backdrop leaves us but but i suspect not uh will the desire for a
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work-life balance change after the pandemic again i suspect not there's one piece of data in the
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research there's a much higher rating given to well-being and people at the early stage
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of their career so the younger guys so we believe that reflects a changing attitude
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that's pretty much here to stay and i know it's quite complicated to design evps
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around this but personally i believe it's quite a positive development for employers as it levels the playing
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field a little bit if you think those environments that are based around the concept of community
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where genuine interest is taken by leadership in all aspects of an
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employee's well-being they're at an advantage now and maybe that's as it should be deep pockets aren't so much the factor
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anymore i think the the pandemic has opened the door for employers to support employees around mental health challenges like
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never before so that's hugely positive but only if employers take that
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opportunity and don't see it as a short-term consideration just related to the pandemic
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one big proviso in all of this is how it's articulated internally and externally to attract new
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talent so you could care deeply but if you're not able to paint a picture of that to candidates the competitive
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advantage around that is lost so it's in everything you do your career shop window
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what recruitment suppliers say about you your talent acquisition function your hiring managers
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are they all articulating the same story and if if they are you're doing brilliantly because that's incredibly
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hard to achieve just one last point on the next slide just in relation to
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um evps it's uh we just had a look at how all of this
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gets undercut by adverse publicity of your employer brand and we ask direct questions on that
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and if you consider these days with social media how can how fast information travels and the detail with
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which it travels adverse publicity about your brand will rip everything else you've done
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on your evp to shreds unfortunately and the survey shows some really interesting reactions to how people feel about
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organizations that have experienced that which are on the screen now so i might take a little minute at this
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point and see if there's any questions or observations that anyone wants to look at in relation to employee value proposition
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and probably one question well it's kind of more of a comment that
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you might like to refer to it is not fair to have the temporary remote working policy based on
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government guidelines so and the health and safety of employees as an employer we
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see september as an opportunity to have a pilot scheme of a hybrid model working before adopting the permanent teas and
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seas the terms and conditions around it to the new and existing contracts
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and so just interested to see your thoughts paul like you know what's what's your what's
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the feedback from you know maybe parties partners that you've maybe been in contact with around
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that yeah i think that's a very clever and it's it's the right approach in my view
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because the the changes are so fundamental we don't know how they're going to turn out
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and we don't know what problems are going to emerge so committing yourself so fundamentally to such a dramatic
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change can be um risky at best and um so adopting it in that um
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that fashion where you'll try a pilot program is is a brilliant idea i think the key to it is is just
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engaging with employees and letting them know that that is the that is what you're doing and that's the
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period of time you're assessing it over and i think they're absolutely fine once they understand that that picture
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so i totally get it in terms of committing yourself to a policy that that is forever more that way
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and that can be risky and people might feel a little bit exposed by doing that but i
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think that's a very very good option very very good option indeed
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so the comments right now pause if you want to carry on brilliant and what i might do it's actually a good segue i could jump into
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what the survey says about remote working and i might just run through a couple of the results and
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then discuss a little bit about what they might mean firstly the survey gives a clear
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preference amongst candidates to a hybrid of either two or three agile days in in a week so they
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definitely want to mix um there's another stat there i thought was interesting 16
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of respondents don't want to return to the office at all i know it's a smallish number but i
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think it's usually significant because it's a further illustration of how important it is to start communicating and engaging now about
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this as that might be completely unrealistic um the people's preferences for onboarding
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is another interesting thing in that they look for a mix of agile and fixed office days that makes
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complete sense in terms of how people learn when they're on boarding and their their cultural integration
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it can't really be achieved online and one of the last stats which i thought was interesting is
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that it doesn't appear to be a great exodus from cities to the country to take
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advantage of remote working 100 of the time and i think our anecdotal observations
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have backed this up a little bit as well that there is some movement but not as much as people are suggesting
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which i guess is relevant because west of ireland based companies would have hoped to take advantage of that but it hasn't
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really materialized in a meaningful way i live in south galway myself and i can see it i can see more people coming into
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the town that i live in but it's not hugely significant because i guess people see it as a future of hybrids so they need to stay
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close to their workplaces just just a couple of observations on on
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what the data is telling us um i think the purpose of the
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fixed office days needs to be clear do people have a choice about when they
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attend or not so the experience of turning up to an empty office for two or three days in a
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week might present a problem over time if if there's nobody in the office or
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nobody in the t their particular team if people are given a choice when to attend or not people i think will begin
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to question the purpose of attending am i connecting with people or am i connecting with a building
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and i think it's really important to start engaging with employees around this and not focusing the discussion on
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remote around productivity exclusively i think that's been the dominant discussion around working from home
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is will people actually work which turns the debate into a trust issue
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but if people are at home without without supervision will they work of course they will i think too much time is spent
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discussing it but really the key issue is what will happen when you have your time in the office together it should be
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about collaboration learning formal learning that osmosis learning as well that's so important
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and then relationship maintenance and team bonding so i think on that basis some real consideration should be given to whether
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everyone should come in on the same days if that's feasible to do by team or by company depending on
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the size another observation would be that the company needs a long-term
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remote pro program and so what it maybe what are the team
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leaders or the middle managers doing now for example uh how has that changed uh have they
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been upskilled to manage remotely i think so many organizations have a team lead type structure but the real
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purpose of that is on the job learning and ensuring productivity is high but both of these
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things are mildly redundant in a working from home scenario so our observation is these guys are
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using the same tool kit as they used before and sometimes that's accelerating breakdowns and trust and relationships
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making it easier for people to move and they themselves they're under considerable duress because their tools
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don't work the same way that they used to so it's a really important factor to consider i think the performance
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management system in general in a company needs to be accommodated in this long-term remote working program it is a
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real opportunity to manage by results here rather than inputs but it's only effective if the whole
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system is fully designed around that so full control and accountability goes to the employee
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absolute clarity about what's expected and from them in a robust system of managing when people fall short or
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the converse when people do really well that there's a really strong and vocal recognition program around that
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so i think all of these issues need to be worked through when designing that hybrid model
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and truthfully we're not seeing those elements in place when we're talking to candidate communities right now
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in some instances they are and those are the companies i think with the competitive advantage in the talent
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space right now and the i'm labouring this point but
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just to say candidates are making the decisions around this now and we can see that every every day
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so it's it's it's it's really important to get this designed quickly and communicated quickly and
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i think i could take another break leslie if that suits just to see if anyone had any
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comments or questions in relation to the survey around remote
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anyone any questions nothing's coming to the chat for maybe to allow maybe if one if someone
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wants a question just regarding i think it's a good point you raise around you know designing the hybrid model
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whether it's you know hybrid working remotely and working on site there's a lot of factors
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you've you've mentioned there that it's not um it's not very straightforward you know
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you talked about performance management we need to adjust that to accommodate so managers i know i i think in many
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organizations managers struggled with managing performance and outside of that
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traditional manner so when they're physically on-site and that's a challenge i think
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we would have faced last year and but in regard to any did anything come back from the
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server around health and safety and accommodating the workplace as in the workplace at
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home did much come back from the survey around that fall or concerns that employees had like you mentioned physically it helped
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but anything around those kind of factors is ergonomics or that it it wasn't actually surveyed uh let's
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see but um there's a new piece of research underway where we're looking at a couple of these things it's definitely a factor
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the the the key thing i think that people found um quite aside from the the physical
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health and safety was was the bleeding of work and home together and how the boundaries of it
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became completely blurred and how that effectively felt that people were working all of the time
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the computer would be left on in the corner or people would be emailing out of hours and so on so there's no kind of clear
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line of demarcation between when my person when my working time is over my personal time begins and and that
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with all of the other things in relation to the the wearing nature of video calls
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they're they're they're not the same as physical interaction in terms of how they how they wear on people just led to very
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very high stress levels and we didn't look at it in this particular survey but we are looking at
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it because we feel it's a very very interesting topic for future reference but definitely it's having an impact a
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mental health impact and i think the opportunity that's presented itself is that we can we can discuss it openly
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if we look at our company we've set a number of rules around you're not allowed contact anybody over lunch
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you're not allowed contact anybody internally after five o'clock there's all these rules around what you
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can and can't do in relation to work so that people aren't sending people emails at nine o'clock so that they don't get an opportunity to switch
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off i think that's really really important very good point yeah no thanks for sharing well
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good to get your thoughts on that and i think we can move on thanks bob okay um
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so i'll just jump into it's it's more or less the final section on it where we're looking at another item i
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suppose that's been turned on its head by the pandemic which is um the selection process during
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recruitment so as i say video conferencing is good it just doesn't really cut it when
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trying to develop relationships uh in the recruitment process i i think managers feel less able to
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objectively assess or or bond with potential employees and they often create
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when necessary sorry they often create unnecessary
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layers in the process to compensate for that so it's a bit of a double-edged piece as
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the survey says 55 percent of candidates will out never refuse a new job with a
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company if they don't feel a strong rapport with a hiring manager during a recruitment process
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which i think is very hard to create via video just speaking from personal experience it's very difficult i think
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so just picking out one big stat here 69 of respondents said to us that a
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poor experience during a recruitment process would switch them off a company but i
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think the the issue here is is that recruitment is sometimes seen and treated in organizations as an administrative
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chore and i think if it's engaged within that way it creates lots of lost talent opportunities so
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our first observation here in this one is that um this is it will become or it has already
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become a very very competitive environment so having a clear strip true of recruitment
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processes and expectations now is critical and sometimes the hiring manager can be the source of the blockage and
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in so far as they may know what they need but they might engage with the process in a very outcome-focused way
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so i think thought needs to be given to whether you're hiring managers have measurements for hiring and who manages
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them on that and then the the other thing just to go back to another point that i was
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making earlier about the evps designing them is one thing but how they're articulated
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is another and who articulates them so if you're using external providers like
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us are they tested on how well they do this if if it says the survey if over half of
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respondents will not go to a new employer because they don't feel aligned with the company's purpose and values
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who in the process is articulating these things to them is it the external provider and and are
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they missing people simply because they can't articulate it there's a couple of really practical
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points that come from the survey on hiring um first is they
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absolutely want the face to face component in the hiring process if that doesn't exist currently and i
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would completely understand if it doesn't given circumstances but there is the potential to miss talent secondly just a basic
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point nobody wants a panel interview uh at the moment people feel like with videos in particular one to one should
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be the max maybe maybe one to two and just moving on to the next slide there
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clara the the final point in the recruitment process is about articulating flexibility so it's
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crucial in recruitment because it's so important to people right now but it has to be real flexibility so
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we've seen several companies reverse out of flexibility commitments at offer
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stage after promising the candidate that they were okay to offer it now i think this is perfectly understandable because sometimes it's
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leaders not believing in it and forcing the reversal at the last minute and it's a huge issue that there's still
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a large leadership discomfort about how fast all of these things are moving
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but in that particular scenario unfortunately you lose the higher obviously but the brand has a very very strong impact on the
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brand but that leadership issue is a massive massive deal it actually segues on the next slide actually to another
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piece of research that we have underway at the moment which it gives us this stat that it's the
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single most important and influential factor in the hiring process so it's just a taster of a new piece of
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research we have underway and we'll we'll we'll release that in due course in the next few weeks
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but just to say it's such a huge influence on getting talent in and i think what we're seeing is we're
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not convinced that all senior leadership have gone along this journey at the rapid pace that it's
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gone which to my mind is totally understandable but at the same time it's it's it's an impediment to hiring and it's an
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impediment to keeping staff it's such a large topic we won't get into any info detail on this but there's
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more on this to come so i'm just conscious of time so i might wrap up and then see if there's any further questions on
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it so i think it gives us some very strong pointers about how to redesign
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a successful employee value proposition in this post pandemic landscape assuming
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hopefully we are post pandemic soon and hopefully it gives you some help in terms of actually retaining
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existing employees and attracting new ones but but definitely there are some fundamental questions to
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ask before designing the process the first one is do you have a firm view
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and a picture on what it's like to be an employee in your company in a post-pandemic world
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all of those things figured out because it's not straightforward at all and and then the second question started
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reiterating one of what i've said before but have certain things about the post-pandemic world
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being fully accepted by senior leadership in in your company or do they expect things to revert back to
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the way they once were once the dust settles on all of this and again our experience says that there's quite a bit
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of that going on and then the final question to ask yourself is is the hiring machine ready
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for this are all the actors involved ready for this and if not how will the experience stack up
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against uh the competitors that you're you're fighting against for talent so i
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think it's it's difficult this stuff is really difficult a little exhausting to face into these things i know after the
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year and a half that everyone has had but i suppose my core message is that if those companies that do will hold on to
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the talent that they have and will new hires win new hires and i hope i've cleared through some of
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the noise around the topics and made the decisions that you'll be making around that that bit easier
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hopefully if anyone has any questions happy to run through them i know we only
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have one minute before before half past but every time yeah we've a couple of questions that have
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come in paul but maybe if i just select one because i know aaron wants to wrap up as well of course
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very much very insightful paul and very comprehensive and i there's been a question asked around can we circulate
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the slides so of course circling slides and the survey i believe so we'll be sending that out
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post and post the session so maybe if i just take one one question has come around and are
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i suppose do we know what companies are doing to get the right balance between business teams and individual
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needs but from the survey or from your maybe other colleagues working in that area do
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we know that insights right now do you mean that candidates would have the ex certain
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sort of high level expectations that might be a bit unreasonable and that might actually impede business performance as well as
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yeah getting the balance i think and also there's another question in and maybe ties in a little bit to it is
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you know did the survey look at generation lens so different types of generations you
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know the age profile what their needs are versus someone a different age profile did the survey look at that
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it's yeah it's really detailed on it actually and i could send that out you know what we don't have is a sort of a breakdown a generation but
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you you know the information comes in and we have asked people kind of roughly the stage that they're at in their career
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and definitely early stage career people look at um well-being above and beyond
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everything so their physical and mental well-being uh is is just such a huge consideration
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so i funnily enough i i don't uh to answer the first question it it
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it feels like the the candidate considerations that they have they're they're not unreasonable given
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the context in any way shape or form i think if somebody has a strong employee value proposition based around
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well-being that should increase performance so they're not at odds with each other as far as i can see
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they can be difficult to do difficult to implement difficult to manage and so on so forth but if they're there a strong well-being
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component of an evp they really increase productivity and they increase stickiness to a company if
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if you like people are less likely to leave so there's a lot of work in it but they're definitely not at odds with each
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other candidate expectations and what's right with the com for a company and a company's productivity in
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my view okay great listen thanks for thanks very much
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paul um and i know there's some other questions there but we just don't have time so i'll hand it over
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you to aaron here it's going to close out the second perfect thanks leslie anne um yeah so just before we close today's
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session just want to let you know there'll be lots of information and updates coming out from cipd ireland
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the team in the next month so in august along with a review of the outputs from
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june's reimagining ireland's talent seminar and information about next steps and opportunities to
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get involved the team will also be keeping everyone up to date with the plan and and everything that's
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coming up in the next 12 months so so keep an eye out for the august events and for the hr update newsletter so in closing i
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just want to say a big thank you to our speaker paul o'donnell from hrm search partners really really interesting uh takeaways
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there and certainly some food for thought for everyone and i just want to say a massive thank you to everyone for attending today on
31:57
behalf of cipc ireland and in particular cibd northwest region so thank you to everyone and have a nice
32:03
afternoon thank you thanks aaron
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