Why training is better than recruiting

Each quarter, the CIPD publishes extensive data on recruitment trends across the UK, including things like the number of vacancies, the cost of recruitment activity, and employers’ expectations of what’s going to happen in the labour market in the near future.

The type of stuff you find in these reports is pretty dull, even for a seasoned HR professional like me. But in the report for Spring 2017, one thing caught my eye — that the labour market is currently unable to meet the demand of employers for new labour.

With unemployment at a 42-year low, there simply aren’t enough people looking for work to meet the needs of employers.

This got me thinking because recruitment is an issue for us here at Aspire too. Often, recruitment is taking too long and is costing too much, not because the HR team is inefficient (well I would say that, wouldn’t I), but because for many of the roles we recruit for, there just aren’t enough good quality candidates out there.

Whether we manage the recruitment process ourselves or ask agencies to help, the same issues arise; there are simply too many employers seeking to fill too many vacancies from an increasingly shrinking pool of labour.

So, what can we do about it?

Well, we could sit back and just accept that things aren’t what they used to be — and as I get older, I must admit to a tendency to say this more often than I should! Or, we could take a more positive and proactive approach to the problem by seeking out different ways of solving the labour shortage problem.

In HR circles, we talk a lot about “talent” — developing it, nurturing it, managing it, valuing it, seeking it. But talk is cheap; we have to start doing something differently or face the prospect of being unable to fill vacancies and ensure continuity of service delivery.

The solution is probably not rocket science.

What we have to do more of is developing our own pipeline of talent to ensure that when key vacancies arise, we have people already inside the organisation ready to step-up (or side-step) to a new challenge.

Our recently launched Leadership and Management Development Programme is a great start, giving us the opportunity to equip some of our workforce with the skills and knowledge that will place them in a really strong position to compete for future opportunities when they arise.

But it’s not just managers and leaders we need to develop, we need to look at our talent pool at every level and invest time and resources in developing it.

The solution is not one that HR can deliver alone. HR can provide the framework, but success will depend on all of us identifying our development needs, thinking about our career aspirations and participating enthusiastically in learning, training and development opportunities that exist inside and outside the organisation.

As someone once said, let’s dare to be different.

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