Increasing employment of agency workers will be important for building workforce flexibility in the next two years, most business leaders surveyed by the World Employment Confederation said.

The survey found that a significant proportion of employers working on these initiatives have implemented them by partnering with an HR services provider.

WEC’s research also showed that multiple strategies exist to attract talent.

The most common approach (cited 52% of respondents) is targeting and supporting talent from underemployed sectors of the workforce, such as people who are long-term unemployed, disabled people, people with criminal records or from ethnic minorities. Other strategies include:

-        Making the job application process more accessible (47%)

-        Offering specialist support to refugees and asylum seekers (36%)

-        Using new recruitment platforms to access untapped talent (33%)

-        Reducing formal education requirements when hiring. (32%)

“As employers around the world wrestle with major labour and skills shortages, it’s becoming critical that they pull every lever available to them in an effort to close the gap,” said Denis Pennel, managing director of the World Employment Confederation. “Enabling diverse forms of work is one of them and policymakers must also wake up to these shifts in worker preferences and ensure that the full opportunities of the modern labour market can be accessed by every part of society.”