Brexit and the Leadership Skills Gap

It’s been a year since it was confirmed the UK would be leaving the European Union and now we find ourselves thinking about the impact the decision is having on the UK’s skills gap and our current recruitment difficulties. CIPD and Hayes Resourcing’s recently conducted a survey that found that 72% of HR professionals think competition for skills will increase over the next three years as a result of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.

So how is it all affecting you? CIPD and Hayes discovered that those most likely to be in demand over the next 12 months would be professionals with leadership skills (58%), digital skills (54%) and commercial awareness (51%). Almost two-thirds of HR professionals think it will get more difficult to recruit senior and skilled employees over the next three years, and 75% are already reporting difficulties hiring the right people now.

Brexit is already having an effect on the UK’s labour market and outlining some serious talent shortfalls in a number of different sectors, the most prominent being professionals with leadership skills. But, it’s not the time to panic, but to evaluate- evaluate your recruitment and retention tactics. Your businesses leaders should be the employees you trust to take the company forwards in the future and so making sure you get the right ones and keep them is imperative right now.

The question of how you can make the update to your leadership recruitment and development tactics is one we can help with. In our experience Development centres have been the most successful ways to assess a leadership team. It gives you the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of your senior leader’s strengths and development areas all the while giving the overall atmosphere of positivity to your business during what will surely be some uncertain times to come in recruitment and development programmes.

When considering a development centre for your organisation, firstly you need to know what you want to see in your leaders- high performing leaders tend to have a particular set of behaviours. The Schroder model of High Performance indicates 11 key behaviours which are linked to high performance in managers and leaders and assesses the candidates to identify them. The behaviours rank from negative use of the behaviour at level one, to an inspirational use of the behaviour at level five outlining how they might act as a leader within your business. The Schroder framework recognises that every leader is unique and will have their own behavioural strengths that may differ from the next leader- so usually a high performing leader is defined by the 4-5 behaviours they excel at- behaviours that could be matched to your businesses ideal leadership profile.

Our Development Centres span over 2 days and include a variety of activities to help to identify the 11 key behaviours from the Schroder framework including psychometric assessments, 360 degree feedback surveys, behavioural events interviews, business simulations and finally development planning and feedback.

Whether it is deciding who to consider within the organisation for a leadership role or bringing in new talented individuals, Getfeedback could support you with efforts.

If you want to discuss how we could support your business with the leadership recruitment and development please contact us at info@getfeedback.net or call 01491 545 527.