ATLANTA, Dec. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As 2017 comes
to a close and the talent landscape continues to evolve, Randstad
US released its expert analysis on hiring and workplace trends for
the next year. With employment increasing by an average of 167,000
jobs per month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
labor market remains competitive, and employers will need new
strategies to attract top talent and meet business demands.
"Technology has significantly impacted business models in nearly
every sector," said Alan Stukalsky,
chief digital officer, Randstad North America. "The growing STEM
skill shortage, AI both disrupting and creating jobs and talent
driving a shift toward agile work arrangements is a lot for
employers to keep up with. It requires progressive thinking to find
talent and meet short- and long-term needs. We're still in the
infancy of most of this, but digitization will advance the pace of
change in the labor market and workforce in 2018."
Randstad executives from a wide range of disciplines identified
trends and market factors that will impact the U.S. workplace in
2018 — and beyond:
- The talent shortage will outpace wage stagnation. Many
businesses have not yet updated their pay packages to reflect
market realities, especially for hard-to-find talent. Hiring
managers must weigh the importance of the quality of a candidate
against the cost to recruit them, and companies that continue to
keep wages below market will struggle. This will also drive
employers to more broadly offer non-traditional benefits, such as
wellness perks and competitive maternity and paternity leave.
- Agile and flexible workforce models will expand. There's
a shift underway in the long-held perception that in order to
attract the best candidates and build the best team, organizations
must hire full-time, permanent employees. Sixty-one percent of
workers expect to choose agile work opportunities by 2019. Research
shows that candidates don't just want, but expect the option to
work from home, work part-time or have access to flexible
scheduling. Flexible work arrangements will remain key to employee
attraction and retention, and companies will expand their use of
agile talent by filling one-time temporary resources and seasonal
staffing needs or bringing in highly-specialized consultants to
tackle critical initiatives.
- Employers will hire for culture and soft skills, train on
hard skills. With a depleted candidate pool, employers are
struggling more than ever to identify right-fit candidates with the
depth of necessary skills. While hard skills reign in sectors like
technology and healthcare, less-teachable soft skills will continue
to be critically important — even in a more technology-driven work
environment. Employers will increasingly focus on training existing
or future hires, especially when they find the culture fit they are
looking for or superb soft skills.
- STEM skill needs will continue to increase. Although
much of the industry discourse around the STEM skills gap focuses
on jobs that require advanced degrees, mid-level STEM jobs like
computer support specialists, web developers and engineering
technicians are actually in highest demand. These vacancies present
a real opportunity for employers to upskill workers with high
potential and the ambition to grow.
- AI and automation will advance. Many organizations have
already begun incorporating automation into their workflows to make
their employees and processes more effective and efficient. But,
despite fears that automation will eliminate jobs, the need for
skilled humans to operate, use and advance technologies will remain
significant for the foreseeable future.
- Talent analytics will become more sophisticated. Data is
evolving beyond metrics like employee engagement and retention
rates. In 2018, more organizations will place data at the forefront
of strategic workforce planning, with metrics that help them
understand how to build better teams, make more processes agile or
lean, analyze the utilization of resources across the company and
truly understand the output of cross-functional teams.
In 2018, business leaders will need to adapt and evolve
alongside these changes, as they remain the link between talent and
corporate profitability. To view more takeaways from Randstad's
featured executives, check out these six workforce trends that will
dominate 2018.
About Randstad
Randstad North America is a wholly
owned subsidiary of Randstad Holding nv, a €20.7 billion global
provider of HR services. Through its unique approach of delivering
HR innovation with human interaction at the center, Randstad
secures and manages a workforce of more than 100,000 people for
thousands of clients each week. As a trusted partner in the
post-digital world of talent, Randstad advances the careers and
business success of candidates and clients through a combination of
the best of high-tech and high-touch processes.
Employing over 6,500 recruiting experts through approximately
1,100 offices and client-dedicated locations, Randstad North
America provides outsourcing, staffing, consulting and workforce
solutions within the areas of engineering, finance and accounting,
healthcare, human resources, IT, legal, life sciences,
manufacturing and logistics, office and administration and sales
and marketing. Learn more at www.randstadusa.com.
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SOURCE Randstad US