As well as flexibility Catherine Schlieben, chief people officer for talent at National Grid, said prospective employees are looking for an employer who is empowered and takes responsibility.
She said: “We’ve found that people want to work for a company with purpose, for example the climate agenda.
“[Employers who] are pioneering and innovating are really important to candidates right now, they want to know their employer will be able to hold their interest and align with their own core purposes.”
Recruitment post-pandemic:
‘Last in, first out’ scaring people from starting new jobs post-pandemic
Is it time to re-think the recruitment process?
How to onboard successfully in a post-pandemic world
Following the event of 2020 especially Jonathan Schipper, global talent management lead at DSM, said talent is looking for an employer who they can trust to speak up on global and sometimes political issues.
Schipper said: “I think employees are less dependent on an employer now and they feel empowered to change roles as often as they want.
“With this in mind, if they [employees] don’t feel like the purpose of their current business does not fit their own, they will leave.”
Shereen Daniels, managing director of HR Rewired, added that she thinks employees now have much higher expectations for their employers when it comes to issues of social justice.
She said: “Candidates now want to see data that supports this, not just [the company’s] targets.
“They now want to see action plans, and this is new, because companies used to just be able to tell possible employees what their values were, and people would except it.”
Daniels joked that now job candidates want to ‘see the receipts’ and want hard evidence of how a company has reacted to a social justice issue.
“This has put a lot of organisations in a tricky situation because they’re not sure what to disclose and how transparent they need to be,” she explained.
Watch and hear more of this HR Lunchtime Debate on demand here.
