If you have recently found that your business is struggling to fill vacancies, rest assured that you certainly won’t be the only business owner in this situation. Staff shortages have worsened since the pandemic, and evidently can be blamed on an array of factors.
According to a policy brief report conducted by ReWAGE and the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, Brexit has “negatively impacted” the labour market.
Nonetheless, People Management quotes the report acknowledging that Brexit was “by no means the only reason for the shortages” — with other factors, including “the pandemic, international sector-specific labour shortages, and an increase in early retirement”, cited as more significant.
ReWAGE expert and report co-author professor Chris Forde has noted that there are complex reasons for the current UK labour shortages. However, he added that “several other countries have experienced high vacancy rates post-pandemic”.
If your business is plagued by a staff shortage, here is how an office move could help
Ultimately, recruitment difficulties in the wake of the COVID crisis are not unique to the UK — but, if your UK-based business is facing such struggles, what could you do to ease them? Surprisingly or not, it could be beneficial for you to orchestrate a change of office location for your company.
Does your business genuinely need to relocate?
Shifting a business to another location might admittedly strike you as peculiarly drastic — and it’s true that there are various alternative techniques you could try first in an attempt to exert a moderating influence on your recruitment woes.
In the above-mentioned policy brief report, it was said that businesses once reliant on EU workers had switched to “reducing their need for workers by turning to automation or simply producing less.” Meanwhile, employees in industries like agriculture have turned to non-EU workers.
However, if you are convinced that your business really does need workers who appear to be scarce in your particular geographic area, seeking a new workplace for your company could start looking like a compelling option.
How could your firm benefit from moving to a major city?
There are certain advantages to basing a business in a small town. For a start, the fewer people a place has, the fewer businesses it will inevitably have, too. As a result, your own company can more easily dominate the local market. Smaller areas can also have more of a community feel.
However, if it is specifically staff shortages that you are trying to tackle, a big city is likely to be the way to go. AllBusiness points out that “larger cities have deeper talent pools” — and the site claims that there are two factors behind this.
One is that “a larger population means there are more people looking for jobs”; another is that “large cities typically have a number of universities nearby”. These can act as ‘candidate factories’ of sorts, providing local businesses with talented workers.
Let’s assume, for example, that you rent and move your business into a serviced office in Central London. Many graduates from London universities could become keen on applying for job positions that have long been left unoccupied at your organisation.
