One of the things I enjoy most about working here at SmartSearch is that we’re always learning.
We’re constantly talking with our clients and vendor partners in the HR and Staffing industry about the ever-changing recruiting landscape, and then discussing what we’ve learned with our colleagues in sales and marketing, customer service, and product development departments.
In today’s unprecedented times, I’m excited that we decided to take a more forward approach by sharing a few of our insider conversations in a new series of short videos.
Follow along with our round table discussions as I talk with my colleagues, Executive Vice President Bill
Inman, and Sylvia Dahlby, Business Development Manager. In the coming weeks, we’ll share essential insights on HR and staffing topics. Our first round of Smart Tips videos are posted on our YouTube channel and Social Media pages; we invite you to subscribe and engage with us on how to build a more human-centric workplace.
Workplace wellness has been challenging for many years and recently magnified by Covid and the new workplace norms. In this first video of the series, we share insights on the demand for more job flexibility, and the conflicts moms and parents face from taking the kids to school and after-school activities, all while trying to juggle a full-time job.
Sylvia Dahlby discusses a few practical resolutions including how employers can offer more flexible scheduling to give parents ample time to perform not only their work duties but attend to parental responsibilities. Employees and employers need to find common ground to iron out scheduling conflicts if they want to increase productivity and results – and reduce stress.
Bill Inman shares some stark metrics from a recent McKinsey report, which showed that 75% of employees want or need some mental wellness support. These numbers are well into the majority of total employees and clearly show that we need to work together to alleviate workplace stress.
Watch this Smart Tips video: Smart Tips Episode 1: Mom’s and Workplace Wellness.
In the wake of the Great Resignation and the largest workplace population in the final phases of retirement, this opens the door for a whole new workforce to enter, with millennials and Gen Z taking over. The work preferences are drastic between these generations and start with how they want to be communicated.
Being a millennial myself, I’ve experienced firsthand how communication channels have shifted to cater to the new workforce. There are compelling statistics on generational work preferences as well, such as that 75% of Millennials and Gen Z prefer fully remote or hybrid work. Looking at these numbers, we see that in-person discussions will decrease dramatically and that alternative mediums need to be utilized.
Communication preferences are drastically different between the generations; Gen X prefers email, millennials prefer text, with Gen Z opts for chatbots and instant messaging. To communicate as effectively as possible, we must be mindful of who we are speaking with and try to understand their preferred channel best.
Watch this video and share your thoughts: Smart Tips Episode 2: Work Communication and the New Generation of Workers.
In our third installment of Smart Tips, Bill Inman brings the focus on automation and its effect on potential job loss. He reveals a startling statistic that 80 million jobs will be lost globally to automation by 2025, and 800 million jobs will be lost by 2030.
There is good news hidden here, though, as Bill goes on to share some studies that predict there will be 12 million more jobs added than lost by 2025, with a lot of these focusing on reskilling and bringing these people onto Web3 such as AI, robotics and the metaverse.
That reminded Sylvia of a staffing industry conference she had attended in 2019, where a speaker talked about how the jobs of the future are not even available today, and how this still rings true now. We don’t know what kind of technological advancements will be made, but we can be certain that new jobs will be created to support them. She also brought up a great point of having employers and employees emphasize expanding their soft skills to ensure they adapt to these new changes.
To hear more about this topic, watch the video: Smart Tips Episode 3: Automation and Its Effect on Jobs.
The Smart Tips video series is one more way SmartSearch engages with the industry to spark conversations on hot HR and recruiting topics. We hope you enjoy these conversations, and please share your insight with us!