He said that one of the “dimensions that's changed radically across industry is what people are looking for in a job”.

“There's an understanding now that stability isn't guaranteed wherever you work, so it's more about the experience and the association with the people you're working with,” Da Costa said.

“Where am I going to get that return? Where will I actually enjoy going to work every day?

“It's not just about the task. It's about the environment and about the culture of the business.”

According to Da Costa, some managers are making life far too difficult for themselves when it comes to building a strong appeal to current and prospective staff.

“I think often people get the impression that you've got to have complexity and a convoluted process to find out what it is that people want,” he said.

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“Often it's the littlest things. Just recognition, acknowledgement, courtesy and respect. They're things we crave as humans and people are no different at work.

“I don't know that it's that complicated. It just needs attention and simply asking a question will often tell you what you need to know in terms of what people want.”

Da Costa told Defence Connect that SMEs are becoming more attractive than many of the larger firms.

“Now, typically we see people gravitating to smaller businesses for that reason. Where they feel connected, they feel valued, they feel challenged and there's that sense of belonging,” he said.

“I see one of the challenges for the primes and the other bigger businesses is trying to replicate that in a large environment.

“It's just not an easy thing to achieve when you've got such scale, but where it can be done, it's going to offer an alternative to employees that they're not able to get elsewhere.”