Modern workplaces have begun to look and feel very different over the last 15 to 20 years as society and culture has changed to reflect the increasingly diverse outlook that defines British life in the 21st Century.

For businesses this has meant a seismic shift in the policies and thinking that underpin recruitment and reward processes.

In November 2021, a survey conducted by recruitment firm Randstadt UK revealed that a quarter of all salaried workers in Britain – some 8 million people, depending on what source you use – planned to leave their jobs within 12 months.

Most intended to explore their career options with another employer.

Recent research has shown that around two thirds of UK employees would sacrifice a proportion of their pay in return for more personalised employee benefits – with the majority citing retirement planning as a key need.

The workplace is becoming a far more complex place, especially in this relatively new era of home-based working where work and home life tend to blur at the edges.

A survey released this week by a wellbeing agency reveals a worrying trend within the HR landscape with the suggestion that around half of the UK’s HR managers have either quit or have seriously considered doing so in the last two years.

Given careers website Career Smart estimated in 2020 that there were somewhere in the region of 170,000 HR specialists working in HR management roles in the UK in 2019, that’s a lot of people who have become so disillusioned with their work or working conditions that they consider leaving employment to be a serious solution.

There are lots of things in business that we now do very differently than we did, say, 20 or 30 years ago, but one thing that seems to have stayed the same is that the good old CV is still very much a part of the recruitment process.

Whilst the way in which potential candidates are identified has changed – talent search (or headhunting, as it is still sometimes known) has become far more widespread in recruitment, for example – the way in which they are shortlisted really hasn’t changed much at all.