On Radio 4’s Today programme, it was stated that following Natwest’s Quarterly Growth Survey, the Yorkshire and Humber Region had the highest jobs growth in the UK.

Sounds like good news at last, at least if you are in Leeds which was identified as the main driver for the creation of employment in the area, but this great news comes with side effects for firms that are not in the immediate Leeds area.

Brain Drain

The most noted impact on any area where there is high growth is the fact that the great and the good, talented and able, skilled and educated are more willing and able to travel to work for better opportunities and higher wage potential, leading to an exodus down the M62 every morning out of towns like Hull, Beverley and surrounding villages (where cost of living can be lower) to take advantage of job and career opportunities that are not present closer to home.

Wage Pressure

For those skilled/valued members of the team that do stay, there is a risk of increased wages pressure as they recognise their value or get approached by recruitment agencies, and employers are required to up-the-ante in terms of pay and benefits to prevent losing key members of staff.

Tough to Recruit

Where there’s growth, there’s recruitment problems.  If you are looking for skilled and experienced new members to join the team to help grow your businesses, then you’ll need to accept that there is a shortage of talent in the region, as growth could out strip supply in terms of people, which will naturally make it harder to find skilled workers.

Now for the good news…..

Jobs growth is great for the region, especially those areas with a strong Higher Eduction sector as it will help draw talent from around the Country to the region, where hopefully they’ll settle through increased work opportunities, rather than migrating home or to places such as Manchester and London.

Employers who work in skilled sectors, with hard to fill roles, will need to focus on retaining people (which is no bad thing), so you’ll often see an increase in internal communication, reviews and development as employers try and keep people engaged so they don’t want to look elsewhere.

Recruitment pressures do create internal opportunities, where its hard to source talent, employers naturally focus more on growing their own talent and engage more in training and development activities.

We are specialist HR advisors to high growth organisations, if you’ve got a recruitment, retention or engagement challenge and would like some help – get in touch