Joanne Caine

Employee benefits have always been important to employees, but since the pandemic shifted the way we work and the way we think about work/life balance, the benefits employers have to offer matter more than ever.

Over the years, having a degree has become somewhat of a 'standard requirement' for many jobs – and not just graduate ones! So, we conducted a survey on Twitter and asked Exeter-based employers whether or not they would hire someone without a degree... and the results are in!

More than 6.5 million workers are expected to quit their jobs in the next 12 months with many seeking out better pay, increased job satisfaction and greater work life balance. As a result, the number of open vacancies has also increased rapidly in the past few months.

The job market has been a swinging pendulum for the past two and a half years and it’s caused a lot of uncertainty for clients and candidates alike. However, we’re now entering an era completely led by candidates.

I think most businesses will agree with me when I say that the past few months haven’t been the easiest. As we predicted, economic uncertainty continued; inflation rose to a record-high of 9.1 per cent, yet we had surprise growth. Additional turbulence occurred in the UK’s political landscape with a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Boris Johnson launching in early June.

From the age of 16, we’re expected to know what we want to do with the rest of our lives. Most of us follow a linear path through life, whether it’s doing A-Levels and heading off to university or finishing school and then looking to find a job. We are then expected to stick to that sector until the age of 67 when we retire.

In March 2020, businesses were thrown into turmoil, facing situations no leader had ever faced before. Overnight, teams were forced to work remotely, and businesses lost huge sums of revenue. In the following months, mental health began to decline, redundancies spiked, 11.7 million people were furloughed and leaders were leaning on HR more than ever before in an attempt to keep their heads above water and to ensure that their teams felt supported in this incredibly turbulent time.

When Boris Johnson said that working from home isn’t productive because of the ‘distractions of cheese and coffee’, and when Lord Alan Sugar came out and said that the pandemic has ‘unleashed a workshy, entitled culture in which people demand — and are allowed — to work from home’, there’s perhaps no surprise that the business world divided into two.

Lifelong learning and continuous professional development are linked with a wealth of benefits from better financial security to improved health. Additionally, in this day and age, with technology rapidly changing, it also gives job security to those who keep up with or stay one step ahead of change.

By the end of 2021, the job market was showing signs of recovery after the most turbulent two years it had faced since the recession of 2008. Employment rates were up and, thankfully, unemployment rates were falling.  However, employers continued to face challenges.

According to LinkedIn, 4.5 per cent of new recruits on its platform were ‘boomerangs’, a term which is applied to those who return to a company which they have previously left, in comparison to only 3.9 per cent the year prior.

This stress awareness month, we explore not only how to spot stress symptoms within your employees and colleagues, but ways in which stress can be mitigated.