20th April 2022, Peterborough – New research from Zellis, the leading provider of payroll and HR solutions in the UK and Ireland, shows that 70% of CHROs describe improving business resilience as either very important or extremely important. Looking back over the pandemic, 50% of senior HR leaders at the largest employers say that talent management has required the most personal focus, and 52% say improving employee experience is the best way to ensure business resilience.

The research shows that, in the midst of the ‘great resignation,’ talent management and employee experience are now top of the agenda, even for the most experienced HR leaders. Conducted by Zellis in partnership with Wakefield Research, this new report has collated responses from 100 Chief Human Resources Officers and Chief People/Personnel Officers at organisations with over 1,000 employees in the UK and Ireland.

The study has shown just how important providing answers to an evolving talent retention challenge has become post-pandemic. Improvements to employee experience lead the list of actions HR leaders can bring to their organisation to improve business resilience, followed by practical considerations of automating more processes or reducing inefficiency in the business.   

“When it comes to ongoing business resilience, HR leaders have stepped up to the challenge presented through the past couple years of COVID-19 and the palpable shifts in employee expectations which continue to test organisations in every sector,” said Caroline Drake, Chief People Officer at Zellis. “The future success of every organisation will rest on its ability to attract, engage, and retain talent, delivering a high quality colleague experience that sets their organisation apart. Whilst this isn’t new for CHROs, it’s clear that in the past couple of years it has become a much larger focus for CEOs and boards.”

According to recruitment firm Randstad, one in four (a quarter) employees were actively looking to change their job at the start of 2022 – costing an average of £25,000 per employee. CHROs are now being given a much wider brief as organisations look to bolster resilience by improving their talent retention to avoid costly staff turnover.

“The experience of employees is always going to be a critical issue when there is such a war for talent,” said Jacqui Summons, Non-Executive Director at Zellis and Chief Person Officer at EMIS Health. “The conundrum that all CHROs and CPOs including myself must fix is in creating an inclusive and diverse environment that makes people want to belong. Technology has an important part to play as an enabler in this space, and the more you can provide a smooth digital experience to your employees, supporting them to manage their work effectively, the more you can create a ‘stickiness’ to your company to support retention.”

The full research report can be found here.

About Zellis

Zellis is the largest provider of payroll and HR software, and Managed Services, to UK and Ireland-based companies with over 1,000 employees. With over 50 years’ experience and over 2,500 employees, we count a third of the FTSE 100 as customers and pay over five million employees a year. We are also the people behind ResourceLink, now part of Zellis HCM Cloud, which won the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professional’s (CIPP) Payroll Software of the Year Award for 2020 and 2021.

www.zellis.com