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In today’s uncertain economic climate and with a skills shortage impacting growth organisations need a workforce that can adapt to any challenge. But what does it take to build a resilient workforce that adapts to challenges and ensures your business remains agile? Here we look at the importance of flexibility, compliance and enhancing the candidate experience.

Why workforce agility matters in 2025

To put the current state of the job market into context we must examine the challenges employers face. These come in three main forms:

Business confidence – the British Chambers of Commerce noted in a recent report that business confidence has fallen to its lowest level since the fallout from the mini-budget in Autumn 2022. This, combined with deferred recruitment decisions may have impacted client and candidate confidence in all hiring markets across the world, resulting in a lowering of net fees during 2024.

Increased competition for temporary talent – according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) the number of job postings in the UK is back up to pre-pandemic levels with 1,415,574 jobs posted in December 2024. This indicates that there is competition for temporary talent across multiple sectors, providing opportunities for candidates seeking work.

Regulatory changes – the most significant change in employment legislation in 2025 is the Employment Rights Bill. This represents ‘the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation’ and will give workers protection from unfair dismissal, establish parental and bereavement leave from day one, end zero-hour contracts and ‘fire and rehire’, strengthen statutory sick pay and protection for pregnant women and new mothers, and establish flexible working as the norm, where practical.

Strategies for building a resilient workforce

Despite the many challenges employers face there are strategies that can help them to build a resilient workforce. These include:

Flexibility through temporary staffing – contingent labour can help businesses adapt to economic challenges and demand fluctuations. It enables businesses to adjust their workforce without a long-term commitment and remain agile. It offers the opportunity to access specialist skills on a short-term basis, filling expertise gaps during employee absences or special projects. It’s low-risk and offers continuity and, most importantly, temporary staffing can reduce costs associated with full-time employees, especially in light of the rise in Employers’ National Insurance Costs.

Investing in training and upskilling – another highly effective method of building resilience is to upskill your workforce through training and development. Now one of the most desirable workplace benefits for employees, training and development also offers the employer several vital advantages including higher retention rates, better talent attraction, an increase in employee morale and confidence, improved productivity and performance, higher levels of customer satisfaction and significant cost-savings.

Collaboration with recruitment experts – hiring the right talent for a vacant or new role can be time-consuming, expensive and stressful unless you’re an expert. The REC estimates that a bad hire can cost a business up to four times the employee’s annual salary in recruitment costs, onboarding and training, lost productivity, decreased morale (which in turn impacts staff turnover), and reputational damage. Specialists such as Taskmaster provide tailored staffing solutions to meet specific client needs, reducing not only costs but alleviating stress too. You can read how Taskmaster supported campus operations at the University of Huddersfield, managing mass bookings at short notice and handling difficult roles here.

Compliance as a cornerstone of workforce resilience

Every employer needs to understand the importance of legal and regulatory compliance in the workplace. There are so many areas of employment law, as well as regulatory compliance, that it can be difficult to adhere to all the new laws and regulations as they happen. In general, compliance covers three main areas: Data Privacy and Security, including GDPR, Employment legislation such as we mentioned above, and industry-specific rules and regulations. The consequence of not adhering to the law is the potential for heavy fines as well as reputational damage. Ultimately, unless you have access to a team of legal experts, it’s recommended that you let specialists deal with all aspects of this difficult subject. You can read about how Taskmaster supported the Harrogate Nightingale Hospital at a time of great uncertainty and with the strictest requirements for compliance here.

Enhancing the candidate experience

Creating a positive experience for candidates works on multiple levels, especially when you’re looking to recruit temporary staff. It will help you to attract more candidates, compete for the very best talent, improve your quality of hire and reduce your time-to-hire, increase your brand awareness, reduce turnover and increase retention, all of which makes employing a temporary workforce incredibly cost-effective.

To achieve the best possible candidate experience employers should use clear communication, streamline their onboarding processes and ask for regular feedback from their temporary employees to improve the process even further.

Taskmaster’s role in future-proofing workplaces

Taskmaster has been providing flexible and responsive workforce solutions to businesses in the private and public sectors for almost 30 years, and we fill more than 2,000 temporary roles each year for a variety of clients in the driving, industrial, facilities management, catering and estates, commercial, utilities and waste sectors.

Because of our extensive experience, we have the expertise to handle every eventuality when it comes to temporary workforce challenges, helping our clients achieve their commercial goals as well as maximise value.

We’re also proud of our track record of providing workforce solutions, such as our partnership with Polypipe, with whom we’ve partnered for over 17 years. You can read how we supported the company here.

Times are hard for employers at the moment, and building a workforce that can adapt to any challenge should be high on every organisation’s list. Temporary workforce solutions enable employers to be resilient, flexible and agile – all vital traits in uncertain times. But employers also need to be compliant and enhance the candidate experience, which can be difficult when budgets are stretched and the focus is on growth.

Is your workforce ready for tomorrow’s challenges? Let Taskmaster help you build a resilient and adaptable team. Contact us today for tailored staffing solutions.