Impact report People power People are the lifeblood of the research sector its biggest strength and, in a world of AI, its genuine differentiator. But the industry is facing a challenge: how to not only recruit and retain talent but help people flourish. Katie Jacobs reports Y oure on mute. These seemingly innocuous words appeared more than four times as regularly in the transcripts of corporate earnings and shareholder calls in the second quarter of 2020 than the first, according to an analysis by Sentieo published by Quartz. And that analysis doesnt even take into account the millions of calls that werent ocially logged. It could well have been the ocial phrase of working through the pandemic. More than three years later, you probably still find yourself on calls uttering those three little words. Because if the pandemic upended everything about our lives, it is perhaps work that has been shifted most fundamentally and, potentially, permanently. How we work, where we work and what we feel about work have all changed. It started with The Great Resignation, the term coined in 2021 by organisational behaviour professor Anthony Klotz to describe the trend of people leaving jobs in higher numbers thanks to pandemic-induced reassessments of lifes priorities. Next in work-related buzzwords came quiet quitting, aka doing the bare minimum. Now, according to Fortune magazine, the latest trend to plague employers is resenteeism employees who hate their jobs but dont think they can find a better one. No wonder many employers find themselves struggling to keep up with a shifting labour market. However, according to Barney Ely, a managing director at recruitment firm Hays, there is some good news for frazzled managers: The Great Resignation has certainly cooled, making hiring easier and shifting the balance of power back towards the employer. Professionals who wanted to move did, so many of those are still in their first two years at a new organisation and the cost-of-living crisis has caused candidates to be more cautious in looking for a new role, he says. Although, he adds, that given permanent job vacancies remain significantly higher than pre- pandemic levels, employers cant aord to be complacent when it comes to finding and keeping great people. Every industry is feeling the pressure, but in market research and adjacent sectors it is particularly acute. Research by Hays finds that skills shortages in marketing are severe, with 93% of employers experiencing them in the past 12 months, rising to 94% in the technology sector. According to human resources body the CIPDs latest Labour Market Outlook, 51% of business services organisations (the category into which market research falls) report having hard-to-fill vacancies although this has decreased significantly from 63% in the previous quarter. The business services sector is also the most likely of all industries to be experiencing skills-shortage vacancies, defined as vacancies that are hard to fill because applicants lack relevant technical skills. Since the pandemic, there has been a real shortage of skills and talent, particularly at mid-level, confirms Inger Christensen of market research recruitment firm Daughters of Sailors. While she sees things gradually improving, shortages persist, compounded in part by short-term decision-making around talent in some organisations, such as the cutting of graduate intake programmes in 2020/21. There is also a steady stream of people choosing to leave market research altogether, attracted by greater flexibility, higher salaries and a healthier work-life balance in other sectors. Its a significant problem for an industry that Sinead Jeeries senior vice-president of customer expertise at consumer insights platform Zappi and current chair of MRS describes as being nothing without people. Increasingly, the value we oer is people who are 20 Impact ISSUE 42 2023_pp20-27_Report.indd 20 16/06/2023 17:03