Mike Thompson, Director of Early Careers, Barclays
Mike Thompson, Director of Early Careers, Barclays
The youth unemployment crisis we see in the UK and across Europe has many causes some of which are structural and linked to how our labour market has changed over the past two decades e.g. fewer entry level jobs amongst large employers as a result of globalisation of work and technology innovation removing many traditional high volume entry level jobs.
The headlong rush to push young people into Higher Education has also had a significant impact leading, as it has done, to a much skewed pool of labour entering the market and an imbalance between higher and vocational learning. This is now being addressed with a greater government focus on driving vocational education through Apprenticeships but will take many years to put right.
These structural changes have had a huge impact on young people and their ability to access the workplace, however, I would argue that some of the causes (and therefore blame for the crisis) should sit fairly and squarely at the door of business and in particular HR and that HR therefore has to take responsibility for the situation we are in and do more to help fix it.
Trends in resourcing best practice in the pursuit of attracting and finding the best talent (the so called “war for talent”) have increasingly marginalised or excluded many young people with a great deal of talent but limited attainment in school or work experience out of it. The list below represents what I believe are some of the “crimes” that could appear on the HR “crime-sheet” in this regard. They are by no means exhaustive;
Let me cover off each briefly in turn;
1. “Computer says no” – there is a belief in HR that automated screening, online testing and assessment all help to filter out and identify the most talented candidates. I am yet to be convinced by this and by the argument that a computer can identify talent better than a human can.
Nor have I bought into the argument that it is a necessary filter to screen high volumes of applications In reality online screening simply places an often insurmountable barrier in the way of many talented young people who fall at the first hurdle without even having had their CV properly assessed or been give the chance to sell themselves
2. Increasingly over the past two decades there has been an upward “academic creep” as employers have raised the level of academic attainment required for even the most basic entry level jobs. Attainment of A-C in Maths and English GCSE has almost become the lowest entry level thereby excluding the 40-50% of young people who do fall below this level.
Many intermediate (entry level) Apprenticeships now require A-C Maths and English GCSE and as such even the government’s flagship skills programme is not accessible to many young job seekers. Furthermore, academic attainment has become a (poor) surrogate for defining talent with the flawed hypothesis that the higher the level of attainment the more talented an individual is. As an HR professional who works with both graduates and non graduates alike I can quite categorically say that this hypothesis is wrong.
3. The death of the Saturday job has been pronounced for some time now and the removal of compulsory work experience in schools has weakened the once strong links between employers and schools. This has led to many young people struggling to get even the most basic work experience that employers require.
4. The issue of criminal convictions is a very thorny one and one which HR has historically taken a pretty blanket and black and white approach towards i.e. if you have an unspent conviction then you are screened out from most assessment processes even if this conviction is minor or historic. Given the high percentage of young people with some form of criminal conviction, this policy is placing a huge “drag” on getting these young people on to the career ladder.
5. The fact that 50% of all 16-24 year olds with a disability are unemployed highlights probably the greatest and most shameful collective failure of HR and UK plc recruitment practice.
The third or charity sector working with disabled young people is fundamentally disconnected from the labour market despite employers often having very strong relationships with charities large or small. Employers are willing to use philanthropy to fund well meaning programmes but are rarely willing to take steps to then employ the very young people they have supported. CSR and Community Investment activity can no longer afford to stay as disconnected from HR and resourcing activity as it currently is.
I don’t for a moment believe that HR has ever deliberately set out to develop policies that exclude such a large and diverse talent pool of young people but that is precisely what has happened. HR has sleep walked into the position it now finds itself and needs to wake up to the problem that is now in all of our communities and that we are all responsible for.
Going back to the future would be a good first step. We need to take a look at what we all used to be good at 10 or 20 years ago when we hired a broader and more diverse group of young people and rediscovering what “talent” really means will be a good start.
We need to rediscover the art of looking at the individual as an individual not an “applicant” or even worse a number. We also need to recognise that talent isn’t just about academic attainment.
We also need to recognise that young people do make mistakes and step off the straight and narrow path and that we need to find ways of accommodating this and recognising this in how we recruit and create flexible policies around criminal convictions.
We also need to help young people across the bridge into work. Provide them the experience they need and work to help them attain the skills and confidence they need. This should be the very minimum every business does. It’s almost a civic duty.
So every HR professional involved in hiring should ask themselves some simple questions;
We all need to take a long hard look at whether we as HR professionals are part of the solution or creating the problem…
Mike Thompson
Director Early Careers
About the Author: Mike Thompson, Head of Barclays’ Apprenticeship programme.