Sainsbury's admits IT recruitment challenges
Phil Jordan, Group CIO at Sainsbury’s states that it’s ‘never been tougher’ to recruit technology staff
Phil Jordan, Group CIO at Sainsbury's, has admitted to challenges in recruiting the right IT staff at his organisation.
"It's never been tougher," said Jordan. "I've never known a time where technology people are so in demand," he added.
Staff across all industries have used time in lockdown during the Coronavirus pandemic to reassess their career options and switch employers, in a trend known as ‘the great resignation'.
Jordan explained that his organisation has not been immune to the phenomenon.
"We've managed to build strong tech brand in Sainsbury's, but the downside is you become a target for recruitment. We've been flat out recruiting all year, and we're broadly standing still in terms of vacancies."
Vacancies for tech roles at Sainsbury's currently stand at around 20% of the total. With roughly 1,550 people working in the technology function, that's in the region of 300 open posts.
One way the retailer is attempting to solve the issue is by speeding up its recruitment process.
"It's very clear that the new cohort of young tech people expect to be handled quickly in terms of a job offer. We are really working hard to get the average time to hire down to ten days, from about 14 days right now. We're looking at the whole process, how we vet, the entire interview process, really trying to revolutionise it."
But this increased pace mustn't come at the cost of weakening the drive to diversity, Jordan added.
"In working on speed we're also trying to be ruthless in not trading off our diversity efforts. We've made huge strides to remove any bias from the interview process. When you're playing with speed diversity can slip off the radar, so we're being careful about that."
The organisation has also set up various schemes to help increase the flow of talent into junior positions, looking at apprenticeships, graduate programmes, and moving staff from shops into IT roles.
"We have a ‘restart' project in our retail stores where we're looking to attract people who have an interest and the right cognitive ability. It's a 16 week boot camp designed to give them entry level tech skills, which then moves them into jobs at a junior level. It's been really successful."
Sainsbury's has currently on its second cohort of ‘restarts', where it takes 20 people out of its stores and puts them into a boot camp. These camps have a "very high pass rate" according to Jordan.
But this focus on recruitment has not come at the expense of retention.
"We've been making sure that the best people have the right level of incentive, both immediate rewards and longer term," said Jordan. "We've set up baselining and benchmarking projects against the industry to ensure our rates of pay are competitive.
"We're also looking at the future of work, things like hybrid working, and asking ourselves what our future colleagues are likely to value. So we've looked at more flexible holiday, for instance allowing people to work on bank holidays, and take the time off in lieu when it might be more convenient. And then things like sabbaticals and working abroad.
"We're pushing ourselves to be bold, and trying to create a new set of work propositions."