With many family businesses currently experiencing recruitment and HR challenges, we spoke to our specialist partners, NXT Recruitment to find out more about the causes and what family businesses can do to put themselves in the best position.

Recruitment Manager, Emma Lindsay of NXT Recruitment has described the current conditions in the jobs market as candidate-led and highly competitive across all sectors, saying:

“We’re seeing many industries experiencing recruitment challenges through a shortage of candidates. Six months ago, manufacturing and logistics-based roles were in particularly high demand due to the pandemic, as they were the businesses that remained open throughout without having to use the furlough scheme.  

“In recent weeks, with the relaxing of restrictions, the hospitality and tourism sectors have reopened their businesses at the same time leading to a huge surge in demand for staff.

“The effects of the pandemic have led to a fluid, constantly shifting recruitment environment but we are speaking to businesses all the time about how to develop their recruitment strategy. We also have the resources to go out and find great candidates, rather than waiting for people to apply to an advert.”

For family businesses in this situation, NXT Recruitment have put together the following tips:

1. Try to forecast your recruitment needs. Whilst this may not always be possible, we do encourage our clients to scope out any potential future recruitment requirements ahead of time, so that you’re not rushing the process to find candidates at the last minute. At NXT, we meet with our clients regularly to discuss their growth plans and we help them to implement the right people structure and aid their succession planning too.
2. Analyse your skillset and be more flexible with your requirements. If you have tried to recruit for a role which has failed to generate interest, we would advise to re-look at the requirements of the role to see if it can be made more attractive to candidates, or even to appeal to a wider range of potential candidates. For example, could a full time role be split into two part-time roles, or could the role be a flexi-working or home-based role?
3. Engage the services of a specialist. We would recommend working with recruitment experts to help you create or re-define your recruitment strategy, to make your recruitment process as effective as possible. A good recruitment partner will be able to advise you on how to attract and retain the best quality candidates as well as being able to help and advise you with headhunting candidates for specific roles.

If you would like help or advice on your recruitment challenges, contact the team at NXT Recruitment on 01228 812585