What the 2024 recruitment outlook looks like for leaders

Year-on-year recruitment outlooks typically take on varying shades of grey. A slight shift here and adjustment there, but it remains on track from the previous year and the year before that. Not with our current times.

Recruitment-wise, the last four years have been a rollercoaster of extraordinary change, some shocking twists, and even surprises on the human behaviour front. Thank you, 2020 – not for your vision but for your disturbance.

Economically, we should expect continued uncertainty and, with it, tightening resources. In the face of persistent high interest rates and widening geopolitical rifts, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is cutting its 2024 growth forecast to 2.9 per cent. With talent acutely linked to business performance, 2024 needs to count. As a recruitment expert and business leader, here is my outlook:

Unemployment levels to rise: Australia’s official unemployment rate is expected to grow to 4.5 per cent. But don’t count on the increased availability of skills. These two components are no longer linked. They lost their affiliation well before COVID-19. Look to underemployment market segments, automaton, and constant upskilling and reskilling.

A softening of salaries: In 2022, Australian annual wage growth was 2.4 per cent, the highest recorded rate since 2018. For 2023, the wage price index shows an increase of 4 per cent. As for 2024, economists expect wage growth to be 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent, moderating again for 2024–25. The statistics tell a similar story, with surveys indicating wage growth will sit at 4 per cent compared to 4.6 per cent in 2023.

As inflation continues its merry way, be prepared for the disparity between the two to cause frustration in your workforce. As always, transparent communication regarding what the business environment can and cannot deliver and surround your team with cultural support structures.

Productivity: If 2023 was about workforce nurture, 2024 holds your team accountable and responsible. The “soft conditions” of psychological safety and fulfilment are a must for vitality, but now is the time for pragmatism.

Business efficiencies and investment returns are non-negotiable. Consider artificial intelligence (AI) to supplement your workforce, but with savviness. Encourage your teams to embrace and befriend AI rather than being afraid (whether they admit it or not). Be ahead of the AI and human integration learning curve for business advantage.

Hybrid: Linked so intricately to productivity, of course, it is of hyperfocus. Not only for day-to-day activity, engagement, and motivation but also for the success of new-hire onboarding. If running a hybrid model, first and foremost, it must be right for the business.

Often, “hybrid” is code for flexibility. Set structures of one, two, or zero days working from home can turn into “rights” and even resentments. Instead of the “rule”, look to mutual compromise and a deeper understanding of your employees as individuals.

You and leadership fatigue: It is legitimate. The world has delivered a collective tirade on workforce wellbeing, the importance of balance, even advocating four-day weeks and workcations as solutions (all while carrying our skills shortage), with a spray of yoga, flexibility, and the dog at work to boot.

Yet leaders have had to pick up the slack. And you have. In 2023, seventy-two per cent of leaders admit feeling burnt out, a 12 per cent increase from 2020. Before you know it, apathy creeps in, and with it, aimlessness and mediocrity. It is a business imperative for leaders to maintain high levels of creativity and innovation. To do so requires vitality and health. Use the holiday break for rejuvenation and planning for long-term personal sustainability.

Employee loyalty – don’t blow it: The “Great Resignation” was nobody’s cup of tea. Hiring managers still quake at the mere mention of “great anything”, and as for employees, research shows 43 per cent of people who quit their jobs during the pandemic admitted they were better off in their old jobs. For both parties, it has been a lesson unto its own. With continued global instability, we are facing a sentiment similar to the pandemic. We need the mutual reciprocation of “loyalty”, the fly-under-the-radar virtue – let’s hold onto it.

A different language: While emotional needs and desires entered our working lives, 2024 requires a different kind of language. Resilience might be replaced or coexist with unity, discomfort welcomed and recognised as essential for development, and a growth mindset as a must. For that matter, less abstract terminology with a clearer direction for business purposes. For example, what is wrong with saying business needs profit?

It’s a far cry from being an employer’s market, but subtle shifts are occurring. Instead of the big swing to the other side, let’s be moderate. Cherish what we have experienced, leverage the knowledge gained, and move into 2024 grounded and ready to take the challenge.

Roxanne Calder, author of Employable – 7 Attributes to Assuring Your Working Future, is the founder and managing director of EST10.