Looking forward to the future...

Looking forward to the future...

2020 has taught us a great deal about diversity and how to challenge the industry to embody genuine representation and inclusivity. Yet much still needs to be done on diversity across agencies and company sectors. A 2020 IPA agency census showed an annual fall in ethnic diversity, with 13.7% of agency employees from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to 13.8% the previous year.

As part of building back better, diversity and representation are crucial. There is also a clear and urgent requirement for brands to be clear on their stance on the big issues. Much has been written about diverse teams performing better and as we have seen, this is more important to candidates than ever before. The importance of a supported and engaged workforce through the pandemic and beyond, acting on business ethics, corporate responsibility, diversity and inclusion must all be an integral part of a business’s strategic approach to continue to attract and retain the best talent.

Being open to a wider geographical and physical pool of talent of has been enabled through remote working and greater flexibility. Jared Lindzon discusses how flexible working will enable more equitable workplaces in his Fast Company article on the future of remote working.17 Our survey respondents felt a more “global workforce and globally, yet remotely connected teams” would be an ongoing trend – even “globally Zoom-ified companies” that operate large-scale virtual events and training. Two clear areas need to be assessed and activated here.

One is how the geographical capabilities of the current workforce can be expanded and adapted, while complying with international regulation and legislation, such as new rules through Brexit and other geopolitical change. Generation X sought work-life balance, which Gen Y eschewed in favour of blending, and Millennials threw out the career book entirely being happy to build a profile more than a traditional career path. Now, however, in our pandemic existence, work and life are simply blurred for all.

With the conflicting desires of both increased flexibility and more connective culture, balancing the two will require considered thought. How we come together as teams when we won’t always be physically together even as we emerge from the pandemic. How we support new people coming into businesses remotely where so much of how and what they learn is from their colleagues. A clear talent and benefits strategy, based on how we live now and what is important to us today will enable clients to show new and existing talent that they are facing into the new workplace and are willing to work with their people to get the balance right.

Covid-19 has also brought humanity, emotion and empathy to the fore; the organisations that are reflecting this in their Employer Brands are keeping their talent connected and close when times are tough and they are evaluating their life choices. Now is the time to review and repurpose to remain relevant. Employees expect it, too, with several recent pieces of research by Edelman and LinkedIn showing brands are expected to demonstrate they are ‘doing the right thing’. We would expect many more to desire flexibility were remote working not such a strong feature of 2020, however, flexible working has become essential and is set to continue throughout 2021. Speaking to PitchBook, Ryan Healy, President and Founder of Brazen, a software company that creates virtual recruitment events, echoes this sentiment and says digital working represents “a paradigm shift, and recruitment tactics and tools need to mirror this.”

In our survey, more remote working and an end to the perceived stigma of flexible working were both cited as key trends for the year ahead. For us, this predicts conversations about broader benefits becoming easier, and if we truncate further, the potential to retain more women after they have children, such is the new universal understanding that work and home can be successfully managed even without the recent reopening of education.

The most desirable benefits not already received are all lifestyle-related, with unlimited annual leave top at 12%, followed by medical/dental cover at 11% and travel allowance at 10%. Flexible working may be under-represented given home working has been essential for a large percentage of the workforce in recent times, but a flexible benefits package and sabbatical options were still cited by 8%, showing a desire for hirers to offer broader life considerations to reflect the changing world of work post-pandemic.

Download our full 2021 Creativity Counts report to learn more about where you stand in the current market, and how businesses can secure and retain the best talent.