Recruitment and Retention has now just got harder!!

While I appreciate that the whole world is having recruitment challenges, I wanted to highlight two problems that I feel are going to impact massively on recruitment and retention. I have actually already experienced both of them with candidates in the last few weeks, and I am sure it will just get worse.

So what am I talking about? Petrol and Houses. The price of petrol is rising higher and higher every week, so obviously your staff (and you of course) will be paying more for their commute into work. With this price estimated to get to £1.50 per litre by the end of the summer, then their commuting costs (by car) have just risen by 50%. How many will be looking to get a job closer to home to cut down traveling? What are you doing about it? Are you encouraging more home working? Are you being flexible with allowing them to come into the office less? Are you actually sharing your concerns with your staff? If you don't they will look for an employer that is doing something about it.

House prices - more importantly the mortgage rate - are stopping people moving. Higher interest rates mean that mortgages have lept up substantially this year, costing people more money. There are two implications from this, 1) they may now not be earning enough money where they currently work, and may have to look at another job and leaving your company or 2) the option of relocating for a new job has suddenly been diminished for the moment, not because they don't want to move, but because they may not sell their house! So recruiting for specific skills in a market where they are absent now becomes a real problem. Whereas, before you could relocate someone with the right skills, now it will become more of a challenge to convince candidates to move. So if this is going to cause you problems, what are you doing about it? Have you even thought of the long term implications? Should you be reconsidering recruiting lower skilled and training them? Should you look at retraining of existing staff? What about ad hoc pay rises?

The one thing that both petrol prices and house prices will definitely test, and that will be how creative a company can be with their creative retention policies!!!!