Employees are critical to every area of work - too few, too inexperienced or insufficiently skilled creates cost, delay and damage to public services and economic competitiveness. Yet the current labour market shortage is evident across our public, private and third sectors. Our ability to deliver critical public services is undermined by it. The need to grow and compete our way out of recession is threatened by it. The capacity of our third sector to provide essential safety nets in the midst of growing poverty and household financial breakdown is damaged by it. So how should organisations anticipate, plan and react in order to attract and retain staff, minimise employee turnover and upskill and innovate with their valuable and scarce staff resource?
The UK and Scottish labour markets are undergoing enforced change. Many factors are at play. Brexit has dramatically reduced available labour from the EU. Long-COVID after pandemic has had a shrinking effect on the labour market. An ageing population is inevitably retiring and shrinking the workforce. Damage to health services during and since COVID means that delayed treatment of physical and mental ill health is causing further shortages.
This is a labour market where fewer available staff are able to command higher wages, are more willing to switch employers and are incentivised to do so by dramatic inflation-driven cost of living rises. How can public, private and third sector employers react to and cope with this staffing challenge?
This conference will address this challenge in three parts. It will firstly review the shape and drivers of the labour market challenge. It will discuss how organisations can plan, prepare and partner in responding to the crisis faced. Finally, it will examine the practical action that can be taken to move from reactive to proactive by focussing on retaining and innovating with workforces.
Topics to be discussed
Who should attend
This conference will be relevant for anyone involved in workforce recruitment and planning, training, staff retention and engagement, HR management, skills development, temporary staff sourcing and management and all those concerned with labour market shortages and supply in Scotland. This includes organisations in public, private and third sectors. It is for those engaged in the task of forming organisational responses to labour market shortages and associated challenges as well as the policy makers, academics and industry bodies concerned with structural approaches to tackling the labour market hurdles being faced.
Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy, Professor of Economics
Business School, University of Aberdeen
Managing Director
Nuwe Consulting
Senior Public Policy Adviser
CIPD in Scotland and Northern Ireland
Catia Montagna (Professor)
Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy, Professor of Economics
Business School, University of Aberdeen
Catia Montagna is Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
She joined the University of Aberdeen in 2013 and she previously held appointments at the University of Glasgow, and at the University of Dundee where she held a Personal Chair in Economics. A major strand of her research lies at the interface between international and labour economics and focuses on the relationship between economic globalisation, welfare state and industrial policies ,and labour markets; more recently she has also worked on the relationship between health and labour markets.
Laura Van Zyl
Managing Director
Nuwe Consulting
Laura leads Nuwe Consulting as its Managing Director. The purpose of Nuwe is to support the public sector in reducing reliance on outsourced solutions, becoming agile organisations and ultimately releasing cost efficiencies that help to ensure a higher quality of front-line service delivery in all services and for all communities.
Laura is a leader and innovator in the recruitment field with a wealth of experience during her 30 year career in the public and private sectors. This has spanned the NHS, utilities and transport and in both small and large businesses, but with a specific focus on recruitment in the public sector for the last 15 years.
Her early career was spent in generalist recruitment, managing branch operations and business development for market leading companies. She has extensive experience in Neutral Vend, Managed Services and Staff Bank/Talent Pool provision. She has implemented and managed innovative, cost-efficient workforce solutions from start-up through to operational delivery. This includes leading through the initial dialogue process, relationship development in the MV/ MSP and in Staff Bank/Talent Pool workforce solutions arena.
Laura was educated in Scotland and lives in Fife with her family where she supports community and rural projects. During lockdown she returned to her running and cycling roots, finding a passion for Duathlon and with the aim of representing Scotland at the Duathlon AG World Championships in 2024!
Marek Zemanik
Senior Public Policy Adviser
CIPD in Scotland and Northern Ireland
Marek leads CIPD public policy work in Scotland and Northern Ireland, focusing primarily on fair work, skills and productivity.
He writes the annual job quality report, Working Lives Scotland, and has written several policy and research reports around skills and the labour market in Scotland and Northern Ireland. He provides evidence to Parliamentary and Assembly committees, responds to government and executive consultations and inquiries and engages with ministers and civil servants.
Before joining the CIPD, Marek spent nearly a decade working at the Scottish Parliament as a political adviser responsible for policymaking across devolved areas of public policy. He has written several election manifestos, dozens of policy papers and coordinated a series of independent policy commissions.
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