06 Jun Companies Need to Understand Social Realities When Recruiting Talent

Companies are revisiting their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and implementing a more humanistic approach in their workplace models, despite the threat of rising inflation, post-pandemic realities and the effects of the Ukraine dilemma. 

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals has been one of the leading guides to creating a more inclusive yet sustainably progressive employment arena for all job seekers. The Mayor’s Good Work Standard helps global mobility and HR professionals in providing best employment practices. Moreover, it even provides its clients links to resources to help employers across London improve their companies.

According to the World Economic Forum, understanding new work and social realities is important for companies looking to build a strong global mobility workforce. Let’s elaborate on these new realities:

Reality #1: Widening gaps in health and wealth outcomes

The pandemic has severely affected working women’s and minority groups’ gaps in pay and promotion. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021 states that closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.

One example that companies can benchmark their efforts on gender disparity in the workplace is none other than Google.

Tech giant Google has reflected on its current DEI efforts and now has decided to effectively listen to how social and economic inequities have magnified during an ongoing pandemic. They collected the necessary information to tackle this issue and achieved their highest hiring and retention levels of underrepresented communities. 

Other companies have expanded their DEI efforts through caregiving benefits and inclusion programs for minority groups while others are more focused on tackling wages and pension issues.

These health and wellness outcomes have indeed been highlighted to have achieved board level recognition to discuss strategies on how to take on social injustice and unreached employability targets for local communities.

Reality #2: Focus on wellbeing at work

Even with a surge in demand for remote work, the workplace model has put intense pressure on employees to balance both their work and personal life. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) May 2021 survey, only a fifth of employees reported that their employer has supported their mental health needs.

Organizations now need to craft a more comprehensive well-being strategy to continue to foster a healthy working environment whether it’s remote or not. 

Employees that are working more than 55 hours per week are at higher risk of stroke and heart disease, according to a World Health Organization and International Labor Organization study.

While businesses had to rush to cope with the expedited digitization, healthcare has also adapted to the impact of the pandemic in the medical landscape. It was discovered that a collective investment of over $1.6 billion for digital mental health firms in 2020 existed.

Reality #3: Reconsidering work, worker & workplaces, and supply chain

The business realm has embraced remote work as it has been heavily influenced by the demands of the workforce. Quite a number of companies are considering a hybrid working model.

Employers are now challenged to maintain productivity and flexibility in a blended workforce. WE Forum states that careful examination of how work gets done will help business leaders maximize both productivity and flexibility in the workplace.

Furthermore, WE Forum highlights that greater transparency of work practices throughout a company’s supply chain is needed to steer a clearer sense of how quality work and strategies are defined to protect workers.

Another thing worth looking into is the increased need for on-demand workers. With the rise of gig workers, companies have to integrate contract, freelance, and part-time workers with more secure benefit options.

Reality #4: Surviving through reskilling and upskilling

A new trend has been observed among employees. Their increased interest in reskilling and upskilling has been noted by not only employees but companies as well. Consistent with this observation, Mercer mentions that upskilling and reskilling is now a top priority for businesses to remain competitive while reaping the benefits of a more agile and digitized workforce.

The WE Forum predicts that by 2025, work will be distributed equally between humans and machines. This signals companies to equip employees with a different skill set since many of their repetitive tasks, most commonly found in data processing, administrative, and other manual jobs, will be done by some form of machinery. 

Reality #5: Intentional collaboration will lead to labor resilience

Companies need to take on more innovative and collaborative approaches to labor resilience. Employers now have to significantly take into consideration how jobs are constantly changing, which job categories and employees are most affected in the short-term to long-term, and how they can make opportunities in different career paths through upskilling and reskilling.

It’s important to note that there’s still more work to be done on efforts to make a culture of learning and talent programs that aid in skill transfer and work mobility for short-term opportunities. Digitization will play a huge role in properly executing such strategies.