Recruitment activity is set to increase over the next six months, but at a slower rate

The latest findings from the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) from Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph show that more than 40% of organisations responding to the survey anticipate an increase in recruitment activity over the next six months. However, business confidence remains fragile.

The increase in recruitment activity is, however, beginning to slow with 41% of the 1,249 responding organisations expecting overall recruitment activity to increase, compared to 48% last quarter, and 17% expecting it to decrease, compared to 12% last quarter. Just under a third of these organisations (31%) expect recruitment activity for managerial and professional staff to increase compared to only 7% who expect it to decrease.

Organisations generally are experiencing fewer recruitment difficulties, especially in larger organisations.

Commenting on the findings Shaun Tyson, Professor of Human Resource Management at Cranfield School of Management, said: There are signs that the labour market is easing somewhat in the face of uncertainty in business confidence, with lower levels of labour turnover and fewer difficulties overall, but the evidence so far is patchy. We need to see if this is a temporary phenomenon, and to look at the trends in future surveys to see what effects, if any, there are from recent events which occurred after this survey was completed. At the moment recruitment activity is still on the increase we believe.

The latest RCI findings also show that:

The need to recruit managerial and professional staff remains high in engineering (60%), production (51%), sales (46%) and computing/IT (42%).

The proportion of respondents expecting difficulties recruiting at board level has risen from 30% last quarter to 42% this quarter And most organistions (88%) expect pay increases to fall in the 2-3% band, rising in line with inflation.

Steve Playford, Recruitment Group Head from The Daily Telegraph, said: The latest RCI figures show that there is still a need to recruit managerial and professional staff in many sectors, and that many employers expect to recruit over the next six months.

Our experience bears this out as advertising revenue has held steady year-on-year, despite the downturn in business confidence. There have been a number of significant announcements regarding jobs losses in recent weeks - for example Rover, Asda and Dickens and Jones - but the need for skilled people is undiminished, so recruitment activity remains buoyant.