Recruitment in a post-pandemic world

Before 2020, everyone was in their workstation trying to be as productive as possible & looking for the time of the salary review to demand a decent increase that can beat or at least equate the inflation.

When the pandemic hits in 2020, most of the businesses shift to remote work, most of the meetings were conducted virtually due to the lock down and travel restrictions and most of employees found themselves stuck at home trying to balance between work needs and personal needs in an uncertain environment worrying for their own health and the health of their beloved ones.

In less than 2 years, many people are vaccinated, and the travel is back to the pre-pandemic levels and companies are now moving back to offices as they realize the importance of face-to-face communication on maintaining the corporate culture but what happened in 2020 has changed the working-world for good and we can never be back to the same point.

Let's have a look on what changed in the world of work post-pandemic as they will help us understand better what's changing and how can both employers and employees adapt to these changes:

Remote work is not unusual anymore

While most of the companies has returned to their offices, they continue to have an option of remote work -usually limited to once or twice per week- & in an expat-dense population like the UAE, many companies are also offering options to work from home country for a limited period yearly.

Some industries had the remote work option before the pandemic, but others never thought of it at that time, now it will be difficult for organizations to attract top talent if they don't offer a hybrid-work option as it is now becoming part of the regular benefits employees are expecting.

Monday-Friday 9-5 is disappearing

It is not only the location of from where the work is done that has changed in the Covid and won't be restored, but also the timing of when the work the done.

The fixed work schedule 9-5 from Monday-Friday is gradually being replaced by flexible working hours which was trending before the pandemic and now it is becoming the norm.

Some companies are adapting core-hours to ensure that meetings can still happen and the team work isn't interrupted by flexible working and the number of companies offering flexible working options to attract talent are increasing but it is not only this, there is a trend of adapting different forms of flexible working like: part time, free lancing, outsourcing & consultant based contracts.

Not all the work is being done through a full-time permanent employee, but the other forms are more cost-efficient and deliver higher results if managed properly.

UAE being a visionary country with forward-thinking policies is now also allowing employees to work for more than one employer and introducing visas for different type of work not the traditional full-time employment.

Other companies are allowing their employees to launch their side-businesses while keep using their expertise and competencies on part-time basis rather than losing them completely which is a shift in the classical mindset of owning the employee's working life.

In Summary, employers and employees are both more open to new forms of fair exchange beside the classical full-time contract where both parties can achieve what they need, employees keep a secured income to cover their basic needs of life while exploring another opportunity for development and growth of experience and wealth & employers are welcoming profiles with an entrepreneur mindset that can drive their business forward not only run the show as it is.

Screening and Selection outdated

One of the most classical models of recruitment is to post a job online, wait for applicants and starting filtering them, it is almost impossible that a recruiter will be able to manually screen resumes or LinkedIn profiles, and this model is approaching to an end in the age of AI & IOT.

More employers are now keen on hiring competent candidates with the right culture fit and personalities even if they lack some technical / domain or industry expertise.

Having said that, we also still see some companies that require industry experience as a mandate which is in my personal opinion is a short-term thinking trap which leads to missing out and overlooking great potential candidates since the business dynamics of any industry don't take more than a year to understand if you hire the right mindset with willingness to learn and capabilities to develop, sometimes hiring managers don't have the time to invest with the new hire & want a " plug & play" employee but it has been proven that cultural fit is more dangerous on the retention/engagement and motivation than the industry expertise.

There are many online tests that check the cultural fit of candidates in addition to their personality type/ profile, which is now being adopted by companies, it is fully automated and doesn't need any administrative efforts.

However, I will recommend only these tools as a screening tool to shortlist candidates for final selection process which despite all the AI and IOT, I believe this should remain personal and not automated.

Surprisingly, the most effective recruitment tool is employee referrals, yes, it is old and classic, but it is very effective since employees are the best who know which kind of profile will succeed and thrive in their environment and culture.

Benefits - No one size fits all

I remember one day I was negotiating an offer with a candidate and trying to sell it to her that we do provide generous schooling allowance & her reply was simple: " I don't have kids and don't plan to have anytime soon ", she didn't like the offer and we end up losing her.

Schooling allowance in her case was almost 30% of the basic salary and the company was willing to pay it to candidate with kids but not willing to increase the basic by even 5% to maintain internal equity so for someone who spends on schooling this was a good hike and an attractive benefit but what about those like this candidate who probably will never use out of it?

Here comes the idea of the benefits shop or the credit of benefits, which -in simple words- means that each employee has an annual credit of benefits that can be fully designed and customized by the employee, this shouldn’t encounter any extra cost on the employer as it will be part of the compensation package budgeted for the role and ideally should be a percentage of salary according to the level of the employee.

The benefits shop will include variety of products such as: flight tickets / hotel accommodation / Gym membership/ stocks, ETFs and bonds / private pension plans / Spa packages / music and sports lessons subscription fees/ birthday gift for spouse /schooling fees for dependents / annual maintenance contracts for car/ post-graduate studies / monthly meal plans / pets accessories/ home insurance packages etc...

Each employee shall use their credit in designing their benefits package according to their individual needs.

While it has been trending talking a lot about well-being and engagement, Imagine the impact of this practice on the belonging sense of employees, ask yourself if my vacation is fully paid by the company how grateful and committed, I will be at work when I return back from my vacation to my desk? and how easy will it be for me to accept to discuss another opportunity with the competitor.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section so we can have a productive community discussion on these practices.