We speak with DevOps Engineer Tawfe’eq Babou to discuss leaping from marketing to a career in tech, finding balance with an ever-growing family, and his dreams of using digital skills to transform agriculture in Africa and turn the dial on food poverty.
… We have twins, and we’re expecting twins again. Yes, it’s going to be a challenge for sure. To be honest with you if I hadn’t made a career pivot, I would hate to think how stressed I would be about it.
A career path isn’t linear, for many, it’s more like crazy paving. You’re not who you were 10 years ago; your personal life, socio-economic landscape, political climate, thoughts and opinions may not be the same, so why should your career be set in stone?
At Morson, we’re seeing that the trend of the ‘mid-life’ career pivot is on the rise, particularly within the tech world. The tech skills crisis coupled with industry-leading flexible working arrangements and digital-first learning opportunities, make tech an ideal space for those looking to get back into work after a career break or seeking to reskill in a completely different sphere.
Let’s jump right into it. Tell me a little about your career to date?
I started in hospitality, then moved into retail and finally became a freelance digital marketer. I loved working with a range of clients in Manchester from fitness, fashion and music to corporate SMEs.
What was the catalyst for you to consider another career path?
When lockdown happened my digital marketing career went out of the door. As a freelancer, I had no job security and many clients dropped off because nobody knew what was going to happen.
At the same time, my wife told me she was pregnant. I was washing up at the time and I vividly remember just going into complete shock and cleaning the same plate for about 15 minutes. Because I bring in our primary income my immediate thought was ‘how am I going to provide for this child?’ We subsequently found out she was expecting twins which doubled the anxiety!
It was a very stressful and scary, but pivotal moment. I knew I had to change my career to provide. After the initial shock, I sat down and drew out a spider diagram with my name at the centre. I considered what am I good at? What am I interested in? What avenues have I not explored that have potential?
My mum was a real inspiration. Around 5 years ago she was fortunate enough, through her employer, to go to Oxford University and do a master’s degree. Not only did she write her dissertation about the digital divide, which piqued my interest in tech, but she also showed me that a career is an ever-evolving thing and that learning and growing are natural, positive and essential. This took away some of the fear.
How did you decide that tech was the route you wanted to explore?
I had been doing an email marketing campaign for a friend and he had some issues with his WordPress website. I had never used WordPress at the time, but my friend said, ‘look, you’re more technical than me, just give it a go’, so I learned online, solved the problem and enjoyed it.
I started to explore this world a little bit more. I always thought you had to be a mathematics major or do a computer science degree to be a software engineer as that’s the traditional route a lot of my friends who were in the industry took. I’ve always struggled with maths, I went to high school in Ethiopia from 2006-2012 and their maths is extremely advanced, so I struggled even more. I’ve always had this fear that I wouldn’t be technically able to do something like programming. Thankfully the industry has come a long way, many people are self-taught and there are so many online learning resources.
I moved into DevOps through the apprenticeship firm QA Consulting. When I applied there, I had to take an aptitude test. It felt like less of a barrier to entry, less intimidating. Yes, there is a numeric test but there was also a personality and logical thinking test to assess my aptitude. I passed and the rest is history. It was a big eye-opener that sometimes you don’t know until you try.
To anyone unaware, could you explain what DevOps is?
DevOps is the bridge between software development and business operations. It’s not just understanding how to execute the technical aspects of a project, it’s managing the whole lifecycle i.e. understanding the requirements from the product owner, the programme specification, the customer base, the goals of the company and managing workloads, the project and stakeholders throughout the process. Cross-department communication and understanding is the difference between software development (whose main focus is making sure the code works and has been tested and debugged) and DevOps.
How have you seen your career in tech benefitting you and your family?
The immediate benefit for me is being able to work from home. Having twins who are under 2 is hard work. By being more available I’m able to support my wife and I’ve seen a boost in her energy levels. I also get to see my children more which makes us all happier. For some women, it can be difficult to maintain an identity outside of the family unit, so it’s really important to be able to support her so she can explore things she wants to do outside of being a mother. She’s always been such an independent person and I don’t want her to lose that. Through my work, she’s been looking at how she can develop professionally. Being able to find a solution for all of this through tech has been amazing.
Although, we’re pregnant again…
Wait, what, you’re pregnant again?!
Yes, haha. So we have twins, and we’re expecting twins again.
(Audible gasp)
Yes, it’s going to be a challenge for sure. To be honest with you if I wasn’t in my current career, I would hate to think how stressed I would be about it. I wouldn’t be working from home and I wouldn’t have the flexibility I’m currently afforded to support my family. But it’s not just that, working in tech has allowed me to dream about true career development. The idea that I won’t be in the same position in five years is motivating and job security is key. Having four children under the age of two won’t be a small task, but the benefits of working in tech all make it feel achievable and will hopefully make it a happy experience too.
What advice would you give to people considering a career pivot?
One thing I would say is that things are always worse in your head. For example, if you think tech is this super technical thing which is unlearnable, you’re wrong.
So, my first piece of advice is to almost take a helicopter view of yourself. My pivotal moment was doing that spider diagram exercise; putting myself in the middle and matching my aspirations to my interests to my skills and trying to see the trends. Do your research and you will be very surprised at how many things you are interested in and how varied roles and opportunities are.
My second top tip is once you’ve chosen your route, get yourself a mentor. You’ll be so surprised how many people, no matter how busy or senior you perceive them to be, are willing to help, share their insight and connect you with others that will be able to help you in your career. One thing I’d say to people who are looking to get into tech, in particular, is that there are some amazing mentors here in Manchester that are willing and want to help and it’s such an amazing privilege to have access to that.
Why is tech a great career option for those looking to re-skill?
The tech industry is booming not only with opportunity but with a fantastic network of diverse people who have different backgrounds and experiences. People are doing some amazing things for diversity in tech and addressing the digital divide. It’s refreshing. As a community, we must champion these facilitators to positively disrupt the industry.
What many people don’t appreciate, is that there are loads of non-technical roles within the tech industry too. I want people to understand they don’t need to be a mathematical genius to come into the digital realm because it is an amazing space. One thing I love about software development and DevOps is that you can take an idea and bring it into the real world and see it positively impact people. That’s so cool and empowering.
There is something for everybody in this space. Through recruitment and outreach programmes we need to help people understand there are so many transferrable skills in tech. People have ability based on aptitude and therefore ample opportunity to find a role in tech that they love and can excel in. As I said earlier, not every tech role is a technical role and we need to promote that. We need to show that tech is an open door and there is something for everybody. With tech being one of the fastest-growing economies there are huge opportunities here.
What are your aspirations and where do you see yourself in the future?
I have a very personal ambition. I studied in Ethiopia and I have African heritage so the issues that affect the country are very real to me.
Specifically, I aim to use my skills in the digital arena to work on food loss preventative measures within East Africa. Africa loses enough calories to feed 1.7 billion people, three times a day every year. The idea that Africa suffers from famine for a lack of produce is largely incorrect. For example, in the UK we waste food, this waste is everything after it gets to the consumer – throwing food away after it goes off etc. In Africa or other developing countries, food waste happens before it gets to the consumer. Not having the correct packaging for produce, poor communication between farmers, suppliers and the marketplace are examples of this loss. In addition, lack of refrigeration causes toxins to get into the food which leads to illness, susceptibility to things like malaria and cholera and a long list of other issues.
Growing up in Africa seeing so much food but realising how little of it reaches the consumer was shocking to me, because I always assumed that the reason people go hungry is that they haven’t got it. But systems around the supply chain are so broken, that’s the main reason that these situations arise. Within five years I aim to be using tech to help solve these issues, helping farmers and suppliers to communicate across the supply chain accurately, and implementing systems so data can be harnessed to help see what needs to be optimised and where processes fail. Better transparency across the supply chain is a big thing, but it’s solvable, and it’s solvable through tech.
I also hear you’re an advocate for digital literacy and you’ve also mentioned the digital divide. Could you tell us a little bit more about the issue and your activity in this area?
Of course, the digital divide means the difference between those who have access to the internet, computers and smart devices as opposed to demographics who don’t have access to the same resources. For example, Manchester City Council is still trying to get enough computers for students. We’re considered the second biggest city in the UK but we’re the sixth most deprived area in the UK.
And the reason the digital divide is so important is that pretty much everything has gone or is going digital. Every business is a digital business now, they all have a website or some other digital outreach, email, or social media. This means if you aren’t digitally able or haven’t had the resources to use these online platforms, you’re already going to be out-skilled by the rest of the market. For example, a lot of homework is now done online and children that don’t have the access to computers or the internet are already falling behind.
I want to advocate for better digital literacy because technology is moving exponentially and as time goes by, if no action is taken the digital divide will become almost un-closable. I’d like to see a holistic approach to solving this issue; increased awareness of the digital divide coupled with private sector investment and a curriculum that serves the needs of our children’s futures.
It was a joy to meet Tawfe’eq and his growing family. I’d like to thank him for an inspirational and eye-opening discussion, personally championing his game-changing ambitions and offer support by focusing the conversation on the digital divide.
If you, like Tawfe’eq are considering a career pivot, looking to take your first steps into tech or are interested in recruiting great people for your organisation, the tech team at Morson is on hand to help you every step of the way.
We’re also keen to speak with organisations that are considering offering training to develop and grow their workforce. As Tawfe-eq so clearly articulated there are great people with aptitude and potential who just need an opportunity – whether that’s returning parents, career breakers, ex-forces personnel or ex-offenders. As a business, offering training enables you to develop and retain a workforce that fulfils your specific needs. We’re actively working with several organisations that are exploring this path to help guide and set a course for success.
To achieve the best outcomes from human resources requires a two-step approach. Firstly, a strategic, high level plan on how HR processes will help achieve a business’ wider objectives is needed. Secondly, it requires an on-the-ground transactional team who are the faces of the department, who oversee the day-to-day operations and ensure employees receive a white glove service. However, if there’s any clink in the chain of this set up, or if an issue suddenly becomes complex, both teams often become entrenched together meaning the HR function is put on pause.
As we face a post-pandemic war on attracting and retaining talent, increases in salaries across all sectors, the prospect of a five-generational workforce by the end of the decade and a very sudden shift to hybrid working, the chance of this happening is becoming more likely. And this is all happening as teams continue trying to balance keeping people safe, enabling their working preferences and retaining the cultures they’ve worked hard to develop over the course of years.
HR professionals get into the industry because they’re interested in how people interact with one another; they thrive on the emotional connection between people working in teams and at different levels in an organisation. So, when things do get tough, it can be difficult to remove emotion from challenging decisions. To overcome this, more and more businesses are investing into outsourced HR functions to enable all people working within a business to focus on its progression and achieving its strategic objectives.
Taking the HRO route
Such was the case with expert property developer, St. Modwen. Having already reached out to Morson to discuss outsourcing its recruitment, the vast learnings following the UK lockdown and enforced working from home led the company’s HR team to explore the option of outsourcing some of its function.
Becky Cund, head of HR operations & sustainable people projects at St. Modwen, said:
“Our business is always growing; we’re progressive, fast-paced and as well as regularly hiring new employees, we promote internally a lot, too. This puts a lot of reliance on the HR team to support our line managers with people management and we had continuity challenges if any of our small HR team were ill or on holiday.
“I’ve got experience of poorly managed outsourced HR, so I was tentative; I’ve seen it become very impersonal, and seen providers never establish connections with internal teams. However, peers have seen it work very well – it was all about finding the right partner.
“We looked into the several different options on the market, but there was always some fall down. Companies might offer employer relations support but wouldn’t do typical HR administration tasks like payroll and holiday requests. Or they could do those operational tasks but wouldn’t help manage our L&D plans or liaise with our third parties such as our legal team or fleet providers.
“We’d already been speaking to Morson about outsourcing our recruitment, so we just put the question to the team. And while it wasn’t an existing part of the business model, we were told the skills were available in-house to do it. We were open to hearing the pitch and what we received was head and shoulders above anything else we’d seen or heard. There was some serendipity around it all; if we hadn’t been discussing recruitment resourcing, the conversation might never have happened.”
HRO in practice
Katie Winstanley, HR director at Morson, said:
“It was clear from our first interaction that the values and intrinsic beliefs of our HR experts and the internal team at St. Modwen were very aligned. There’s always differences between every organisation, but our priority was ensuring that the employees within the business would feel no disruption in delivery; we needed to be fully embedded with a consistent presence and a persona that matched St. Modwen’s brand.”
Morson was appointed to oversee the employee life cycle, from beginning to end – from onboarding after recruitment, organising company cars and booking people onto the induction programme, to managing holiday requests, administering payroll and overseeing relationships with outside suppliers, including St. Modwen’s legal support and fleet operators. Morson has built a core St. Modwen team, which is permanently focused on St. Modwen for 80 per cent of the time. Team members work on site and if remote, communicate from a St. Modwen email address. They attend weekly catch-up meetings and are involved in the planning and development of operational improvements, as well as feeding into quarterly reviews for a truly seamless delivery.
Becky said:
“All of these activities have SLAs assigned, but when Morson applied for the work the KPIs weren’t included in the contract. It was suggested we agree SLAs in partnership over a period of time, which dispelled a lot of myths for me; I wasn’t tied down to a supplier’s idea of what good looks like, we did it together.”
“You can’t work any other way – our approach was sculpted around St. Modwen’s challenges and the solution is fit for purpose rather than off the shelf. Having a core team means we are always ‘on’, while they benefit from the beauty of outsourcing during peaks and troughs because we can apply additional resource whenever it’s needed. We’re truly unified, to the extent that some employees don’t even realise the team isn’t an in-house entity.”
Achieving more together
Melissa Hewitt, senior group HR advisor at Morson – who acts as the leading HR interface for St. Modwen – said:
“So much has been achieved in such a short space of time. Primarily, the implementation plan was an example of true collaboration; this wasn’t something St. Modwen had considered for long, and not something we had a team already dedicated to. But we worked together to agree on what was needed and everything went smoothly.
“We’ve developed dashboards which not only provide rich data to St. Modwen on the things the transactions their employees are completing with our team, but also demonstrates the difference in the number of transactions being completed right now compared to before our solution was in place. What it’s revealing is that these transactions did previously exist and were important, but they are now more efficiently managed. We’re also using a ticketing system to demonstrate that our SLAs are being met; so far, we’re achieving them 98 per cent; five months in, that’s an amazing place to be.
“Once we have a year of our own data under our belt, we’ll be able to spot trends, too. For example, we’ll be able to say, ‘you had a spike of enquiries about annual leave in January, so let’s allocate some resources there to create tutorials on how to book leave through the system quickly and easily’. It’s about pre-empting, being smarter while developing a personal relationship with St. Modwen’s employees just as if we were an in-house function. We want them to feel our team prioritises them, and when people are picking up the phone to me rather than their line manager for things like payroll requests, that shows it’s working as it should.”
A more valuable future
Which companies benefit most from outsourcing HR? There are a few key criteria.
Katie said:
“Outsourcing your HR is particularly effective if a company feels their in-house solution could achieve more. If employees could use their time more effectively, if senior leaders are focusing more on tactical operations than on strategic delivery and if SLAs aren’t being met, these are all indicators that something must change.
“We understand companies have reservations about outsourcing, but we would never take on something if we thought there was a chance we could fail. The HR service is often the beating heart of an organisation, and we want to get that right. In the case of St. Modwen, we enforced a three-month trial period of our HR solution ahead of instigating an end-to-end recruitment programme; we wanted to prove ourselves and that move is paying off for us and for them.”
Becky added:
“This is our foundation year; we’re getting everything in place to ensure the service works for our people. We’re seeing positive outcomes already which is way ahead of where we thought we would be. In three years’ time, we want the HR service from Morson to be entirely self-sufficient – for them to be so ingrained in our business that we’re constantly finding added value, using their knowledge and insight to improve our business.
“We have an ambitious people strategy, but outsourcing is helping us to achieve the trajectory we need to grow exponentially. Any company on a similar path should consider it. If you’re looking into it, go with the company that proves it’s done its research into your business, and be clear on what you want to achieve from the partnership from the outset.
“Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of the relationship. Morson is an extension of our team, and it’s felt like that since the very first interaction.”
If you would like to find out more about outsourced HR and explore how outsourcing your HR function can transform your organisation, get in touch with Morson Group HR director, Katie Winstanley, katie.winstanley@morson.com
Morson Group has been named the largest and number one engineering recruitment firm in the UK in recently released figures. Morson also retained its position as the 7th largest staffing firm overall, with SIA valuing the UK staffing market at £30.9billion in 2020.
Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) has shared its latest Largest Engineering Staffing Firms in the UK report, based on staffing revenue generated by the 12 largest engineering recruiters in the country, with Morson Group topping the table.
It defines ‘staffing revenue’ as revenue generated from the provision of temporary workers to business clients, as well as direct hires, permanent placements and from ‘temp to hire’.
As well as being a leader in engineering recruitment, Morson Group also retained its position as the 7th largest staffing firm overall, with SIA valuing the UK staffing market at £30.9billion in 2020.
According to the data, engineering staffing accounts for 24% of the total UK professional staffing market, with the segment only behind IT in terms of market size.
Revenue in the engineering segment of the UK staffing market decreased by 24% in the 12 months analysed [2020] to a value of £3.9billion, but despite this, Morson Group’s market share increased to 19%, from 16% in the 12 months prior, demonstrating its dominance in the sector, with its next nearest competitor accounting for 8% market share.
Ged Mason, CEO of Morson Group, said:
Though this has been a particularly difficult trading period for many, the Government giving important or critical engineering and construction sectors the green light to continue through the lockdowns enabled us to capitalise on what quickly became a candidate-driven market.
“Clients required niche and volume talent to deliver some of the largest infrastructure projects in the country, and we were able to source it using our extensive networks and our collection of innovative products and services, which have demonstrated to customers that we’re on the pulse of specialist industries such as nuclear, aviation and rail.
“The publishing of these figures from the SIA further strengthens our position as the leading talent solutions specialist in STEM and engineering, with our market share more than double our nearest counterpart. And as we look ahead to the next 12 months, we’ll remain a constant source of support and consultancy for clients seeking to add the very best skillsets to their teams.”
As the leader in engineering recruitment Morson exists to solve challenges. Each of our service lines has been purposefully developed in response to our client’s needs.
Visit ourRPO and MSP pages to find out more about our recruitment offer, or, hear it from our customers…
SIA is the Global Advisor on Staffing and Workforce Solutions Founded in 1989, Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) is the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions. Our proprietary research covers all categories of employed and non-employed work including temporary staffing, independent contracting and other types of contingent labour. SIA’s independent and objective analysis provides insights into the services and suppliers operating in the workforce solutions ecosystem, including staffing firms, managed service providers, recruitment process outsourcers, payrolling/compliance firms and talent acquisition technology specialists such as vendor management systems, online staffing platforms, crowdsourcing and online work services. We also provide training and accreditation with our unique Certified Contingent Workforce Professional (CCWP) program.
Known for our award-winning content, data, support tools, publications, executive conferences and events, we help both suppliers and buyers of workforce solutions make better-informed decisions that improve business results and minimize risk. As a division of the international business media company, Crain Communications Inc., SIA is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in London, England.
The pandemic created a tidal wave of recruitment challenges that many had never prepared for before.
In many sectors, recruitment froze entirely because life was placed on pause. As a result, talent teams were furloughed or made redundant, while the teams left behind were handling rapid legislation changes. As they’ve scaled back up, it’s been a challenge to find suitable skillsets to fill the backlog of roles that have become re-available in other parts of the business.
While many industries experienced a downturn because of the lockdowns, in contrast, others – such as the e-commerce and digital sectors – were tremendously successful and capitalised on an influx of talent to their teams. However, recruiters who had previously been able to forecast spikes in hiring were suddenly faced with an overwhelming task to hire quickly enough to meet demand.
As we continue to feel the tidal wave of industry disruption caused by the pandemic, companies must become proactive with their hiring. Here are the signals you might see from your hiring team which suggest they need the support of a talent strategy and/or third-party specialist in 2022.
The need to recruit vs. lack of resource to recruit
The first thing to look for is a very obvious need to recruit, but a lack of ability to prioritise it; in short, your team is currently too overwhelmed to dedicate the time and resources required to fill your vacancies. Alternatively, candidates may be committing to a role with your company before suddenly taking a vacancy with a different employer; this tends to indicate the candidate is leveraging your business to create counter offers and suggests your recruitment process isn’t tightly controlled. Perhaps the candidate’s ambitions haven’t been understood, or they’re not being properly engaged with throughout the hiring journey.
You might already use recruitment agencies and notice your spending is through the roof, but you can’t quantify performance or results. Perhaps you’re inundated with CVs for a role, but none quite fit the bill; if this is the case, the agency isn’t working closely enough with your organisation to find the right skillsets and values to meet your culture and technical requirements. This might mean your projects become delayed, causing internal objectives and targets to be missed.
Where are the candidates?!
Since the pandemic – but also pre-Covid, from businesses, looking to source niche talent – our RPO team has been recognised for our ability to provide businesses with the insights and data required to source the most suitable candidates for a role, as well as our ability to embed within a business culture and employer brand proposition. Our services have been utilised to create a real point of difference in the hiring landscape and with great effect.
For example, as talent teams have fluctuated in capacity, we’ve worked on a project basis to supplement available resources. More companies have used our Digital Studio to enhance visibility in crowded, candidate-led markets. We’re being appointed to support workforce planning, ensuring teams are better prepared for spikes in demand so they can talent pool in advance, rather than in reaction to a surge. We’re overhauling onboarding journeys to create positive, personal experiences that are more reflective of the brands we represent.
With such a candidate-led market on our hands, we anticipate that in the coming months we’ll witness the highest ever level of resignations; it’s the first time in a long time the country has felt quietly confident enough to move jobs. This, along with the demand for flexible working, the move out of the furlough scheme and people using up masses of saved up holidays will put a huge strain on talent teams once again. If they reach burnout, a domino effect will be created whereby operating teams may be left completely under-resourced for months on end.
Internal recruiters are the gateway to any business, in the privileged position of bringing people into a company that will lead to its future success. But if you envisage this type of tipping point taking place within your business, act now and begin to take steps to rectify the issue before it manifests and takes hold. Such a conversation can be challenging to have but it’s for the good of your business. Allow an outsourced provider to manage the more complex, talent strategy challenges, while your internal team might be allocated to high volume roles that they have vast experience in filling. An RPO can help you fill a set of specialist vacancies that might not yet be associated with your business, help your brand stand out in a noisy market, or leverage a bespoke platform to source from a wider talent pool than is available to your in-house recruiters.
Much better than that, they’ll get to know your business inside and out, developing an understanding and awareness of your culture, vision and objectives to the extent they’ll perform just like an internal team member, but with certain advantages over your competition. In time, they’ll become indispensable and a crucial part in delivering an effective talent strategy.
With 50 years’ experience helping clients with operations around the world to navigate their recruitment challenges and refine their talent strategy, in 2021 we launched RPOne to the market.
It’s a transformation of the traditional RPO model, offering a more agile, custom-fit solution to organisations of all sizes that wish to make their talent ambitions a reality and gain a competitive edge within their industry.
To find out more about our specialist RPO offer, click here.
While businesses have spent years trying to perfect their ED&I strategy to bring people of all genders, ethnicities and abilities into the workforce, new research demonstrates one major demographic may have been absent from the conversation.
APSCo OutSource Strategic Partner, 55/Redefined, has issued a new report to market which reveals there are hordes of people over the age of 55 exiting the workforce earlier than they feel ready to because they don’t feel there are enough opportunities available to them.
The figures show that the number of people aged 65 and over will increase by more than 40 per cent in the next 20 years but that by 2050, the working-age population will have actually shrunk by between 21-28 per cent, creating a shortfall of more than 50 million workers. That’s despite people aged between 55 and 75 saying that, on average, they feel between 18 and 20 years younger than their age, and 45 per cent of people aged 55 and over saying they don’t believe they can afford to retire at 65.
The longer this disconnect continues to manifest, the more likely we are to see ageism become a major downfall in ED&I strategies currently in place in businesses around the world, and – worse still – the skills shortage emerging in young people will be mirrored at the top of the age scale.
Our role as outsourced recruiters is to educate the market on the ways in which over 55s talent provide enormous value to businesses looking to fill vacancies, and advise on the strategies they can implement to ensure they’re not missing out on a wealth of eager, relevant talent.
Shut out
The data from 55/Redefined shows:
56 per cent of employees want to continue to work beyond the age of 65, but 65 per cent of employers encourage retirement at the legal retirement age or before
65 per cent of people think no point applying for jobs after 55, assuming the jobs market is closed off to them
Employers said health and illness (37 per cent) and lack of energy (21 per cent), would put them off hiring over 55s talent…
…despite over 55s proving to be 200 per cent less likely to take a day off sick
Legislation brought in several years ago to anonymise dates of birth on CVs and job applications makes it harder to specifically target an older demographic and turn these stats on their head. As a result, great talent is being missed when companies are hiring en masse.
Instead, we should start to look at behavioural based criteria and psychometrics to remove the bias around qualifications and tenure, to better facilitate people to switch between industries, and enable people without a career at all – such as mums who gave up their careers to raise children – to get a job in a field they’re passionate about.
Bringing in older workers also presents an opportunity to inspire a less experienced workforce and identify future leadership potential. People who’ve spent many years in business know what makes a loyal, reliable employee and they’ll be able to spot it quickly if given the chance to mentor younger people.
Forced out
Figures also reveal:
A quarter of people in employment fear they will be forced to retire before they want to
This figure increases to 35 per cent when looking at over 55s talent who are currently unemployed
Three in four people will run out of money in retirement
Over 55s have overtaken every age group in terms of spending online
89 per cent of over 55s talent would take a pay drop in salary to retrain in a new role or industry
42 per cent of retirees think roles need to be more appealing and suitable to their changed needs after retirement
Only a quarter of HR leaders aged 25-30 said they would be willing to retrain or reskill 55–75-year-olds, compared to 44 per cent of HR leaders aged 46-50
In short, this means not enabling older workers to continue working – and many told 55/Redefined they want to continue working until they’re 80 years old – will be hugely damaging to the future economy. If they’re not employed and therefore can’t afford to spend, several industries will collapse.
As such, employers need to be encouraged to open conversations with their older workers and grant them the choice to continue working into their later years. There’s no legal age a person can retire, and taking the statutory route isn’t always what’s most effective for a person’s wellbeing.
Then, we must find more creative ways of marketing jobs to a demographic that – even though still keen to work – don’t necessarily have to. With retirement pots and pension funds, working in older years becomes a choice, not a necessity, so job adverts must make the prospect appealing enough for people over 55 to join a company and help it thrive.
This might mean creating job shares, offering healthcare benefits or providing a training programme to help them reskill. It might also mean providing an education to the candidate themselves on how to develop a CV – given it’ll be years since they last applied for a job – and helping them understand the fast pace of recruitment, and why they shouldn’t go for the very first job that becomes available.
None of this will be an overnight solution to the problem facing over 55s talent set to retire in the next 10 to 15 years, or for the people already out of employment who want to re-enter. It will take time to overcome the deep-rooted issues associated with older workers and transform how they’re perceived by a jobs market that inherently champions the young.
Our priority as outsourced recruiters is ensuring that every single candidate – regardless of their individual make up – is given a fair opportunity to access work, should they want to. In the meantime, employers can also do their bit to make older workers feel valued should they apply for jobs – doing so might see them fill some of the vast numbers of vacancies currently available across in-demand sectors, that could just learn a thing or two from an experienced pair of hands.
We’ve helped our clients navigate the challenges of talent acquisition for over 50 years. Our door is always open, get in touch at hello@morson.com or find out more about how we can support your ambitions with our EDI consultancy service.
