5 Workplace Trends for 2017: what will really impact recruitment?

Both Sodexo and LinkedIn recently published articles on what will be trending for the Workplace and Recruitment Market in 2017. Both base their results on extensive survey responses and provide ample food for thought. Talent Acquisition is becoming hard work in today's ever accelerating world and thinking ahead on how we can organize the inflow of new professionals pays off.
So, I selected some trends which I think will become a real challenge and might have some relevancy from a local European perspective.

1. Robotics
The technology in this field is progressing in serious leaps and bounds. Debates aplenty on how much jobs will be impacted but even the lowest estimates are staggering. (See a previous post with a video that should be recommended viewing.) How on earth will we keep everyone (meaningfully) employed? Apart from the ethical debate and the serious risk to the quality of life for large parts of the population, it has now become clear that talent acquisition will in future mainly focus on a small thoroughly educated and competent segment of professionals. As a corollary: learning will become a lifelong mission but companies have a stake in providing continued education and to battle digital illiteracy. (See the EU's digital skills coalition.)


2. Intergenerational Learning
Oh yes. Aging, it's a thing. In fact the 'older' population is the only part of the workforce that is growing! Average life expectancy will reach a staggering 90 years for women in the near future.  Looking at it like this, let's see it for what it really is: an opportunity.  People need to work longer. We all know it. It's good for supporting our social security model and experienced workers constitute a vast reservoir of knowledge. And yet: we are still biased towards younger candidates. So we need to become aware of this and address it and benefit from it. So: include more experienced workers in your teams, mix and match ages, organize internal mentoring programs.


3. Branding your organization
Talent Acquisition has a new arena to deal with: it's called employer branding. And it's intertwined with personal branding and an active social media strategy; In fact, this reveals my age. I should not be calling social media a strategy, it should be something that is inherently part of my work and life, as it is for millenials and the young joining the workplace. Talent Acquisition and corporate / marketing communication should work in tandem to build a large community of followers. In fact, you should know your future employees, where they hang out, what interests them and they should know your company and its culture. Also: potential future candidates should also possess this new skill to talk the language of personal and professional branding.


4. Quality of hire and time to hire
KPI's, love or hate them but these two KPI's remain the holy grail for recruiting. Hiring managers want candidates on board FAST. Technology should support the process and deepen the recruitment experience. Our succes in Talent Acquisition is still measured with these metrics. 30% of companies in the LinkedIn survey report an average time to hire shorter than 1 month? (They must have an enormous hiring budget.) In my (unscientific) experience we are now looking at an average of 8 to 10 weeks lead time to hire (and climbing) for the IT market in Belgium.


5. You will definitely be needing a referral program
LinkedIn reports a staggering 48% of respondents quoting employee referrals as the top channel for quality hire. I concur. This is a low cost but very effective program to initiate and in future this will become ever more important because of the branding and social connectedness issue (see above).