Somewhat ironically in this digital age, fewer and fewer things are binary. Sexualities, politics, nationalities, economies, you name it, there’s rarely been more fluidity, more grey areas, more flexibility. 

And that’s largely how we find today’s current labour market. 

According to the KPMG/REC permanent placement index, the most recent reading suggested a fall from 44.2 down to 43.8 – whereby any figure under 50 indicates a contraction in the number of permanent hires being made. The ONS suggested that live vacancies across the UK experienced a 5.5% monthly decline to April this year – the 11th consecutive drop. And the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage points to 3.8%. On a far more anecdotal basis, the volume of green ‘open to work’ indicators on LinkedIn appears to be increasing rapidly. 

But that’s not the whole story. 

There’s far more nuance to the labour market than we might think. The latest ONS stats quoted above also point to a UK employment rate of 76%, an increase of 0.2 percentage points on the previous quarter. There was a 23,000 increase in the number of payrolled employees – and today’s figure is up more than 1m from pre-pandemic levels. There was also a small decrease in the percentage of people being made redundant. And, although declining, there remain more than 1m live vacancies across the UK economy.

It’s a Schrodinger’s cat of an employment picture.

In essence, we have a UK labour market in which people are struggling to hire and in which others are struggling to get hired. 

We also have a market in which many organisations will be both rolling out the employee welcome mat to new joiners, whilst simultaneously ushering others towards the exit. 

So, if your organisation is both making hires and letting people go, what are the implications for your employer brand? 

Potentially, hugely confusing and, as a result, hugely damaging. 

Your standing and reputation as an employer will be impacted significantly by the way people depart your organisation. Are internal communications blithely ignoring the fact that this is happening? Or is there honesty, sympathy and transparency that this is happening? Are those people leaving your organisation being provided with assistance, with respect and consideration? 

More important, what strategic communications are accompanying such headcount reduction? Has your organisation simply gone into survival mode, battening down the hatches? Pretending it isn’t happening? Is it simply making redundancies as a result of corporate peer pressure and market expectations – Google, Meta and Twitter are doing some similar, so there’s an expectation that everyone must?

Or is there an end goal in sight? Is there a positive purpose to such activity?

Are the redundancies part of a pivot into new business streams and different markets? If those people left within the business can understand that tough decisions have been made, but that there is thinking and strategy behind such decisions, then they will find it easier to get behind them. 

Such thinking should equally apply to external candidate communications.

Candidates need to be fully aware of the environment in which they might soon find themselves. There will always be candidates who will be apprehensive of and uncomfortable about an organisation going through change and upheaval. At the same time, there are candidates who view this as a time of opportunity and possibility. That their skill set matches the new trajectory of an organisation. That they feel they can make a real contribution to where their new employer is going and are excited by the pivot or new strategy.

Clearly, existing employees will also see such external candidate messaging. They will expect honesty and authenticity. They will expect that such messaging reflects what they have been told via internal communications. 

Similarly, those people who have just left your organisation should be able to take away from such communications that their old employer is going in a different direction and that their experience or skill set will be better channelled elsewhere. 

Senior leaders also have a real responsibility during such times. They may truly be excited about where their organisation is headed but they need to demonstrate the empathy and proportionality reflective of what has happened. Large bonuses and director’s retreats to exotic climes are unlikely to play well.

Businesses have always reinvented themselves – Twitter started life as Odeo, a means of finding podcasts, Nokia’s origins were that of a Finnish paper mill, and Instagram was a location-based check-in app call Burbn. And they will continue to do so. They might change radically or incrementally. Their employee requirements will change in terms of numbers and skill set and location. AI is another factor in an organisation’s changing and evolving relationship with the nature and size of its employee base. 

Delivering difficult, nuanced and sensitive messages is critical during periods of change. Critical for keeping existing employees engaged and motivated. Critical for ensuring that those departing leave with dignity and a positive feeling about their old employer. And critical for those people needed for an organisation’s new direction. 

And if you think that it’s easier to keep the corporate head down and to simply not communicate, then it’s probably the time to do just the opposite.

About
Neil Harrison is recognised as a leading employer brand specialist, creating insights and actionable intelligence around key people audiences. Internal employee communities as well as external talent pools. These are insights which will help drive informed EVPs and their associated employer brands. Factors such as Brexit, as well as a tightening labour market, mean that organisations serious about talent acquisition need to act based on knowledge rather than guesswork.