This information is reproduced courtesy of Demos
Executive summary
The research
This report is the result of nine months of Demos research, focused on developing possible futures - or scenarios - for recruitment, and to identify their implications for the industry and for public policy more broadly. Recruitment 2020 presents the findings and recommendations from our research. The research process involved over 40 interviews with experts - recruitment agencies, advertisers, employers, interest groups and civil servants; and specialists in diversity, privacy and technology - a futures thinking workshop with industry professionals, and a wide-ranging literature review. Throughout the pamphlet, we adopt the broadest possible definition of the recruitment industry, encompassing everything from outsourcing of temporary and permanent recruitment to advertising and job sites. This represents the most comprehensive and holistic review of the future of recruitment undertaken by any British think tank.
Aims of the study
This report has three aims:
Our argument
We argue that the traditional divide between extremely personalised recruitment for highly skilled jobs and relatively standardised recruitment processes for low-skilled jobs looks set to close in the coming years. A combination of new expectations and new opportunities, we suggest, will drive a more personalised approach across the spectrum. This traditional division is set out in table 1 opposite.
Drivers of change
The new model of recruitment outlined in this pamphlet is the result of a series of drivers of change, identified and explored during the research process. The implications of these drivers, along with a set of tensions they provoke, are explored in depth in part 1 of the report.
A competitive business environment
The recruitment business landscape has changed remarkably over the past decade. The industry has grown rapidly, diversifying its services and making record profits year on year. The war for talent, the growing importance of soft skills, the drive for efficiency and the need for flexibility have all led to an increase in outsourcing and advertising to recruiters and greater efforts to reach candidates through advertising on and offline.
Regulation and legislation
Despite being the ‘freest market in Europe', the UK recruitment industry still faces a set of regulatory and legislative challenges.
An unregulated market and the lack of an official, enforceable set of standards bring reputation and standards into question. Important legislation around workplace rights brings issues of compliance and risk management to the fore for recruiters, employers and advertisers.
A changing workforce
Over the coming years, the workforce is set to become far more diverse, reflecting trends towards an ageing population, greater ethnic diversity, increases in immigration and more women taking up positions in paid work. Here, the recruitment industry plays an essential role as intermediary - helping business understand and accept these changes, and encouraging candidates from this ‘new' talent pool to enter or re-enter the workforce.
Changing social values
The overlap between life and work - the person and the professional
- is growing. Terms and conditions of work, beyond pay - company ethos, the psychological contract, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics - are increasingly important to candidates seeking work. This makes recruitment a more complex process - as recruiters are asked to match people with organisations, not just skills with vacancies.
Technology
Web 2.0 has become shorthand for a shift in the way the internet is used and understood. It sees the internet as a collaborative tool, where we each have an active role in creating value for one another. Web 2.0 has fundamentally changed recruitment, putting relationships at its very core. Technology too has changed the recruitment experience, from the design and distribution of ads to day-on-the-job simulations. But technology has its limits - how much can we rely on it in recruitment? Combined, the drivers create a serious challenge to the traditional model of recruitment in the UK.
Our recommendations
Beyond the traditional model
We make a series of recommendations to support this process.
Employers should:
1 ensure that commissioning processes - whether through human resources (HR) or procurement - focus on value rather than cost
2 align HR, public relations and marketing and be clear about core organisational values.
Recruitment professionals should:
1 track retention to demonstrate impact
2 demand accountable advertising online to demonstrate impact
3 help organisations learn about themselves by overcoming the insider/outsider problem
4 align the recruitment experience with client ethos
5 find ways to connect with the passive job seeker
6 broker and utilise peer-to-peer relationships
7 use Web 2.0 to build personalised relationships online
8 tap into the long tail.
These recommendations are developed in chapter 6.
Markets and social policy
The theme running throughout this pamphlet is both the ingenuity and shortcomings of markets. We argue that many of the likely changes in the market for recruitment will have positive consequences. However, for all their uses, markets often produce imperfect results. They can produce disparities in power which undermine people's ability to shape their own lives. Their outcomes can overlap with social goals, such as more inclusive workplaces, without ever fully achieving them. And markets can be very poor forums for collective decisions about the kind of society that we want to live in; the sum of our individual choices often produces outcomes that none of us are comfortable with.
We have identified three social challenges that we consider beyond the market, and keeping our focus on recruitment we make recommendations for:
This report is intended to open up a new debate about recruitment in the UK. Until now, much of the discussion has taken place within the industry. It is now time for a broader and more ambitious public debate about recruitment.
Our research demonstrates that recruitment is caught up in some of the key public policy issues of our time - integration and diversity, privacy and the regulation of the internet, and competition and economic success. In this sense the ability and responsibility of those in recruitment to influence and bring about change should not be taken lightly.
