Written by FCSA Business Partner, Caunce O’Hara
Let’s start with the GDPR
At the time of writing this, we are only a fortnight away from the GDPR becoming law. Countless millions of us are receiving an ever-growing number of emails, from companies we’ve signed up to in the past, asking us to opt-in again so we can continue to receive e-newsletters, offers and updates.
For marketers everywhere, this has provided a minor headache and some hasty rewrites of strategies to alleviate the reliance on e-marketing tactics. For recruiters, the GDPR may cause much deeper issues.
The way organisations store and process personal data will need to be significantly changed for most companies. If you handle a candidate’s information you need to have had express permission from the candidate to use their personal data in the way you plan to. You will also need to store the candidate’s personal data securely and if you are victim of a cyber-attack which results in a security breach you will have a responsibility to inform all individuals of any data breaches.
The GDPR also enforces the right of any individual to be forgotten and any organisation in breach of this can face significant fines.
One of the key ways it will affect the recruitment sector is the storage of candidate data for upcoming roles. For example, many organisations will retain a candidate’s information or CV when a recruiting process has finished in case their credentials are deemed suitable for upcoming roles. As part of the regulation you may need consent from each individual to continue this practice (unless you have other grounds for processing that person data e.g. ‘contract’ or ‘legitimate interest’), you will need to store the candidate’s data securely and you will need to be able to prove you have the candidate’s permission to store their data or CV should you be asked to.
For organisations to be compliant with the regulations they may also need to change some of their IT processes and infrastructure. In a lot of cases renewed permission to handle and store candidate data may need to be sought from individuals, which in-turn could mean the creation of new internal IT processes to gain and store candidate consent.
This will also affect organisations who manage their own recruitment and, in some cases, retain candidate CV’s indefinitely after they have filled a role they were recruiting for. In most cases, this will involve shredding paper CVs and deleting those CVs that are stored on hard drives and servers… an onerous task for some unlucky individuals.
And now for BREXIT
We haven’t even left the EU and yet as soon as the EU referendum was completed in 2016 and the votes were in the doom mongerers were telling us the end of the world was nigh.
It’s far too soon the judge the impact of BREXIT, either positively or negatively, but one glaring issue has come to light in recent months and that is the issue of employment.
Early signs from the recruitment industry are that European companies and European workers do not view the UK as an attractive proposition any more when it comes to recruitment and employment, with BREXIT being cited as a key factor in their viewpoint. The uncertainty surrounding BREXIT is already being felt by recruiters and talent professionals.
Some of the concerns raised include: Will there be a brain-drain? Will there be a lack of suitable candidates and skills shortages? How much impact will EU legislation have on the way organisations recruit staff? How will BREXIT impact the freedom of movement of migrant workers?
According to the Resource and Talent Planning Survey approximately 20% noticed an increased cautiousness in prospective candidates and a similar amount of increased cautiousness in organisations’ recruitment. Also as a result of BREXIT, 60% of organisations expect increased difficulty in being able to recruit senior and skilled employees over the next three years, with 40% anticipating difficulty in recruiting operational staff.
Will there be a shortage of businesses looking to recruit in the UK?
According to the Labour Market Outlook Surveys this could be the case, with 12% of private sector firms saying the UK’s decision to leave the EU has forced them to consider moving some of their business operations abroad. How much of an impact this actually has on recruitment in the UK remains to be seen.
One thing is for certain, the next 12 months will be a busy period for all parties involved in recruitment.