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The UK’s ‘pingdemic’ has exacerbated staff shortages, with over 72,000 UK job ads marked as ‘urgent’. New research from Adzuna has found that between 19th-25th July, there were 1,116,454 advertised job vacancies, making it the 11th consecutive week of over 1 million open jobs. This comes as a record number of users of the NHS COVID-19 were sent alerts in the week up to 21st July, with nearly 600,000 people identified as coming into close contact with someone who had tested positive, according to NHS figures. The pingdemic has led to many retailers having to change plans in order to have enough staff to operate, with supermarket Iceland announcing an initiative to recruit an extra 2,000 staff to cover absences, and M&S warning of potentially needing to reduce opening hours. Alongside this, the government continues to update advice about the list of sectors exempt from the need to isolate after being ‘pinged’ by the NHS COVID-19 app, which currently includes emergency service workers, border control staff, and food production workers. However, in most other sectors, the guidance remains to isolate if alerted by the app until the 16th August. As businesses scramble to recruit staff, more employers are advertising perks
