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Gloucestershire Business News

Business expert: Attracting and retaining skilled staff

By Cathy O'Donoghue, director of HR Champions Ltd 

Cathy O'Donoghue of HR Champions Ltd looks at the subject of recruiting and retaining suitably skilled staff from a slightly different viewpoint.

Recruiting suitably skilled staff is clearly a problem that businesses continue to face. It's an ongoing issue that we continually hear echoed amongst our own clients and business associates. What's less clear however is exactly what skills employers are struggling to find in candidates.

Try an internet search for the skills employers are looking for and you may be surprised to find that it's actually what we would describe as 'soft skills' that employers seem to desire, as opposed to hard qualifications. Resilience, leadership, team-working and communication skills feature far more prominently amongst skills that employers look for than HNDs in engineering or degrees in higher mathematics.

Whilst qualifications aren't altogether irrelevant, there is possibly as much credence associated with demonstrating an ability to learn at a particular level, as having the perfect qualification for a vacancy. Of course, you're unlikely to employ someone who has recently qualified as a vet to be your next software engineer, but having the ability to adapt and learn will be high up in an employer's list of preferences for the right candidate.

With record levels of employment in the UK, candidates can afford to be fussy about where they choose to work.

When recruiting, nobody is likely to advertise a job in a way that makes it sound dull and uninviting, so to give themselves an edge, employers need to make their proposition as attractive as possible. Remuneration packages can easily be matched or bettered. And whilst a competitive salary, health care and generous pension provision will certainly encourage enquiries, there is something indefinable about working for a company that has a reputation for being a good employer.

Building such a reputation doesn't happen overnight however, so employers who have any plans for growth should be implementing a strategy now for how their vacancies of the future will be filled.

Start building an employer 'brand' from within with your existing employees. Introduce clear and professional business policies and ethics consistently across your workforce to develop an enviable culture. Invest in your employees. A properly considered succession plan will mean that skills are available internally to meet growth plans and staff attrition will lessen as employees see their future development mapped out for them.

Our own programme of funded leadership training will help instil in current staff those soft skills that employers so desperately seek in new recruits; with the glaring added advantage that it can be delivered entirely free of charge for businesses in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. By developing leadership skills, employees will improve their communication, resilience and grow their own self-leadership abilities.

With a motivated workforce in place that lives and breathes the company's principles and values, the business becomes an employer of aspiration. Struggling to recruit and retain staff will become a thing of the past.

Talk to us about your own organisational development plan and of course about the funded training that we currently have available. It's limited so contact us now on 01452 331331 or by e-mail to info@hrchampions.co.uk. Visit https://hrchampions.co.uk/ for more details.

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