Is talent pooling the way forward for the UK higher education sector?

The UK has always been seen as a prime destination for students in higher education. Our universities are world-renowned, with only the US attracting larger numbers so with that in mind what impact has the Coronavirus had on the future of our leading educational institutions?

Coping with COVID-19 is particularly complicated in the higher education arena, because they serve such a wide variety of functions. Foremost they are educational institutions, additionally many function as ‘miniature towns’ meaning they are major local employers contributing considerably to the local economy. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the entire higher education sector around the world. Students suddenly needed an online way of learning, meaning that education leaders had to reinvent how to run their operations. Ultimately teaching online can only take a student so far and cannot provide students with the life experience of being ‘on campus’ so it's not really feasible as a long-term solution. These operational changes may mean that institutions will have to close for the short, medium, or long term. Staff also face unprecedented challenges, mainly job insecurity and the ability to do their job online from home. According to a report produced following the initial impact of COVID back in April, almost three quarters of UK institutions will be left in a critical financial position, with many barely able to cover their expenditure.

All of the above, coupled with the fact that a large percentage of the new intake would have been coming from overseas means that the future looks bleak. International students make up almost 14.4% of undergraduate students and 35.8% of postgraduate students in the UK (2017/18) and 30.8% of academic staff have a non-UK nationality including 44.5% in engineering and technology. 

Staffing expenses are one of the biggest costs accounting for more than half of total expenditure in the higher education arena (2017/2018). Attracting and retaining quality staff in this competitive industry is paramount and that’s where talent pools may provide the answer. In a matter of months, we have gone from a candidate-rich market to that of a candidate-saturated one due to COVID. Recruitment companies and educational institutions are being flooded with CVs and that makes identifying the right talent almost impossible. The value of talent pooling in this scenario is that it provides a fair, non-biased and natural way of attracting and filtering for the right candidate for the role.

We can recommend, talent pooling solutions that offer universities access to a national and international talent pool. There is even an option to build organisational specific talent pools, incorporating a re-deployment pool if redundancies prove necessary across academic and non-academic roles. 

We know specialised workforce management consultants who can support organisations throughout the talent pool journey, whether it is with the creation of a new talent pool, improving a current talent pool/staff bank, building your EVP, or just accessing the national talent pool.