• Swindon & Wiltshire Professional services
• Thursday October 23 2025

Despite economic shifts businesses still struggle to hire, say recruitment experts

With unemployment rising and the number of jobs vacancies falling, businesses should have no difficulty in filling roles.

But according to the Agile Recruitment team at Swindon-based HR Dept this isn’t proving to be the case.

Recruitment remains a significant and persistent challenge for SMEs operating throughout the Swindon and Wiltshire region.

The Agile Recruitment team are seeing an upsurge in enquiries – particularly from industries affected by seasonal demand changes, like hospitality, manufacturing and warehousing – because of ongoing recruitment difficulties.

And the team’s advice is, plan ahead and start recruiting now for roles that need to be filled over the Christmas period or for planned growth in the New Year.

“While our recruitment team has seen a significant increase in demand for our services, we are also aware that some employers are waiting to find out what happens in November’s Budget before making recruitment decisions,” said Geri Hardy, who heads up the Agile Recruitment team at the HR Dept Swindon and its sister company in London.

“Competition for quality candidates is fierce, especially in sectors like hospitality that need extra staff to cope with seasonal demand. Our advice is simple: don’t wait – start recruiting now.”

A planned recruitment strategy, and avoiding a last minute scrabble for staff, also improves staff retention. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the average staff turnover in the UK is 34 percent a year. Of this, 6.6 percent is due to employees no longer working, for instance retirement or long-term sickness, with the remaining majority finding jobs elsewhere.

Geri said: “The average varies from industry to industry, and notably hospitality has almost double the staff turnover rate compared to, for example, financial services.”