employee mental health

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Unlock the secrets of modern recruitment: Discover tips for hiring new talent in 2024 and stay ahead in the competitive market.

In the dynamic landscape of recruitment, timing is crucial, employers constantly strive to minimise the time it takes to fill vacant positions while ensuring they find the best talent for their teams, and with the evolution of recruitment strategies and the integration of technology, the recruitment process has undergone significant changes in 2024. Similarly, it is really important to boost wellbeing at work and have strategies in place to support employees when you recruit and HR can assist with this.

Let’s explore how long it takes to recruit a new employee in the current landscape.

Streamlining the Recruitment Process

Traditional recruitment methods often involved time-consuming processes, including manual resume (CV) screening, multiple rounds of interviews, and lengthy decision-making cycles. However, in 2024, organisations are leveraging advanced technologies such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and automation tools to streamline the recruitment process.

These technologies enable recruiters to sift through large volumes of resumes efficiently, identify top candidates, and schedule interviews with ease, significantly reducing the time it takes to fill vacancies.

It’s also worth checking out places that offer temporary workers, for example, those in the medical or mental health field will be able to take advantage of services like physician recruiter companies who can give you talented and passionate staff on a short term basis.

Enhanced Candidate Sourcing

In today’s competitive job market, attracting the right people requires innovative candidate sourcing strategies; Employers are leveraging social media platforms, professional networking sites, and job boards to reach a wider pool of candidates and in doing so you can uncover some hidden gem candidates. You also want to make sure that you support your candidates, especially when you come to hire.

Additionally, employee referral programs and talent acquisition partnerships with educational institutions and industry organisations have become popular avenues for sourcing qualified candidates. By proactively engaging with passive candidates and building talent pipelines, organisations can expedite the recruitment process and reduce time-to-hire.

Virtual Recruitment and Remote Onboarding

The widespread adoption of remote work has transformed the recruitment landscape, paving the way for virtual recruitment processes and remote onboarding practices- in fact, in 2022, it is estimated that around 27% of the US workforce was working remotely and this is an upward trend that has been seen in the UK too.

Video interviews, virtual career fairs, and online assessments have become integral components of the modern recruitment process, allowing employers to conduct interviews and assess candidates from anywhere in the world. This can also be helpful to people with disabilities and mental health issues, to be able to interview from within their own home.

Agile Recruitment Strategies

In response to rapidly changing market dynamics and evolving needs, organisations are adopting agile recruitment strategies to adapt quickly to shifting priorities and talent requirements. Agile recruitment involves breaking down the recruitment process into smaller, manageable tasks, enabling recruiters to respond promptly to hiring demands and make data-driven decisions. By adopting an agile approach, organisations can reduce recruitment cycle times, improve candidate experiences, and maintain a competitive edge when recruiting new talent.

2024 is the Best Time to be Recruiting!

In 2024, the recruitment landscape continues to evolve, driven by technological advancements, changing workforce dynamics, and the need for agility and efficiency.

While the time it takes to recruit a new employee may vary depending on factors such as industry, role complexity, and candidate availability, organisations are using innovative recruitment strategies and technologies to speed up the process and secure top talent in a competitive market filled with approximately 12 million Americans every month and millions in the UK.

It is also important to support the mental health and wellbeing of new employees through the recruitment stage to onboarding and beyond, to ensure they feel settled and can thrive in your business. HR can assist with this, as well as developing wellness plans when employees begin

By embracing virtual recruitment, agile methodologies, and metrics-driven approaches, organisations can reduce time-to-hire, improve candidate experiences, and achieve better recruitment outcomes in the dynamic and fast-paced world of talent acquisition (whilst embracing employee wellbeing).

This article was written by a freelance writer

(image: Mateus Campos Felipe at Unsplash)

The global coronavirus pandemic brought mental health and personal wellbeing to the forefront of our working life. As more companies return to the office, employers need to think about whether or not they are doing enough to make mental health in the workplace a priority. We speak to consumer finance startup, CapitalBean.com, to get some insight.

Workplace Mental Health Post-Covid

“The coronavirus pandemic highlighted serious concerns regarding mental health and personal wellbeing,” explains Richard Allan of Capital Bean.

“With ongoing uncertainty and a heightened sense of risk, it could be argued that we were experiencing an unprecedented global mental health crisis, often with no end in sight.”

“From a workplace perspective especially, many workers were facing uncertainty regarding their job stability, redundancies and, for some, navigating an entirely new way of working and interacting with colleagues.”

“In response, many companies started to take employee mental health more seriously and implement frameworks and best practices; however, now that we are returning to normal and trying to leave Covid-19 in the past, what is the extent to which companies are keeping up with their commitment to employee mental health?”

The Return to the Office

During the Covid 19 pandemic, the majority of workers were learning how to do their jobs remotely. This presented a range of new challenges to navigate and loneliness was widely reported. Not only were people missing the daily social interactions with their colleagues, but they were also finding the blurred lines between home life and work life difficult to navigate – with people’s homes doubling up as their offices, many workers were finding it difficult to switch off and reported working more hours.

Now that people are starting to return to the office, after adjusting to nearly three years of remote working, they are being faced with new challenges. People are finding the return to work difficult and reporting a great deal of anxiety regarding social interaction. In addition, after working from home, they are now having to juggle their home commitments alongside going to the office. Whether it is squeezing in laundry, balancing childcare, or even factoring in an extra hour for the commute, the return to the office is proving more difficult than expected for many and is causing stress and anxiety for some. Others prefer working from home, so there is a balance.

The Employer’s Role

Millions of workers are returning to the office or workplace with changed attitudes and new expectations. In order to attract and retain talent, it is important for employers to acknowledge this and respond empathetically. Many companies have included mental health in their promises to employees on return to the office but now it is their time to demonstrate that this is not merely lip service.

Employers need to proactively introduce programmes that are promoting workplace mental wellbeing and help employees with the challenges that they are facing. It is important for workplaces to create a psychologically safe space for workers and welcome conversations surrounding mental health and support.

The Great Resignation And Mental Health at Work

After the pandemic, more people than ever before started evaluating their working life and what their main priorities were. With new focus on mental wellbeing and work-life balance, workers started to question what their expectations were and what they required from their place of work. The great resignation, the mass exodus of millions of workers in 2021, left employers having to think about what they needed to offer workers to not only attract talent initially, but retain it.

Workers who were asked about the great resignation pinpointed lack of workplace communication, sense of belonging, employee-manager relationship and toxic environments all as reasons to leave their jobs.

In a post-Covid era (and what should have been before this), it will fall to the employer to make sure their staff feel looked after, not just financially but also emotionally.

Employers need to make their employees feel like they are taken care of, respected and acknowledged, and that their personal wellbeing and mental health is a top priority. Going forward, this will be more important for jobseekers than free office lunches or staff drinks.

We all have mental health and it is vital this is acknowledged and cared for, and not ignored in the workplace.

This article contains links to partner organisations.