From Redundancy to Talent Scarcity: The future of work is changing

The UK has seen a 103% increase in planned redundancies in the second quarter of this year. And we are not alone. Back in July 28,000 workers in the US tech sector were made redundant in mass job cuts, including Microsoft and Gopuff announcing their own redundancy plans.    Redundancy is something that is never taken lightly. For many companies anticipating or going through a period of economic struggle, redundancy is only considered as a final resort. After all, people are the most valuable asset in any business.

There is a lot of media coverage at the moment on businesses making redundancies. Driven both by needing to get through this current period of economic crisis, as well as the ongoing shifts in consumer behaviour.

At TheHIVE collaborating businesses are matched to share talent and staff. And we are asking: are the redundancies we’ve seen over the last few months really the only option that businesses have? Especially when the labour market remains tight and talent is so scarce? Whilst the economy might be unstable right now, what will happen when conditions do stabilise? Will businesses become faced with staff shortages?

A sector perspective

Let’s take a look at an industry that was hit hardest by the impact of COVID-19 here in the UK to set some further context, the hospitality sector.

A recent House of Commons report found that in 2019 the economic output of the hospitality sector was £59.3bn. This accounted for roughly 3% of the UK’s total GDP. In the three months to March 2020, there were 2.53m jobs in the hospitality sector in the UK, representing 7.1% of total UK employment.

When the UK economy began to re-open in 2021, the hospitality sector faced immediate staff shortages. Again, the ONS tells us that for the three months to February 2022, there were 166,000 job vacancies in the hospital