UK jobs data January 2022

"In our experience, businesses overall are very confident about recruiting to accelerate their growth and we expect to see the jobs market continue to thrive during 2022. The challenge for many employers remains a lack of skills in the market, as well as the fact that companies are often making obscene counter-offers to staff who plan to leave, resulting in rising wage costs that are simply unsustainable."

As we are seeing with the Nations apoplexy with Boris, we will see the same towards business if flexible working is taken off the table. We all know why the land & office holding upper echelons of our society want us back... But the businesses who intend to thrive over the next year will be "building back better", with their People front of mind. Companies continue to push forward with recruitment however it also seems that budgets have been reduced. Organisations will be disadvantaged if they do not look at their people, culture, behaviour and values which includes flexible working. Retail looks set to continue its downwards decline in 2022 as it has during the last number of years and expedited during the pandemic as footfall was non-existent for a large period of time as we relied largely on digital solutions. Employers who do not embrace flexibility will not have the same attraction as others who offer various methods of flexibility from the widespread, often department led, hybrid model to individual based flexibility. Attrition is likely to go through the roof if flexibility is not on offer compared with other employers who offer and openly discuss flexible working with its people and future employees. We know that the organisations that need extra support with the flexible working journey are likely to have less productive and engaged people too. We feel the answer is simple in terms of offering a form of flexibility and clearly communicating this with current and future employees. People need pre-pandemic working practices to stay there. We need to increase the wealth generation within our working classes and that will never be acheived by adhering to the norms or PAYE and yester-year. A new breed of business is rising, they are ran with their People returning an ROI, not built with their People being a fixed cost noose around their necks. These are the businesses who will attract the best talent in 2022 and leave the dinosaurs still trying to go back to the status quo in the dust, where they belong.