With labor markets still undergoing unprecedented shifts and volatility, employers are increasingly strengthening their focus on retention and internal mobility. However, the shrinking life span of skills, changing attitudes to work, and the rise of AI are complicating factors here. So, how can employers ensure they support their employees’ future development and drive internal mobility at a time of significant change that renders traditional career pathing irrelevant?
My guest this week is JC Townend, CEO at LHH for the UK and Ireland. JC is a strong advocate of Career Activism, giving employees the tools they need to advance their careers in the way that makes the most sense for them. This can drive retention, supercharge internal mobility, and help ensure employers have the right skills available at the right time.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Labor market trends
• Why HR should be building for the future for right now
• What is Career Activism
• The end of linear career paths
• Giving employees the tools to advance their own careers
• Switching disciplines and industries
• A mindset shift
• Gig assignments
• Building brand and reputation
• Hidden jobs markets
• Skilling for retention
• What are the benefits for employers?
• The impact of AI on jobs and careers
• What will work and careers look like in 3 years time?
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Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 643 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. With labour markets still undergoing unprecedented shifts and volatility, employers are increasingly strengthening their focus on retention and internal mobility. However, the shrinking lifespan of skills, changing attitudes to work and the rise of AI are complicating factors here. So how can employers ensure that they support their employees future development and drive internal mobility at a time of great change that renders traditional career pathing irrelevant? My guest this week is J.C. townend, CEO at LHH for the UK and Ireland. J.C. is a strong advocate of career activism, giving employees the tools they need to advance their careers in a way that makes the most sense for them. This can drive retention, supercharge internal mobility and help ensure that employers have the right skills available at the right time.
Matt Alder [00:02:17]:
Hi JC and welcome to the podcast.
JC Townend [00:02:20]:
Hi, it’s great to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:22]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Matt Alder [00:02:24]:
Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
JC Townend [00:02:28]:
Sure. Glad to be here. My name is J.C. townend. I’m the CEO of LHH for the UK and Ireland. LHH is a global recruitment and leadership development company. We operate in more than 65 countries around the world across a wide variety of sectors. In the UK in particular, we are supporting 20,000 individuals per year with career coaching. Most often when people are made redundant, we help them. Next, new roles. And we also have a major recruiting practice which helps all kinds of people land roles.
Matt Alder [00:03:07]:
Tell us a bit about your background. How did you get to do what you do now?
JC Townend [00:03:10]:
Yes, as you can probably tell from my accent, I’m an American, so I worked the first 20 years of my career in the US. I grew up in New York and moved to the UK about 12 years ago. I’ve always been an executive in management consulting, working in areas from energy to banking and finance, to health and to education, and came into this role six years ago specifically to work in workforce areas. So how do we think about employment, companies, company structures and how both employees and companies can be made successful?
Matt Alder [00:03:51]:
So obviously your organization operates in all different sort of parts of the talent market, as it were. What are you seeing in labor markets at the moment? What are the trends and what does this mean for HR and how they think about the workforce?
JC Townend [00:04:08]:
Yeah, boy, what a change we’ve been through over the last four years in the marketplace. I think it’s the fastest pace of change that I’ve seen in my entire career, both in the US and in the UK and globally, I think starting with all the changes brought about by Covid, from spikes in redundancies, challenges with people quiet quitting, to a massive recruiting market to a now very sluggish recruiting market. What we’re seeing now, I think us, UK and globally is a very sluggish labor market. There’s less recruitings for new roles. There was report that came out last month that said there’s been 16 months of sequential decline in the number of new roles listed in the London area. And we’re seeing that in microcosms around, around the uk. At the same time, we’re seeing less voluntary moves right now of employees to external companies. And so that is helping companies because they’re not having as much change in their structure right now.
Matt Alder [00:05:30]:
And what’s HR’s kind of response to that? Where should they be focusing? What should they be thinking about?
JC Townend [00:05:36]:
Yeah, I think this is a really good time when workforces are slightly more stable than the average, to really be thinking about how to build now for the future. So one of the things I was just talking to a group last week about was that people, you know, we need to make sure that HR doesn’t get complacent and think that their employees are going to stay with them for the long term unless they have really strong career paths. So we’re still seeing from our research that at least 50% of individuals are still actively looking at how to progress their careers, mostly external to other companies, even though they’re not taking those jobs. But we’re also finding less than 10% think they can advance their careers within their current companies.
Matt Alder [00:06:29]:
I mean, it is a very disruptive time for the whole concept of a career at the moment. I know that People’s attitudes to jobs and works at work is changing dramatically with the dramatically changing times. I know that you’ve been talking a lot about something you call career activism. Tell us a little bit more about that.
JC Townend [00:06:50]:
We’re starting to realize that maybe the best way to help employees develop in their careers is to put the power and the information into the hands of the employees themselves. So if you think of 30 years ago, it was very typical for an organization and an HR department to create very linear, specifically modulated career paths of how someone moves up through the organization. And that would include an expectation of how many years in a role, what training was required. People could really envision their careers at a company for 30 years. Now I’m hearing. I spoke with one HR director of a major financial services company and he said they have actually stopped writing those career paths on paper because jobs are changing so quickly that the career paths are becoming obsolete as quickly as they can get them written down. So what we realized is that if instead of the companies trying to create very rigid long term career paths, if you instead put tools right into the hands of the employees themselves, they can advance in all kinds of ways. So they don’t necessarily just have to climb up a company ladder in one vertical. But for example, I’m mentoring right now a person in finance that wants to move into kind of more business leadership. And so she wants to know what does she need to learn to make that change over the next 10 years. And we’re seeing a lot of individuals that want to shift their careers moving from finance to marketing or sales, into delivery or accounting, into legal or computers or coding. The thing is, companies can’t really predict what an individual will want, but the individuals will.
Matt Alder [00:08:46]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:08:46]:
I know that your organization does a huge amount of coaching with people in terms of finding new jobs and what’s going on in their career. How do individuals need to think about this? Particularly, I suppose, you know, within the companies that they’re working for, this kind of sense of career activism, empowerment, about the direction of where they’re going.
JC Townend [00:09:06]:
I think this is something that we really started to think very proactively about three years ago because we were talking with one of our companies and we were giving them their annual report of how we were helping the redundant employees land new roles. And suddenly they realized they were spending all of this time and money helping people that were exiting the firm develop these really amazing career paths. And they weren’t investing any of that internally. But we learned a lot of those lessons are directly transferable, internal to companies. So when someone’s made redundant, one of the first things they need to do is really look about what you know, look at what job they want next. The same when someone’s internal to a company, do you want to move up vertically in the same path, or do you want to move maybe to the side or diagonally into a whole other area? Then what we help them do is we help them figure out what are their transferable skills. So what skills do you already have that are relevant to that kind of new career objective? And what things do you need to learn? So building those skills. But a lot of companies stop there, but we’ve realized that’s not enough. There are a lot of tricks to how to actually land the role in your company that are not part of just skilling and closing those skill gaps. And that includes everything you know about how to find a new job. So it’s actually being able to brand yourself by having a reputation for the types of experiences and skills that you’ll need in the new job. It’s learning how to network internally in the company so that when jobs become available or roles become available, which are not always advertised, someone’s going to tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, you should be interviewing for this role. It’s also thinking about how to get what we call gig assignments in areas of interest. So what are the small projects that you can volunteer for in the marketing department that start to give you both experience and reputation to be able to do that kind of work so that when a role opens in the marketing department, you’ve already got those skills on your cv.
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Matt Alder [00:11:54]:
Traditionally, a lot of employers have not been very good at internal mobility in terms of spotting transferable skills, being able to move people through the business, and those kind of. How’s that changing? What are you seeing companies getting right in terms of supporting their employees with this approach, and what can they still be improving on?
JC Townend [00:12:16]:
So I think what companies are getting right is, number one, acknowledging that there’s no longer these rigid, linear career paths. Second thing I think they’re doing very well is understanding what skills are required in different types of jobs in offering really good training programs to skill employees to help retain them in the company. So those are two things I Think they’re doing really well. I think where they can improve is by helping employees to understand how to navigate the hidden job market within the company. So a lot of times companies will post roles available, but that may only be a fraction of the jobs that are really available in the company. And sometimes roles are created specifically with a person in mind because they’ve really, you know, they’ve demonstrated a whole new area, a whole new way they could take the business into. And sometimes the company almost gets interested in creating a role because they see the potential of a specific person. So I think that’s where employers can do a lot better at kind of coaching their employees through that process, teaching their managers and supervisors also how to be career coaches. And I think managers can be reluctant to do that because they don’t want to lose the best people off their teams. But I think giving them both the skills and the incentives to help their people develop actually paradoxically helps those managers attract the very best people to their own teams.
Matt Alder [00:14:07]:
I think that’s really interesting and I suppose just following up and digging a bit deeper on that. You mentioned right at the start of the conversation that they’re used to a perception that you join a company and you’d be there for 30 years and the company would basically structure your career path for you. Obviously that is now completely out the window in terms of all the things that we’ve been talking about. Where does responsibility lie then to ensure that the employees have a good career in that company? You kind of mentioned sort of coaching from managers, but you know, is it hr? Is it managers? Is the employees themselves? You know, who’s kind of responsible?
JC Townend [00:14:44]:
I would say all three. And I think if you ignore any one of those three elements in the equation, you’re going to have a problem. So certainly HR still has a really important role in helping employees build careers in companies. So hr, it’s still there, but we’re very narrow minded if we think it’s only HR’s responsibilities. I think we do need to put responsibility in the hands of the managers as we discussed. I mean they should. They’re the closest to their employees in being able to understand their career aspirations in a non threatening way. And they’re also best connected to help those employees kind of make the connections, networks and get the assignments that will build their ability to grow their careers. But this third element of the employees themselves I think is something that has been vastly ignored. And I think it’s only as I’ve been at this company at LHH for the last 6 years. I’ve realized with the number of people we’re offering this career coaching to every year, sometimes people will contact me. They’ll send a thank you note to me as head of the company and say, I’m almost happy I was made redundant because I’ve learned things about how to build my career and how to land jobs that nobody ever taught me before. I think that is absolutely the secret to improving talent development and career growth for employees and companies, and hence increasing retention of your best employees, is to really give them those skills for them to map out their own careers. And I think that, yes, it helps them grow their careers. And one thing that we’ve discovered in our own company is it also makes them more patient because rather than that knowledge about what their career path is being in the hands of HR and their managers, that knowledge exists in their own heads. So they can exactly see how what they’re doing today is going to lead to their next job. And that makes them more patient and more likely to stay in their current job.
Matt Alder [00:16:59]:
I mean, as we said, it’s a very different way of thinking for employers than we’ve kind of seen in the past. You kind of mentioned some of these already. But what are the benefits of companies if they get this right?
JC Townend [00:17:11]:
I think the first benefit is retention. Right. I talk to a lot of chros and there’s a lot of development programs for employees that are out there. But they tell me the people that tend to be in those development programs tend to be the very first ones that competing companies are coming to and trying to steal away from their firm. So I think by empowering your employees so they don’t just feel like they’re part of a program, but they feel like they own their own careers within your company and it’s unlimited. I think you can really improve retention of your very best employees. I think you also gain a reputation as a really good place to work, and that’s why employees want to even apply to be part of your company to begin with. So if you think of some of the digital and tech companies that had such a good reputation of a place where you wanted to land your career when you hit the job market, that’s the kind of reputation I think every company should be aspiring to have.
Matt Alder [00:18:15]:
It’s obviously illegal to have any kind of podcast interview these days without mentioning AI, so I’m going to go ahead and mention it. What impact does AI have on all of this? How do you think it’s going to shape jobs? Are you seeing people being displaced by AI?
Matt Alder [00:18:29]:
Already.
Matt Alder [00:18:30]:
What’s your take on this?
JC Townend [00:18:32]:
First, I think the pace of change seems to be getting faster and faster. As soon as we think that jobs and roles are changing, you know, faster than we could imagine, AI is impacting every single job. And I don’t just mean, I mean all kinds of tech, robotics, sensors, etc. I just, I had gone to a car manufacturing plant and boy, what tech is doing that employees used to have to do through manual labor is like dramatically transformed. Am I seeing jobs being lost? I would say I’m not seeing that many jobs being directly lost Where a new tech comes in and immediately you see a lot of redundancies. But I do think we’re edging towards that. So there’s lots of discussions, especially in the financial services sector about how tech and AI is going to take over more of those jobs that were typically required kind of humans to do that. But I don’t think people should be worried, I think they should be excited because I think AI can take over those really mundane parts of the job that allow humans to do the really interesting, very human centric things on top. And I think that’s where you can have a really strong benefit from AI. I’ve said, and I hope tech could increase so quickly if it increases our productivity fast enough. It could be the thing that actually allows us to finally realize the dream of a four day work week without reducing salaries because we will have increased our productivity that much just through the use of technology.
Matt Alder [00:20:29]:
And that leads me on nicely to my final question, which is what do you think working careers are going to look like in the kind of medium term in sort of three to five years time?
JC Townend [00:20:39]:
In three to five years, I expect that certain industries will have changed dramatically. I expect changes in some of the service industries. It could be things like accounting, banking and finance and things where those kind of language compatible software programs can be introduced. I think there will be other industries that really don’t change at all. And when I go and talk around to executives in terms of their strategy of how are they going to adopt AI, A lot right now are in between. They’re trying to decide do they want to be a first mover, getting ahead of the crowd, but also making the mistakes, or do they want to be a follow on mover, letting others make the mistakes and then they come in implementation, put in place the tried and tested technology after it’s really been developed and tested. And I’m seeing people fall into those two camps right now. I’m seeing more in the second camp. So we’ll see where it goes.
Matt Alder [00:21:49]:
Jc, thank you very much for talking to me.
JC Townend [00:21:52]:
Great. Thank you. It’s been fun to talk.
Matt Alder [00:21:55]:
My thanks to JC. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
