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By Simone Lockhart

2022 is set to be another busy year when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent across our organisations and most companies now recognise that it is hugely important to have a strong and attractive employer value proposition (EVP) to assist in securing key personnel.

Significant investment has gone into this area, with most updating their approach to include new aspects of working life such as remote and hybrid working. Many others are completely re-vamping their whole strategy by re-engaging with their people to find out what is truly important to them, and incorporating those findings into new ways of creating a great employee experience.

For businesses that have refreshed their EVP, full company roll-outs have taken place to engage staff and communicate key messages externally. This can include marketing teams updating intranets and internal communications, while HR teams share messages internally and externally to assist in attracting new talent to fill critical roles.

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It’s been a massive undertaking. For some, however, creating an EVP is just the beginning of the exercise – we now need to live and breathe the commitments made.

The next big investment is to ensure managers truly understand what this means to them and their staff, and what needs to change about how they interact with and support their teams. It’s also really important they believe in the value of the changes, so they know how to adapt and integrate the changes positively. If it is a manager’s job to manage our people, it’s our job as leaders and HR professionals to ensure we are training and supporting them to do their job effectively.

It is also hugely important our managers know how to use our company EVPs in the recruitment process. Gone are the days where managers had the luxury of volumes of quality candidates lining up to be assessed on their suitability for a role.

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What we’re seeing now is a true two-way interview process where candidates are also interviewing the manager to assess them, and the organisation, as the next place to take their career – it’s well recognised in this profession that people work for people. This means managers need to be prepared to answer questions from candidates as well as ask them. As an interviewer it’s now their responsibility to act as a shop window and effectively sell the organisation and opportunity every bit as much as it is for them to assess the candidate.

So let’s ring in the new work year with a refresher on what makes your company a great place to work, and spend some quality time with your managers to make sure they’re confident and well equipped to make 2022 a great year for recruiting and retaining talent.

Simone Lockhart, commercial director of the Taranata Group, is a guest writer on behalf of s1jobs.