We found that 60% of the audience today have staff shortages. So can we go overseas? Are there cost implications, and tied on to that, can we have targeted recruitment, such as females that are out of the workforce?

We did an event earlier in the year, Seamus, with Allstate where they looked at trying to target, particularly women who had left and had been out of programming, computer programmers, for quite some time and said, "Well, we know they've got the raw skills. If we bring them in, we can retrain them and get them back quickly." So what are the legal issues really by either recruiting or the cost, recruiting overseas or targeting specific groups?

Seamus: It's interesting when you mentioned the overseas aspect because that's something that probably in the last lot of months, maybe from around October, November time. It wasn't something that I was particularly up to speed on. I have to pick my hands up, just it wasn't something in terms of advising clients that had really risen before was my client base, but it has now from in around November. And I know that we've had Brexit, and we've had the settlement issues that have arisen and we've all got used to those.

But really, I mean, look, there are those various steps that you have to go through in relation to bring in somebody from outside the UK. You're obviously covered for anybody within Ireland but anybody outside the UK coming to work for you, then you need to go through the proper processes in relation to sponsorship and in relation to them making applications for permits to come into work in the UK. That process and, you know, it's a complex process, it's not straightforward, and it takes time. And so where you are making those endeavours, give yourself plenty of time.

And you can expedite the process in relation to sponsorship, you can pay an extra £500. But that doesn't guarantee that you're going to get on the fast list to get it done. It is tricky and specifically where at the minute what I've come across is a number of times, we require employees, talking about multinational clients here that require employees from other European states or from America to come over to do urgent training or working with equipment to provide assistance in relation to that. But the quarantine periods themselves are tricky from anybody coming over from another country into the UK, but then also on top of that, the permits have the necessary steps that you need to take, and particularly if they're bringing family, whether it's partners and children and things like that as well, so it is a complicated process. If you are looking to do that, make sure that you get good legal advice or advice from a proper authority that can hold your hand through it because it isn't straightforward.

On the other aspect of targeted recruitment, I think that is a resource that people can tap into to see if they can seek to recruit, maybe, where they're liked on certain sort of types of people I suppose within their organisation. I'm aware of specifically looking at targeting females. I mean, in fact that for me is really about looking at the resources that you have, doing your impact assessments looking to see what your workforce looks like and where you need to make those improvements in relation to whether it is on gender or other types of diversity that you need to bring into the workforce. But certainly, I wouldn't get overly concerned where there are shortages in relation to that within your workforce that people might say are health concerns. Am I discriminating? Am I positively discriminating? Am I doing something wrong here by looking at that? But no, I mean I think it's to be encouraged. I'm sure Mairead has some helpful thoughts in and around that also.

Scott: Okay, Mairead. I'll give it to you. There you go.

Mairead: Yes, sorry. No, Seamus, I was just sort of making some notes as you were chatting there just regarding the sort of the visa application process. I suppose probably those areas that would traditionally have had a skill shortage and that demand for talent remains so across IT, finance, engineering, and sort of the scientific sectors, and organisations that we work with who would have to sort of skill shortages in those areas will continue to sort of look at bringing people in overseas. But as Seamus mentioned, there is a very specific process and there's a barrier. There's a framework around where the rules will apply for that.

I think some of the other organisations that we work with through last year were saying the biggest risk to their businesses is their people, and then would tend to be in sort of production or sort of hospitality and so on where they have a huge workforce of probably low paid individuals and a lot of whom are coming from EU countries and that poses a significant barrier to those organisations. How do we recruit those individuals who perhaps go back to their home countries? How do we recruit talent coming into the organisations and that is challenging, that is challenging for those organisations, in terms of how they sort of look at those skills.

But yeah, I think, for with regards to looking at trying to attract underrepresented individuals into the business, you know, a lot of tech companies are looking to open that market up and probably rather than positively discriminating is looking at how they can be flexible as an organisation to bring people on board who potentially had barriers because of child care issues, because of location issues and so on, so they are looking at returning to work or individuals who've got caring responsibilities and being more flexible in their approach with regards to hours worked, and with regards to where they can work and so on.

And that has sort of targeted quite a lot of females who've had to leave the workplace because of caring responsibilities but equally, they open it up to anybody. And I think that makes it a really fair process, but they are increasing the awareness. They're actively going out to look at individuals who've had to leave workforce for whatever their caring responsibilities are and trying to be more flexible in their approach to make it work and where they're bringing that talent back in again which is fantastic to see.

Scott: Yeah, I suppose, Christine, it's one of the big issues. At Legal Island actually we're doing online events and webinars is that opens up to disabled people who wouldn't be able to travel or couldn't travel during various hours. There's a lot of good benefits there, but it also means that, albeit there's some legal issues, Seamus. You could employ somebody and Abu Dhabi, or the U.S., or you don't even have to hire them. You could just bring somebody on a contract basis, self-employed, perhaps, and the fact that there'll be somebody and they're some work elsewhere, you know, I don't know, maybe the odd tax implication where you get the earnings from.

But other than that, it does really open it up to, even if you don't deal with an individual to get work done remotely in India, in China, wherever you want, so the technology means that I suppose you could look at, do we really need employees, or on the other hand, do employees have to be flexible enough that they could maybe have many add jobs, they could do different tasks for different people and be self-employed in some roles, and employed in another. I mean it's an open up. You look at the gig economy cases that have been coming up. It's going up in the future.

Seamus, just before we look at that and we tend to, believe or not, close up soon, we've got down here . . . Somebody just said there can be significant tax implications with employees working abroad and indeed there are less so if it's somebody coming from England obviously just coming back to Northern Ireland to be based here. The cost of this tax base is also significant, so I'm not, I'm certainly not putting it down. I'm just saying that there are opportunities there and there've been big issues. We discussed those in the past podcast as well, Seamus, about people who may be from Europe, who during the lockdown ended up just going home to work from Poland or Lithuania or whatever but they're still based, if you like extensively in London.