Social media – what’s not to like?

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If you are looking to change career, social media, particularly LinkedIn, provides great opportunities to promote yourself and engage with your audience.

People like to use social media for many different reasons; to be entertained, gain knowledge, and keep up to date with the latest information from their favourite people and businesses. So, creating interesting and unique content with your posts will help you appeal to your followers and gain new ones, encourage engagement and provides opportunities to be noticed.

Be social

With so many time pressures, it can be difficult to stay on top of updating your social profiles. However, social profiles need to be renewed with quality and consistent content, to help grow your audience, engagement and conversions. Posting regularly, rather than leaving large gaps between posts, will help to keep your followers coming back for more information, and engaging with it with likes, comments and shares.

It’s not just what you say…

It’s not just for your followers that content should be updated regularly, but for the social media platforms themselves. The more you post, the more chance you have of the social media platform prioritising your content. This means more people seeing it in their feeds. This will expand the reach of your content online, create new followers, and potentially lead to greater engagement with your community.

It’s how you say it…

With so many social media platforms available to choose from, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more, there are people and companies all vying for attention. Being able to stand out from the crowd is a sure way to get noticed for all the right reasons. For example, videos are attention grabbing for the audience. LinkedIn videos drive five times more engagement than any other styles of posts on this platform. These can provide vital information in a quick yet effective manner.

Say it again

You don’t have to create new content all of the time. Pre-existing content can be repurposed and reinvented into different formats to make it seem new. For example, resharing information from blogs as a post, or into a summary video can provide snapshots to your audience, who might have missed it going live the first time.

This will drive new excitement and interest, increasing the chances of content being seen and engaged with on social media.

 

 

Managing a hybrid workforce

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Of the multitude of challenges thrown up by Covid, the changes it made to the world of work are still being felt by all of us. Many of these changes look like they are here to stay. Thousands of people found themselves having to adapt to working from home almost overnight. Now, well over two years after that first national lockdown, with some people still working exclusively from home, many more have combined working some days in the workplace with some time working from home.

 Adapting to a new way of working

Some organisations were already very familiar with this ‘hybrid working’, long before the pandemic, and had it down to a fine art. Many more have had to adapt quickly to find ways to ensure their employees can carry out their role from their own home as easily as they might at the office. Technology, with the extraordinarily speedy adoption of platforms such as Teams and Zoom, can make the adjustment easier. However, it can also bring its own challenges, with broadband accessibility, for one thing, frequently being patchy, particularly in more rural areas.

 No ‘one size fits all’ for hybrid working

Some employees love working from home, with the time and money saved without commuting. It can help create a work-life balance that has benefitted mental health, and in some cases, even enhanced performance. Other people can struggle with working from home. They may miss the team spirit and camaraderie that sharing a workplace can bring. Equally, not everyone’s home lends itself well to becoming a workspace. Lack of space or caring responsibilities can make working from home overly challenging to be sensible for everyone. It’s really important that managers bear this in mind when it comes to setting new rules for their working model.

Every organisation needs to ask if hybrid working suits it. How is the mental health of the workforce being benefited, for good or ill? Is a good work life balance being achieved or are some employees feeling left out and isolated? Is there a danger that those who work from home more may feel they are missing out. Not just on the day to day, but feeling marginalised on longer term opportunities, for promotions and training for example?

Its all about trust

Managing a hybrid workforce effectively really just comes down to trust. Before 2020, many employers would have been concerned that working from home allows employees too much freedom. How would you know that someone is really working if you can’t see them? It is actually surprisingly difficult to quantify and monitor how much someone is working, wherever they are located – in front of you or many miles away. After all, presence in the office is no guarantee of productivity.

Managers need to change their mindset and trust their employees to manage their time effectively. Good managers focus on the outcomes. Does your workforce’s new way of working negatively impact your customers? Are their needs still being met? If the work is being done and your employees are available for customers when they are needed to be, surely that should be all that matters.

Staying relevant in a changing world

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It’s very easy in the day to day, to lose sight of what actually allows you to carry out your job. We all take our attributes for granted to a certain extent. If you have experience in a discipline or sector, it does become something of second nature as to how you work and how your role is carried out. If you’re someone who works in an office, you don’t sit down at your desk in the morning and think: ‘What should I do today?’ We naturally check our emails, attend meetings, carry out tasks, do our jobs, but the process is entirely instinctive.

Working and learning

However, instinctiveness and routine perhaps encourage us to rest on our laurels too. This can lead to complacency when it comes to keeping up to date on new legislation and the latest industry thinking in our sectors. Some companies implement training and updates as a matter of course. If this is offered, it makes sense to take whatever opportunities are available. Employers may fund courses, including master’s degrees and other further qualifications, as well as conventional diplomas, degrees and relevant vocational qualifications.

Further education in the workplace is a positive outcome both for employer and employee. This mutually beneficial option is worth exploring if there are areas of research and education you’d like to take on. There will be a multitude of options, from in-person courses to online certificates. However, make sure that any academy purporting to provide certificated accreditation is authentic and the real deal, and not a bogus organisation.

Improved prospects

The importance of keeping relevant isn’t always naturally encouraged by employers. It may be down to the individual to make the effort themselves. There are many ways to keep abreast of industry developments. This can be through the membership of industry bodies, or it may be through websites and courses.

You can also tap into your colleagues’ knowledge. They may be able to advise you where to find relevant information, or even provide the tuition or training themselves. Sharing skill in the workplace is one area in business that is often overlooked. Networking might also be an option, with tips and news on current thinking and development often best heard by word of mouth. There’s no quicker way to impart information than an in-person conversation. It’s often the most straightforward and low-key situations. An informal chat over lunch or a coffee, for example, can prove the most unexpectedly rewarding.

Looking beyond the expected

You can also look beyond your sector too. There will be affiliate courses and accreditations that will be useful in your long-term career path. Certainly, any academy courses and memberships of official organisations – that will, in simple terms, ‘add letters after your name’ – will expand your skillset. This will make you a more attractive prospect for any employer in the future, and of course enhances your CV. Joining organisations will ensure you keep in the loop regarding industry developments and technological advances. You may also like to look at coaching and mentoring, whereby you will undergo a career appraisal that will identify areas where you can explore. A good Career Coach will both find out where you are in your current situation and identify areas you can address for career advancement that will keep you relevant – both for your current career path, and the road yet to be explored.

Shy and (un)retiring

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The current economic climate is leading to all kinds of unusual phenomena. From the continuation of work from home to the adoption of hybrid working models, people are changing their lifestyles and working life routines in a multitude of ways. One aspect is that people are continuing to work beyond their retiring age – but also some are coming back into the workplace, having already retired. This can be for many reasons, from financial necessity to personal choice. However, ‘unretirement’ is an undeniable trend that is worth looking at.

Uncertainty and finances

Research from the Office for National Statistics has revealed that there are now more people aged 50 and over in work – or actively looking for work – than since just prior to the pandemic. This is driven by a  number of key factors that are affecting everyone, in one degree or another. These new findings identify upwardly spiralling inflation, volatile financial markets and the soaring cost of living as leading to the ‘great unretirement’.

Some of the statistics are telling. Of the increase of 116,000 over-50s working or looking for work in the past year, more than half of them were men aged over 65. This is an increase of 8.5%. This research also showed that 37,000 more women over 65 were also now in work or looking for work. Experts deem this increase is being driven by former retirees returning to work, rather than people working longer.

Volatile financial markets are said to be creating significant fear and uncertainty in people’s perceptions of their future retirement income. Any kind of pension pot can be affected by all kinds of factors and in some instances, if there have been financial difficulties with the business, or any kind of personal fallings-out (such as divorce), this can have a big impact on savings, assets and pension arrangements.

Wellbeing and benefits

In addition to the obvious financial benefits, there are of course a variety of positive impacts on a worker’s wellbeing by continuing to work. For many the void or retirement simply isn’t for them. Working can provide a sense of purpose and direction, of motivation and routine – not to mention exercise, both mental and physical, depending on the role. The social aspect is very important to many people too.

The ‘great unretirement’ also keys into some important aspects of Career Evolution’s vocation. We work a great deal with people who are getting work-ready and getting used to entering (or re-entering) the jobs market or workplace once more. We guide our clients on using networks and keeping up-to-date on developments in their sectors. It’s always worth subscribing to newsletters, or retaining links to your sectors via networking or even socialising, just to keep up to speed on any new legislation or technological developments. In this way, it won’t be such as shock when you re-enter the working environment.

With the jobs market becoming particularly competitive, it’s more important than ever to gain an edge. By continuing to keep in touch with your network and being creative and flexible about what a career might look like, it will ensure that you are prepared – should you want to ‘unretire’ yourself and enter the world of work once more.

Speak to our team if you are in need of our services.

WELCOME TO OUR FOURTH VLOG!

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Welcome to our new vlog from Career Evolution!

We will be sharing weekly advice and updates from the industry on outplacement, career management, and coaching.

In our fourth vlog, our director, Sue Thomas, rounds up some of our posts from July, including developing your personal brand, portfolio careers, identifying transferable skills, and a case study with Peter McCarthy.

Watch the video below:

See our first vlog here, our second vlog here and our third vlog here.