Starting 2023 with confidence – it's a big year for recruiters!

Happy New Year to you all! 

I hope you had a good Christmas and got the chance to enjoy some downtime with friends and family over the past couple of weeks.

As the new year opens, we find ourselves on strange ground. An economic slowdown is likely in the first half of the year, despite inflation rates stabilising. Yet candidate shortages mean that demand from employers for recruitment and staffing services is likely to remain robust.

For us as recruiters, this is a new picture: clients under pressure in their businesses, but still needing to hire. And I see it as an opportunity for us as an industry to add real value to the resilience and success of our clients, our candidates and our own businesses. To be part of the solution. For recruiters with the right product mix, 2023 should be a great year.

In 2023, the role of the REC will be twofold – to explain this complex and challenging labour market to your clients, governments and the media, and to help you thrive in it.

The REC has an important role in shaping your market

The first of these goals is defined by the value of professional recruitment. We no longer have the labour market of 2015, and the low-cost, low-value approaches that some client businesses pursued then are no longer sustainable.

Helping businesses understand this is at the heart of our work – both through direct campaigning, using our unmatched media voice for recruiters and the network the REC has with clients, and by supporting you to have added-value conversations with your clients. We can support you on everything from the latest data, to skills and welfare-to-work options, to helping clients up their game on equality, diversity and inclusion. This deeper, more strategic partnership is needed everywhere, but nowhere more so than in some of the public services sectors like health, social care and social work, where the REC was particularly active over Christmas rebutting some of the commentary around agency costs and putting forward positive solutions.

But this representation for you is also about the regulatory framework and the role of governments. We have already seen some of the big themes of the year emerge. By starting the year with competing speeches, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have fired the starting gun on a long run-up to next year’s General Election. From our short-term goals, like progress on what a UK-version of the agency regulations might look like and addressing the challenges of the Harpur Trust ruling on holiday pay, to longer-term issues including supply chain compliance and a framework for regulation that suits a more flexible workforce, there is a lot to get right.

Engaging with the REC this year will help us to get the system you need, to make the biggest difference in what you do. We start this process on solid ground, having established good relations with both sides in the House of Commons through our Overcoming Shortages campaign last year – and we are launching 2023 with a bang at a reception for MPs in just a couple of weeks' time!

But we also want to help you run your business effectively

My second point – helping you to thrive this year – is also at the heart of the REC’s purpose. We are your organisation – owned by you and run in your interest. Of course, core services like the legal helpline and our market-leading contracts are at the heart of this. But we have been investing more every year in this area, with the REC’s business advice site now one of the most popular areas of our website amongst members!

Last year, we published a range of tools to help you – from work on engaging management in recruitment and salary benchmarking, to our guide on how to Futureproof your Recruitment Business, manage your cashflow through consolidation, and define your business strategy. In 2023, there is more to come – from support on upskilling your team, to new tools designed to help you on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and new developments for our REC Professional members to help support recruitment as a career. 

Our regular data for members (Report on Jobs, RISR, JobsOutlook, Labour Market Tracker) is also a vital tool. We can use it to help bring insight to you on the markets you are serving – just get in touch with us with any questions. But we also know that the network is more than just you and us. The best discussions happen when we are all together and members can discuss issues with each other. We certainly learn more that way! So, in addition to our fantastic free-to-members annual conference in July, please also come and join us at our regular in-person regional, national and sector meetings. These are great events where we can work through issues together, share solutions and shape the REC agenda.

And making sure the industry is in good standing really matters

A big part of the REC is that membership means something – it stands for doing things in the right way. Please tell your clients and candidates about this – the code of conduct you subscribe to, and the fact that our independent Professional Standards Committee is there as an insurance policy to make sure the Code is met. As well as celebrating success at the REC Awards in the Autumn, we will stay on the front foot on standards throughout the year.

You can do your part by making sure you complete the 2023 Compliance Assessment by 30 June 2023, if you haven’t taken it since 2021. The fact that REC members are all compliance checked like this underpins the relationships we have with governments and a wide range of other stakeholders. And – with a potential change of Government in the offing – that is going to be more important than ever this year, as so much of the regulation that governs our industry is up for review.

A strong REC, rooted in good practice, will be essential to getting the right outcomes.

As always, do feel free to drop me or any of our team a note on what is on your mind, as well as any feedback or ideas for us.

But for now – from all of us at the REC – we wish you a successful and growing 2023!