Times are Changing: What have we learnt as a business in 2023?

When I joined Kinetica back in September 2022 as the Group Talent Acquisition Manager; the role was a new creation for the company. The Senior Leaders had made the decision that if they wanted the business to grow as planned over the coming years; then they needed someone dedicated to sourcing new talent for the business. 

As this was a new position, we had a complete blank slate to design the Talent Acquisition and People function to work exactly how we wanted it to. However, despite the best will in the world, when designing a new function, the strategy you initially design and implement, may not always work and tweaks need to be made to suit your evolving business. This year we have had so many successes: adding talented new team members, improving employee engagement, defining our culture, improving our benefits program and many more. But we have had our fair share of challenges that we have pivoted and adapted too. 

 So, what have we leant so far?

1. We don’t always get it right and we aren’t afraid to admit it.

At the end of the day we are only human and we aren’t always going to get it right the first time round. With this being a new function for the company, we were always going to try new things but despite our successes not everything was going to work. What we have learned is if it doesn’t work, understand why, learn from it, admit it was wrong and move on. Don’t dwell on things that haven’t worked and just use them as a learning tool for the future.

2. Times Change – you need to adapt.

The recruitment industry has changed over the years and you need to make sure as an organization you are embracing the change. You need to adopt new technologies and amend your internal processes to reflect the changes in the market. If you can’t embrace the change you will get left behind. 

3. You can’t do everything at once!

We learned this pretty quickly but taking on too many projects at once just doesn’t work. You can’t focus on delivering exceptional results if you are spread too thin. We now focus our energies on a couple of projects at once to ensure they get our full attention and we can execute and implement our strategy to full affect.

4. Understanding everyone has different goals.

Everyone within the business has their own personal goals and they may not align. The most important thing we do is think of the company from a holistic view and ensure that the changes we make aren’t pointless for changes sake, but they will actually have a positive impact. People will get behind positive change if they can see the benefits. 

5. Communication is key:

People can’t get behind what they don’t know or understand. It is so important that we are transparent with our staff and they feel a part of what is happening within the company.