Bosses across many sectors are struggling to fill roles - but many people are still on furlough. Eleanor Pringle and Angus Williams investigate.
With less than four months to go until the end of the furlough scheme, some 400,000 people in the East are still relying on the initiative for a portion of their pay cheque.
But the labour force is facing a problem – some of those people have got accustomed to their 80pc pay packet and reduced working hours, according to some experts.
These are the people whose priorities changed in lockdown, who decided they wanted to spend more time at home with their children and less time in the office.
We have heard of the devastating impact of long Covid, but it appears furlough might have some side effects too.
Cassandra Andrews is a motivation expert who believes the pandemic has impacted how many people view their nine ‘motivators’ – which range from freedom and autonomy to security.
She said: “The main problems employers are facing is that people could have worked out during the pandemic that they don’t actually need their full pay packet. They might have decided that they can get by on 80pc and the freedoms they get for working four days a week instead of five are worth that pay cut.”
Data compiled by Statista also shows that the number of people registering as self-employed (4.3m) was also on the rise for the past couple of months – albeit still at much lower levels than prior to the pandemic (5.03m).
However, Ms Andrews said she believed this trend would not become a sustained issue, adding: “I don’t think we’ll be seeing this trend of droves of people leaving their jobs to work for themselves. That is, unless they’ve got so used to the freedom they had during lockdown and that has become a priority for them.
“I do think people are aware of what a tough time self-employed people had during the pandemic and not many people will be willing to give up their security after a time like this.
“What is much more likely is that people may leave their current role to go and work for a competitor because they may be able to offer that freedom which individuals have come to value.”
But the solution, Ms Andrews said, is simple.
“It’s entirely fair enough that businesses may not be able to offer this flexibility – if they needed someone full-time before the pandemic they may well need them full-time afterwards and I don’t think companies can be blamed for that.
“What is important – and I think businesses often forget – is that they just need to listen to staff. It’s probably the case that one size won’t fit every employee and firms will have to get creative if they want to retain staff.
“A key thing will be to remind people of the company culture – whether that’s getting managers’ visibility back in the office, doing fun things as a team, or introducing members of staff who joined during the pandemic, as well as addressing any concerns about coming back bosses need to remind staff why they chose to work there in the first place.”
She was echoed by Melanie Marjoram, a Norwich-based senior regional manager at recruitment agency Reed.
She said: “It was a candidate driven market pre-Covid but it’s even more so now. The ball is very much in the candidate’s court now.”
This, she says, has led to candidates being able to act like consumers.
“A lot of people have re-evaluated their lives over the past few months. They’re more concerned about work-life balance. Some people have changed careers thinking I don’t want to stress anymore.
“People shop around. They’ll look on Trustpilot. They’ll look Google reviews. They’ll look at the company’s website to find out what their ethos is and what they’re all about.”
Job seekers are now attracted by a firm’s stance on environmental and social issues, as well as the benefits and flexibility associated with a role, according to Ms Marjoram.
But why has the balance shifted so much in favour of the job seekers?
“It’s a shortage of candidates that are out looking for work and are available at the moment,” she said.
Contributing to this shortage, she says, are the furlough scheme and the increase in Universal Credit.
But other factors are also at play.
“There is an element of some people being nervous about going back to work,” she said. “Some people have been really affected by Covid — it’s knocked their confidence.”
With the furlough payments scheduled to come to an end in September Ms Marjoram hopes that more candidates will come into the market.
“I think a lot of people are thinking well, I’ll just wait until the end of furlough — not for everybody, but I think we will see an influx of candidates. Definitely.”
One area which is seeing a particular shortage in available labour is one of East Anglia’s biggest sectors, tourism.
Nick Attfield, director of properties for Southwold-based brewery Adnams, said the group had already hired 40 staff and needed to hire 40 more for its 10 directly managed properties to be fully staffed. “I think it’s actually much more complicated than some headlines have made it seem,” he said. “I agree that for the industry there has been a shift out of hospitality.
“But you’ve got to remember that we’re all recruiting to get ready for June 21. And that return to ‘normal’ is the return to staffing numbers that we haven’t seen since 2019. We did no recruitment in 2020 because we were closed for half the year and working with restrictions for the rest of it.
“The biggest key for me is that normally every summer, I’d be taking on 30 or 40 students to fill those seasonal roles at the moment, but because we didn’t employ anyone in 2020 — because we didn’t need to — I haven’t got those people on the books.
“I would also argue that in this region, we haven’t seen many business failures. So, there isn’t the pool of staff who are in between jobs.”
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