Blog: Projections for 2024 from the Safety of May.
I don’t know how you feel about the last few years, but my outlook on life was very different four years ago. I was at home with my kids, homeschooling (not very well), and every day, the news was filled with doom and increasing death rates.
From a work perspective, at least for me, it was easy. My income stopped as clients that I had been working with slammed the brakes on their projects. Around me, however, were workers successfully and unsuccessfully embracing remote work. For some, it was the gateway to a new life, and for others, it was a work-based prison sentence as people were cut off from their routine. For many, that routine had lasted for years, decades even.
Since remote work, we’ve shifted to huge hiring numbers. Some were driven by ‘the great resignation’; others were motivated by optimism about growth, and others were fat on the VC money they had just landed. Then, from the back end of 2022 to now, we’ve seen hiring freezes, layoffs and ‘rightsizing’ driven by economic factors and, to a certain extent, AI.
My business, immersive, founded in early 2021, has ridden that rollercoaster. As an in-house embedded recruitment firm, we are the barometer of the market.
Most predictions come at the beginning of the year - but this time around, that was too early, we needed the year to bed in a little.
Over the last 12 to 18 months, employees have sheltered in their roles and companies, not feeling like they can move as easily as before. As a result, many, if not most, companies are seeing very low employee turnover. It’s easy to mistake low attrition for happiness, contentment, or, in some cases, the result of a fantastic HR initiative.
Many employees feel stuck and wish they could do something new.
Based on the little reading I have done (note to self: do more) if history repeats itself, and I believe it will, this current period of low attrition will be followed by a period of high attrition. People are bored. If their career used to move every two years, the pattern has been interrupted, and they will be keen to move again.
As a generalisation, the US moves first, and according to recent LinkedIn data, nearly 85% of people in the U.S. are considering changing jobs in 2024. Historical trends show that attrition rises as confidence in the economy improves. Using the phrase, I say every day is just a matter of when, not if.
And then what?
You’ve spent 2023 not hiring backfills, and then at the back end of 2024, when your business gets more confidence, you start hiring, only to find that attrition is up and you have to double up on your hiring activity.
I don’t think it’s 2021/22 again, but an attrition spike is coming, and business leaders, especially talent acquisition leaders, need to prepare. Many organisations we engaged with, particularly in technology, scaled back their talent acquisition teams to save on costs. But when demand bounces back unexpectedly, talent acquisition leaders often struggle to move quickly enough.
Even if you are not thinking about growth, enterprise organisations need to prepare for backfill and the ripple effect of people leaving them.
So what should leaders do now?
Help your people see what’s next.
Employees like things to be kept fresh. They need that feeling of tangible career progression. If you’ve been doing the same role for a while it and you can become stale.
So, it’s not rocket science to think that we need some professional growth or even just reassurance that we have a future here. Sell to me. Why should I be here? Give me the
opportunity to grow by learning a new skill, working on a new project, or moving into a new role.
Depending on your business size, of course, it also impacts your ability to achieve this. Large enterprises, by default, have plenty of opportunities but often work in silos or have really restrictive behaviours around internal mobility. There are some great tools out there, and with AI advancing on a daily basis, lots can be done, but it all starts with the desire to do something.Talk to your TA Team.
Some TA leaders I talk to know they have a slightly ‘broken’ team. They have reduced team size and have asked those left to carry on regardless. With an eye on costs, even if that TA team has been stretched, there hasn’t been any money for additional headcount, even on a temporary basis.
If you need them to dig deep and go again, then you need to know they are up for it. As the ambassadors of your brand, as that first contact., they need to be all in and enthusiastic again.Look how much flexibility you have in your TA team.
TA teams often struggle to add capacity quickly. Those teams that are thinly staffed right now will need to add capacity quickly to deal with the upcoming spike in attrition-based hiring. Now is the time to put that ‘insurance policy’ in place to have TA capacity on demand.
Beyond that, generative AI will help your TA team do more with less. Writing personalised job descriptions, writing engaging messages, and using the tools available today can speed up the admin in talent acquisition, freeing up time to do what talent acquisition does best of all: talking to candidates.
Higher attrition rates are coming. Clearly, if I knew when then my crystal ball was worth the investment. Jump back to 2021/22 when hiring went berserk, was that a happy time? No one wants to be in a position where they wonder why good people are leaving their business and that it’s taking a long time to replace them.
About
Martin Dangerfield immersive. CEO is a seasoned recruiter, talent acquisition leader and strategist (with a small 's').
He is building a global business that helps talent acquisition leaders do a better job, adding capacity to their teams, supporting the development of meaningful EVPs, and doing more with less. With a straight-talking, results-focused approach, he has recruited on a Global, Regional, and Local level, creating and leading teams of recruiters, brand specialists, and HR professionals in multiple locations.
To schedule a call with Martin, click here.