People power: Boosting recruitment and talent retention

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“You’re on mute.” These seemingly innocuous words appeared more than four times as regularly in the transcripts of corporate earnings and shareholder calls in the second quarter of 2020 than the first, according to an analysis by Sentieo published by Quartz. And that analysis doesn’t even take into account the millions of calls that weren’t officially logged. It could well have been the official phrase of working through the pandemic.

More than three years later, you probably still find yourself on calls uttering those three little words. Because if the pandemic upended everything about our lives, it is perhaps work that has been shifted most fundamentally and, potentially, permanently. How we work, where we work and what we feel about work have all changed.

It started with ‘The Great Resignation’, the term coined in 2021 by organisational behaviour professor Anthony Klotz to describe the trend of people leaving jobs in higher numbers thanks to pandemic-induced reassessments of life’s priorities. Next in work-related buzzwords came ‘quiet quitting’, aka doing the bare minimum. Now, according to Fortune magazine, the latest trend to plague employers is ‘resenteeism’ – employees who hate their jobs but don’t think they can find a better one. No wonder many employers find themselves struggling to keep up with a shifting labour market.

However, according to Barney Ely, a managing director at recruitment firm Hays, there is some good news for frazzled managers: The Great Resignation has ‘certainly cooled’, making hiring easier and shifting the balance of power back towards the employer. “Professionals who wanted to move did, so many of those are still in their first two years at a new organisation and the cost-of-living crisis has caused candidates to be more cautious in looking for a new role,” he says. Although, he adds, that given permanent job vacancies remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels, employers can’t afford to be complacent when it comes to finding and keeping great people.

Every industry is feeling the pressure, but in market research and adjacent sectors it is particularly acute.

Research by Hays finds that skills shortages in marketing are ‘severe’, with 93% of employers experiencing them in the past 12 months, rising to 94% in the technology sector. According to human resources body the CIPD’s latest Labour Market Outlook, 51% of business services organisations (the category into which market research falls) report having hard-to-fill vacancies – although this has decreased significantly from 63% in the previous quarter. The business services sector is also the most likely of all industries to be experiencing skills-shortage vacancies, defined as vacancies that are hard to fill because applicants lack relevant technical skills.

“Since the pandemic, there has been a real shortage of skills and talent, particularly at mid-level,” confirms Inger Christensen of market research recruitment firm Daughters of Sailors. While she sees things gradually improving, shortages persist, compounded in part by short-term decision-making around talent in some organisations, such as the cutting of graduate intake programmes in 2020/21. There is also a steady stream of people choosing to leave market research altogether, attracted by greater flexibility, higher salaries and a healthier work-life balance in other sectors.

It’s a significant problem for an industry that Sinead Jefferies – senior vice-president of customer expertise at consumer insights platform Zappi and current chair of MRS – describes as being ‘nothing without people’. “Increasingly, the value we offer is people who are smart, who can think strategically,” she adds. “We need more leaders in the sector to engage with the importance of people and culture in facilitating what we do.”

In fact, not doing so could prove fatal for organisations: they simply won’t be able to attract the talent they need. According to Christensen, candidates are increasingly looking for a clear understanding of what a culture is like when they apply for roles. “We hear more and more from candidates that culture is really important,” she says. “They want a supportive working environment, somewhere you are listened to, where individual requirements are met, where you can influence things.” Employers, she adds, need to be able to tell a compelling story about the purpose and values of the organisation, and how it supports staff wellbeing and development.

Opinium is one agency that appears to have cracked the candidate-attracting formula Christensen describes, growing successfully during the pandemic and subsequently. While associate director Kate Whiffen admits the talent pool has shrunk and negotiations for the best people have been notably tougher, she credits a progressive and inclusive culture with enabling the business to find – and keep – the people needed to support its growth. “Culture can be defined in many ways, but for us it’s about people, having that sense of belonging, trust, friendly environment and buzz,” she says. “We’ve worked really hard to keep this positive culture while transitioning from a small company to a much larger medium-sized agency.”

When it comes to the recruitment process, Whiffen notes that candidates appreciate good communications and quick decision-making, as well as a focus on inclusion. Opinium takes part in the 10,000 Black Interns initiative, a paid internship programme Whiffen encourages every agency to sign up to. It is also setting up an internship programme with the youth democratic engagement charity My Life My Say, helping 18-24 year-olds into work.

Another ‘small but powerful’ part of candidate attraction is bringing final-round interviewees into the office for their last interview, says Whiffen. “It’s not just a meeting room, but giving them a tour of the building so they can see the team in action and feel the inclusive collegiate culture,” she adds.

Creative flexibility

While Opinium embraces hybrid working, this in-person interviewing approach (and encouraging enough people into the office on certain days to create that vibe) is an example of what Hays’ Ely describes as a return to ‘pre-pandemic habits’ for many organisations, in terms of face-to-face interviews and more time spent in the office during the first few months of a role. But flexibility remains a core part of what attracts people to a job, and crucially keeps them there; some 62% of employees would be tempted to change jobs if they could choose how often they were in the workplace, Ely says. It’s certainly something that Patrick Alcantara, strategic customer insight lead at AxA, has observed as he builds his team.

“Flexible working arrangements are increasingly part of the conversation when it comes to hiring,” he says, adding that AxA’s smart-working policy was part of what attracted him to the business: “It empowered me to create remote arrangements to work around my commitments, while maintaining purposeful, regular face-to-face interactions.” He is based in the North West, his boss in the South East, with other team members in Yorkshire and the West Country. “We maximise hybrid working arrangements to get work done while still getting the facetime crucial to team building,” Alcantara says. “Some colleagues choose to come into the office three or four times a week, while others have job sharing arrangements.”

While Alcantara has found the flexibility he desires, a lack of it on the agency side in particular is driving some people, most notably those with caring responsibilities, out of the industry entirely, says Christensen. While the pandemic has forced most organisations to offer a degree of home-working, there remains a need for businesses to think more creatively and strategically around the true meaning of flexibility, she says, whether that be considering job shares, the four-day working week or part-time working, while appreciating that some roles are harder to do flexibly. And Ely warns: “If you’re not prepared to have an open dialogue about flexibility when it comes to different working patterns, professionals might look elsewhere for an employer that communicates more effectively.”

When it comes to hybrid working, Zappi’s Jefferies is clear that getting this new way of working right is ‘way more complicated than three days in the office, two days at home’. She adds: “You need to listen to people. It’s not ‘anything goes’, but about understanding your people, enabling them to work in a way that’s effective, in a highly supportive culture.”

At Zappi, staff are free to work from anywhere, but tend to go into their local office midweek to see colleagues and collaborate. Jefferies, who is an old-hand at remote working, having previously lived in France, is an advocate of asynchronous working, something Zappi is currently experimenting with different ways of using. She gives the example of a request for comment (RFC). Whereas before the process may have required numerous meetings, now the document is written up and shared with the team for feedback within a set timeframe.

“It doesn’t matter if you do it at 6am or 11pm,” says Jefferies. “It’s a much more fluid way of working than having lots of meetings.” She adds that giving people this flexibility and autonomy over how, when and where they work is a boon for inclusion: “If you are open to people working in a way that works for them, it means that people who are neurodiverse or who have a disability can contribute more easily. It should be a massive opener for people’s contribution.”

Increased flexibility and open-mindedness about where people are located also opens up opportunities, as Alcantara has found, for people living outside of (often more expensive) cities. This has been the experience of Fiona Blades, president and chief experience officer at consultancy MESH Experience. Blades, who admits to being somewhat sceptical about how effectively you could manage people remotely pre-pandemic, has since wholeheartedly embraced the possibilities offered by location-agnostic working. The company went remote-first during the pandemic and has worked that way since.

“We can now recruit people in Wales, in Northern Ireland. My managing director is based in upstate New York,” she says. “It’s so expensive living in New York that lots of people have moved out, but we can still work with them. When I started the agency in London, it had more of an ad agency feel, with table football and a fridge full of beer. That has totally changed since the pandemic.”

Building connection

Despite ditching the table football and the beer, the business still finds creative ways to engender camaraderie, both in-person and virtually.

It runs an internal awards scheme, for example, and a festival every August, with three weeks of learning (through online sessions), socialising (with parties in New York and London) and volunteering.

“We’ve been deliberate about creating face-to-face quality time,” says Blades. “I prefer that to walking into an office and seeing everyone with their headphones in.”

Additionally, every other week, a name is drawn out of a hat and that person gets that Friday off. “It’s those little things that are helpful in defining the culture,” she says.

If people are coming together less regularly in-person, creating inclusive opportunities for engagement online is critical for a positive, thriving culture that catalyses great work. Jefferies advises using technology not only to enhance productivity or get work done, but to keep people connected socially.

“We have a massive Slack culture, with threads for pets at Zappi, kids at Zappi, random chat,” she says. “The way you use tools can be massively powerful in keeping people engaged when not in the office.” Every Friday, Zappi staff can join an all-company call, hosted by the chief executive, where anyone can present on a topic of their choice (one of Jefferies’ team, based in Michigan, recently shared his passion for fishing). “You feel like you’re part of something. That connection and engagement is active and alive, wherever in the world you are sitting,” Jefferies adds.

Zappi’s Slack deployment is a great example of technology being used for good, but it cannot be ignored that digital overload can lead to burnout. A recent report on recruitment and retention in the research and insight sector, published by MRS, Daughters of Sailors and Vela (Jefferies’ previous consultancy) in June last year, cited ‘a perceived culture of excessive working hours and unreasonable demands on staff’ as a key cause of talent shortages, with overwork and its impact on personal wellbeing driving some to leave the sector or to go freelance in a quest for more flexibility and a better balance.

“[In agencies], there is a tendency to take on more work than there is resource, as well as the tendency to not want to say anything but ‘yes’ to clients,” says Christensen. Jefferies adds that until the potential of AI is realised, the volume of manual tasks can mean the more interesting parts of roles are forced to the fringes of the working day.

This is something Opinium has recognised and taken strategic steps to tackle, says Whiffen. “When we were a small agency, all researchers did everything, including questionnaire design, scripting and data processing. But as we got bigger, the volume of data processing got huge,” she explains. To ensure people could focus on ‘being research consultants first and foremost’, Opinium opened an office in Cape Town to deal with data processing. “Now we have a brilliant team of data processors who are focused on building their careers around data and analytics, and everyone is able to play to their strengths,” says Whiffen.

Working well

Putting wellbeing at the centre is another way of helping people deal with the stresses and challenges that come with any job, as well as helping businesses attract and retain talent. This could include giving employees money each month to spend on their wellbeing or personal development, or offering access to specialist mental health support services.

“There is more need and desire to have a greater work-life balance and better personal wellbeing so offers of mental health support and stress reduction are becoming higher on people’s wish lists,” says Opinium’s Whiffen.

Alongside practical support around mental and physical health, employers also need to consider ways of working and leadership behaviour. All the fruit baskets and yoga classes in the world aren’t going to help if someone’s job is simply too big or if a manager is behaving badly. “Ways of working help to support wellbeing,” says AXA’s Alcantara. “We actively encourage colleagues to take their annual leave and relax, not answering emails or calls on holiday. As leaders, we try to model positive behaviour the best way we can, taking breaks ourselves, offering flexibility where needed and checking in regularly as a team.”

There is another form of wellbeing businesses need to address, one that is more at risk than ever in today’s cost-of-living crisis: financial wellbeing. CIPD research has shown that when employees experience financial distress, their wellbeing and job performance suffer, with 29% of people saying cost-of-living-related financial worries have negatively impacted their productivity at work. The average pay award across the private sector stands at 5%, with many organisations introducing more regular pay reviews (every six months rather than annually for instance), or giving one-off cost-of-living payments to staff on lower salary bands.

Paying fairly is critical, but there are other ways to compete when constrained on salaries and unable to keep up with inflation, rather than getting into a bidding war. Benefits, both tangible (such as private medical insurance or access to money-saving deals) and intangible (like flexible working and learning and development), can help firms find and keep the people they need. According to Ely from Hays, 56% of professionals would be prepared to accept a lower salary for a better work-life balance. Allowing people to work remotely and flexibly (starting after peak travel time for example) can help cut personal travel costs.

But perhaps the most powerful attraction and retention tool is something you can’t put a price tag on: purpose. Most candidates ( 85%) consider an organisation’s sense of purpose to be important when considering a new role (Hays again). It’s something Blades recognises as becoming ever more important. “Younger people are coming into the workforce and they are keen to make sure they are doing some good. We need to listen to that,” she says. She adds that creating alignment between an individual’s sense of purpose and the business values can aid retention and engagement. It’s all about giving staff the ‘experiences that help them to grow as people’, she adds, such as empowering people to launch internal sustainability initiatives.

Alcantara acknowledges that for busy managers, delivering all of this can feel like a big ask: “Building a positive workplace culture can be tough; we often have a hundred other things to worry about.” But, he notes, insight and research professionals should be encouraged by the fact they have something of a head start: “Our roles include keeping our stakeholders honest, using data and insight to create a compelling case for change. It’s about setting a good example and using the tools at our disposal to encourage positive behaviours.”

As Jefferies passionately points out, all this will soon be, if it isn’t already, a non-negotiable for any market research leaders wanting their teams to deliver great work. “We need our people to flourish and thrive, not be burned out,” she concludes. “Helping people to work at their best will become an absolute hygiene factor.”

This article appears in the July 2023 issue of Impact.