We are never comfortable turning new business away – but are some Multilingual Contact Centre vacancies unrecruitable in the post-Brexit, (nearly) post-Covid UK jobs market?
After 16 years of recruiting for Northern European linguists, we continually check the data to ensure that our business plans are based on facts rather than beliefs.
This became even more important after the Brexit vote because applications for NI numbers by EU citizens started dropping after that vote.
EU immigration reached a very low level and then…… Covid.
According to studies, up to 1.3 million EU citizens went home in 2019/20.
Of course, their home countries have a skills shortage too. We don’t expect many to come back and pick up their old lives 2 years on.
They won’t be easily replaced. To get a Visa EU immigrants will (usually) need a Degree, a Job Offer with a minimum salary of £25,600 AND a couple of thousand pounds for a 3-year visa. The employer will need to be accredited and pay the appropriate fees.
This is VERY BAD NEWS for some UK businesses – but they have had since the Brexit vote to recognise the problem and to start evolving…….
As have we.
An EU citizen will start job searches with their localised version of their search engine of choice. Not a search of UK/US-centric job boards. Irrespective of their location.
We believe that a significant percentage of folk will decide that working from home or hybrid working is a non-negotiable part of their lives.
And, if you are employing remote workers, why would you care how remote they are unless your systems and practices haven’t yet evolved?
The ongoing shortage of multilingual contact centre workers in the UK is a problem caused by Brexit. Could the solution be the technology and management practices that Covid forced us to adopt?
Time will tell but it seems like a sensible investment to us.