Founder & CEO at Criteria, a pre-employment assessment company with a simple goal: to help organizations make better hires.
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It’s difficult to recall a time when hiring professionals faced more turmoil or uncertainty than they have over the past two years. First, there was the dramatic rise in unemployment in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and the overnight shift to remote work. Then came an extremely tight labor market and the Great Resignation, driven by shifting employee expectations and greater mobility. Now companies are trying to determine what the next year will hold as the labor market remains intensely competitive and shifts like remote work and video interviewing remain the norm.
Now that tens of millions of employees are accustomed to working from anywhere (WFA), companies eager to attract top talent will have to develop policies to make this transition as smooth and productive as possible. Meanwhile, it will be necessary to fully leverage video interviewing to expand their talent pool and identify the right candidates. Companies will also need to make diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a top priority, which will require the adoption of evidence-based hiring methods that mitigate the effects of bias. To meet evolving employee demands, internal mobility will become a core focus — in an era of hyper-turnover, employees should be reminded that their concerns and professional aspirations matter.
Although this is a difficult time for hiring managers, it’s also an unmatched opportunity for those who can get out ahead of these developments. With that fact in mind, let’s take a closer look at the most prominent hiring trends likely to develop this year and how companies can capitalize on them.
Companies will embrace the remote work era.
While the transition to remote work was a shock for many companies, it has also proven to be surprisingly smooth. Just nine months after the transition took place, 83% of employers said it was a success, while more than half thought productivity had actually increased with the rise of remote work, according to findings from PwC. In August 2021, another PwC survey found that the majority of companies have adopted a hybrid model of remote and office work. While 29% of employees wanted to be fully remote in January 2021, that proportion climbed to 41% by August.
These are all reasons why companies will likely continue to embrace remote work in the coming year, which means developing policies and providing digital tools that facilitate remote communication and collaboration, giving employees the flexibility they need and considering ways to maintain the company culture even with a distributed workforce (which executives cite as the top challenge). The pressure to completely integrate remote work with the existing culture and operations is even higher in industries where this type of work is already practical (much of the tech sector, for instance). In these industries, remote work will be indispensable to remaining competitive.
Companies will also need to update their hiring platforms for the remote work era, which means the optimization of video interviewing and the use of digital search platforms that provide access to qualified candidates from around the world.
The emphasis on DEI will change how companies hire.
The business case for diversity is becoming stronger all the time. According to research from McKinsey & Company, companies with diverse executive teams outperform their competitors. Employees also place a premium on diversity in the workplace, with 78% saying it’s important for them to work at an organization that prioritizes diversity and inclusion. This has a direct impact on where people decide to work — more than three-quarters of job seekers say a diverse workforce is an important factor when considering companies and offers.
It’s clear that companies have every incentive to build and support more diverse workforces, and this fact will be reflected in how they hire. Traditional hiring methods such as evaluating resumes are fraught with bias and subjectivity, which is why companies should look to rely on more evidence-based means of talent discovery, like well-validated pre-employment assessments, structured interviews and other objective measures of a candidate’s skills and abilities. This can help reduce bias in the hiring process and give hiring managers a more robust understanding of how candidates will actually perform on the job.
A diverse workforce is vital for companies to remain competitive as we move into 2022. Diversity won’t just improve business outcomes and make your workplace more dynamic and representative — it will also attract top talent at a time when that talent is hard to come by.
Companies will focus on internal mobility.
Just as the tight labor market has confronted companies with significant hiring challenges, persistent hyper-turnover has made it difficult to hold onto the employees they already have. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the quit rate reached an all-time high in August 2021 at 2.9% until reaching 3% in September and November of 2021. This will no doubt serve as a reminder that companies will need to revamp their retention efforts if they want to maintain a happy and healthy workforce.
According to Gallup, employee engagement decreased globally by two percentage points in 2020, which could lead to lost productivity and increase the likelihood of turnover. Employees don’t want their professional lives to be static — they want a chance to move up within the organization. As hiring managers continue to struggle with the tight labor market, internal hires and promotions can fill vacant positions and reduce turnover at the same time.
While companies face strong headwinds in their efforts to build and sustain their workforces, the past two years have also forced them to make long-overdue changes to their hiring and retention strategies. By embracing remote work, diversity and internal mobility, companies will be capable of adapting to whatever new workforce challenges 2022 may bring.
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