Ángel Sáenz de Cenzano (LinkedIn): "The employee is much more demanding after covid"

The LinkedIn offices in Madrid are a hymn to optimism.

Colorful, bright and with common spaces to connect.

As in many technology companies, there is no lack of table football or Asterix comics featured on the shelves.

Despite their modernity, they are going to be reformed to adapt to the new forms of work that the pandemic has brought.

With its rooms occupied at half gas, since the company offers its 40 employees the possibility of choosing where to work based on their productivity, the headquarters is a reflection of the transformation that Ángel Saénz de Cenzano (Madrid, 1972), director general for Spain and Portugal of the largest social network of professionals in the world, assures that he has experienced the platform in its 10 years of life in the Iberian Peninsula, the fifth largest market for LinkedIn in Europe, the Middle East and Africa,

“The company has changed a lot.

Being faithful to our vision and mission of generating economic opportunities for members of the global workforce and connecting all professionals on the planet, we have been evolving from a digital space where people put their profiles to look for professional opportunities, to a space of connection where professionals share value and content, and where there is currently a boiling of internal and external communication of companies and executives.

This goes far beyond a job portal, it is a professional connection platform where interaction grows in annual ranges of 30% or 40%”.

From the vantage point of the reference labor platform, Sáenz de Cenzano affirms that the pandemic has radically changed the world of work.

Thanks to telecommuting, flexible work.

“For the company it has meant a much greater ability to access talent because we have understood that its geographical location is not decisive.

And this is a great advantage.

At the same time, and this is social progress, a need for empathy has been generated, for a connection between the company and the employee.

The employee is much more demanding about where, with whom and why he is going to work.

And that reality has changed the labor market a lot.

Companies are realizing that they need to tell what their purpose is, their way of working, their level of flexibility... We are facing a turning point in the social contract of companies and workers”.

With nearly half of the Spanish workforce considering moving companies, according to the manager, LinkedIn's activity is "frantic" once pre-pandemic levels have recovered.

The new labor model has a lot to do with it.

“Remote work is globalizing talent.

It is no longer only searched in Madrid or Barcelona.

Why can't Alicante or Vigo or Santander be recipients and generators of talent?”, he says, while confirming the growing trend of professionals to move their residence away from big cities.

Because, according to Saénz de Cenzano, "traditional companies, which previously viewed the distributed talent with which

worked with skepticism , now accept it as a reality."

useless opposition

He does not understand those who reject the model.

“We should think that hybrid work is practically universal and, whoever is resisting introducing it, will do so for some time, but the reality is very stubborn and will force it to be generalized in sectors where it is possible.

In industries that cannot offer maximum flexibility, they can offer it in another way, in terms of schedules, capacities, benefits and services in the office.

Because if not, there will be an imbalance between sectors”, he foresees.

Today about 15% of the offers handled by the platform in the world are 100% remote work.

And the director of LinkedIn maintains that telecommuting makes a job accepted or rejected and not only in the technology sector.

It is closely related to what Saénz de Cenzano calls the Great Reflection (he does not like to talk about the Great Renunciation as the process by which millions of workers have left their jobs has been defined in the United States).

"In Spain, with the pandemic, people have reflected on how things were done in their company."

And, according to LinkedIn surveys, 21% of workers have already changed companies and 28% are thinking about doing so.

“Labor mobility is a reality.

Gone are the days when people worked at one or two companies throughout their career.

Young people will be between 10 and 15 during their professional career.

We are in a dynamic work environment and in which the turnover is much higher”, he assures.

"Once it is assumed that flexibility is a reality, the greatest concern of human resources directors is how to generate spaces that offer the greatest productivity and with which the well-being of employees can be taken care of."

Two other of the most recurring topics in the conversations that they have on the platform are the technological transformation and the development and commitment of the workforce, which are key right now, he appreciates.

The social network acquired by Microsoft in 2016 shows the thrust that training is acquiring with its own numbers: last year more than half a million hours were consumed in Spain on its learning platform.

In addition, the free training itineraries that it launched together with its parent company after the pandemic have been completed by more than a million people.

“Companies are taking the development of their employees much more seriously, they are investing much more in training of all kinds, be it technical or skills.

Adaptability and agility are the main values ​​of professionals, they are the key to the selection processes right now”, he says.

That is why the company "is going to try to normalize the representation of skills within professional profiles in a project called Skill Taxonomy",

LinkedIn, which intends to grow in Spain and, in fact, is going to hire a dozen professionals, especially for its editorial area, is having problems with false profiles and job offers.

“Cybersecurity challenges are universal to all companies.

We are happy to be the most reliable platform, but we are aware of our responsibility in content curation, which we handle directly.

We put a lot of emphasis on it.

It is key for us that people trust the network”, settles the manager.