2024’s top 3 talent opportunities – attract, assess & engage

When our marketing manager asked me to write a blog, I wracked my brain and thought about what people might want to hear about.

I settled on a blog on the biggest opportunities for talent attraction, assessment, and engagement in 2024. So, here goes.

Candidate Attraction

If I see another job advert talking about exciting opportunities, I might need to sit quietly in a dark corner for a few minutes.

It’s an area that needs a lot of improvement. The good news is that it’s easy to solve. Get your creative people (copywriters or marketers) involved in writing your job adverts.

Instead of telling people that it’s an exciting opportunity, tell them what makes it different. Tell them about your unique benefits or the cool projects that you work on. Talk about the positive impact that you have and the culture that you’ve built.

Ask your colleagues “Why did you accept the job offer with us?” or “What’s keeping you here?” and share the top snippets in your adverts.

Improving your job adverts is a quick win for 2024.

Candidate Assessment

Traditionally, most SMEs rely on unstructured/structured interviews to assess talent. Ambitious leaders of high-growth companies that want to start improving the accuracy of their hiring will see improving their recruitment process as a quick win – be that by improving interviewing techniques with training and the introduction of competency frameworks or by mirroring large corporates and introducing assessment centres.

As more businesses realise the benefits of becoming more selective and increasing employee engagement, they’ll see investment in the assessment of talent to be a “no brainer”.

Adding a more robust candidate assessment to your recruitment process could be a win for your talent strategy for 2024.

Employee Engagement

The UK has a problem when it comes to employee engagement. To put a figure on it, Gallup puts the UK rate at 10% vs a global average of 23%.

To put this into perspective further, the top companies globally have an average engagement rate of 72%. They also make a concerted effort to retain these highly engaged employees, allowing them to become more selective about who they bring in.

When comparing employee engagement levels, Gallup found that, versus the top quartile of business units and teams, the bottom quartile had the following differences in business outcomes:

• 81% increase in absenteeism
• 18% increase in turnover for high-turnover organisations
• 43% increase in turnover for low-turnover organisations
• 10% decrease in customer loyalty/engagement
• 18% decrease in productivity (sales)
• 23% decrease in profitability

There’s a huge opportunity for businesses to increase employee engagement in 2024 and in turn, increase their profitability.

One effective way to boost engagement is by promoting open communication channels and encouraging employees to express their ideas and concerns. Providing opportunities for professional development and growth can also enhance engagement, as employees are more likely to feel invested in their roles when they see a clear path for advancement. Recognising and rewarding employees for their hard work and achievements, whether through formal programs or simple expressions of appreciation, can significantly contribute to a positive workplace culture.

Conclusion

There are a lot of these types of blogs at this time of year making predictions on what the challenges will be.

I prefer to focus on the opportunities. If your business takes an interest in Attraction, Assessment and Engagement, they’ll all work hand-in-hand to set your business up for a stellar 2024 and beyond.

Build habits and processes that support your growth journey.

Corvus People is a consultancy that specialises in supporting businesses to Recruit, Develop & Retain high-performing talent. If you’d like help in any of the mentioned areas, we’d be happy to have a chat. Get in touch by emailing [email protected].

Written by Michael Hewitt.