This article was originally published in Dutch on Nextconomy.
The news about the labor market sounds positive: less temporary unemployment, fewer layoffs, and more job vacancies than expected. Vickie Dekocker, Senior Expert in Education and Labor Market at Agoria, views this with a critical eye. She provides an explanation for the underlying reason and motivates organisations towards job redesign.
Rising energy prices can lead to a personnel surplus within companies in the short term. Vickie Dekocker urges caution: "Figures about the labor market of the future indicate that even with a hundred percent employment rate, there will still be a shortage of labor. The structural labor shortage remains because the aging of the labor market will hit harder and longer than the corona or energy crisis."
According to her, this explains the limited layoffs and high number of job vacancies.
More and more organisations are professionalizing the hiring of their external talents.
Strengthening the internal labor market through retention and attracting personnel
Companies experienced the impact of a crisis during Covid and learned to know the labor market instruments to deal with it. And they saw that the recovery came quickly. "Companies are making a lot of effort to retain their staff to be ready for the future."
"Organisations are less eager to lose people through dismissal or by sharing employees with other companies," says Vickie Dekocker. Companies strive to retain their internal workforce to fill open roles anyway. Additional vacancies are opened to bring people in to strengthen the internal labor market.
Front runners choose job redesign
Vickie Dekocker sees front-runner companies proactively recruiting. They map out the core tasks of the organisation and look at how the jobs of the past can be broken down into smaller parts. They go for reskilling their own employees to create room for internal mobility. Job redesign opens the doors to a wider potential of people in the labor market who can work within the organisation.
Job (re)design is about the set of activities within a role and about clustering certain roles into a job at different difficulty levels. One question that arises is how the education system can participate in this.
The company academy: an answer to labor market and education challenges
Job redesign presents the organisation with a number of challenges that arise from both labor market and educational reality. "We can no longer assume 100% employment," warns Vickie Dekocker. "The positioning of work has changed: individuals want to do other things besides work," she explains the labor market challenge.
Quickly switching to customised training tailored to the needs within and in collaboration with the business community is important.
People should be given the opportunity to learn roles so that they are able to perform parts of a job. This can happen both on the job and elsewhere. "And there is a gap with the education system today," Vickie Dekocker identifies a pain point.
"Quickly switching to tailor-made training to meet the needs in collaboration with the business world is important." More and more companies are setting up their own academies to bridge the gap between the supply of the school education system and the needs of the organisation.
The internal freelancer
"It is not smart to entrust the core activities of an organisation to a freelancer," argues Vickie Dekocker for the idea of the internal freelancer. She refers to the permanent employee who fulfils another function within the organisation for a shorter or longer period of time. "The intention is that several people within the company can perform the core tasks to guarantee continuity."
"For hiring freelancers, companies mainly look at the roles that need to be filled," says Vickie Dekocker. She advises companies to approach the internal labor potential in the same way.
Companies will be able to:
- retain existing employees,
- attract new people,
- strengthen the core of the enterprise.
"Unravel jobs into roles and roles into activities to utilise this untapped potential within the organisation."
Jobs, roles, and activities
"There is still a lot of potential in the labor market that remains untapped today by holding onto jobs," concludes Vickie Dekocker. "Unravel jobs into roles and roles into activities to utilise this untapped potential within the organisation," she advises organisations. The more people take on different roles, the more people are in control of their own careers. Vickie Dekocker sees potential in taking on the same roles for different organisations. "There is a reality of scarcity within which the sharing of people is imposed. Especially for crucial positions that cannot be filled. In addition, there are also more and more people who want to combine different jobs." That is why she remains convinced of the existence of the freelancer.
