Mar 11 Newsletter

Welcome to our newsletter!

Wow what an exciting month we’ve had at Beaumont Consulting, breaking some FIRST EVER company records in relation to job flow.

Our Permanent job flow almost doubled from January to February, we have never had that much of an increase, certainly not in the last 5 years. There is talk of confidence throughout the market, so those figures confirm the way things look like they are going. Brilliant!

What does that really mean? Well for those looking for work, there are more opportunities coming on to the market. Remember not all jobs get advertised, so if you are looking, keep in touch with one of our Consultants and ensure they know what you want to hear about.

For those looking to fill roles, the extra competition in the market means you have to work harder and faster to secure the candidates you want, because if you don’t, your competitors will. You may also find your response to your advertising decreases and it becomes increasingly harder to find that perfect candidate. That’s where we can be invaluable; our candidate networks give us access to a wider range of candidates, so when you can’t find the right candidate, we usually can!

We have to also consider that a significant increase in opportunities in the market, will mean more people find new opportunities, which means more people change jobs, which means more vacancies get advertised and so it goes on… media reports are already eluding to the fact that 2011 with be a year of extremely high turnover, figures from 30 – 60% are being talked about which is insane! Many of our clients are also confirming that this is the case. Just last week we held a complimentary breakfast addressing the issue of retention with Kim Seeling Smith which received rave reviews. If you want a copy of her top 10 tips for keeping your critical people – please contact Patricia Leech our Operations Manager.

On another exciting note, we will be launching a new retention tool in March, which is a first for the recruitment industry, designed to give you critical information to support you in retaining your new hires as well as increasing their productivity and effectiveness. So watch this space for more information or give me a call to discuss.

Have a great month.

Nikki Beaumont

market

Job Market Reaches Tipping Point

By Kate Southam

Newly released data shows Australia’s job market is heating up placing new demands on organisations to “sell” what they have to offer as an employer.

Recent reports reveal job openings in January increased by 12.8 per cent adding to gains in October and November.

“Workers are geared-up and confident” about changing jobs and will even move across the country to get the best deal according to IPA Recruitment’s CEO Tricia Phillips. CareerOne’s own research – due out next week – reveals a majority of workers in a survey of nearly 1,000 people were currently looking for new jobs.

Ms Phillips advises employers to review all aspects of their recruitment process immediately including their speed to hire and the ability of their key people to “sell” their organisation to job hunters.

“Employers need to really understand why people exit their organisation and also ensure everyone involved in their recruitment process knows how best to sell their organisation to candidates,” says Ms Phillips.

“If they used to take three weeks to short list candidates then they might need to speed that up or face finding their shortlist is empty because those candidates have accepted jobs elsewhere [in that time] .”

IPA’s monthly report is based on job vacancies placed by clients with its consultants in 28 branches around the country. Industry sectors include call and contact centres, executive, legal, industrial and trades, technical and engineering, mining and resources, governments, logistics and health.

Other key monthly job data is due out in the coming week including the Advantage and ANZ surveys. The Australian Bureau of Statistics was due to release its official unemployment rate for January next week but has been postponed the release date due to Queensland’s floods and cyclone. The unemployment dropped to 5 per cent in December, the lowest level since January 2009.

As rebuilding projects begin it is predicted that job openings across services industries, manufacturing and trade sectors would put upward pressure on wages in those sectors.

Ms Phillips says employers face additional difficulties due to the increased mobility of the workforce. She says local workers as well as those coming in from overseas were prepared to go anywhere in Australia to secure the best working conditions.

Kate Southam is the Editor of CareerOne.com.au and author of the Ask Kate column and the Cube Farmer blog about work matters.

webinar

Webinar

For those that were unable to attend our Breakfast Seminar, The Critical Path to Retaining Critical People by Kim Seeling Smith we are able to bring you this in a webinar. Please follow this linke to the webinar to view it.

If you are interested in receiving the white papers that surround this seminar please contact Patricia Leech.

network

Social networking: the challenge for employers

Ben Williams, 13 December 2010

As a result of the growth of online social networking sites in recent times, employers are being forced to address a number of related issues. Thoughts and opinions that would have once been exchanged in private, now find their way onto the internet where they can be viewed by large numbers of individuals or are even made available to the public as whole.

A common problem appears to be that employees consider their comments on such sites to be invisible to their employer. This was clearly the case in January 2009, when staff of a well known British store were caught branding customers as 'idiots' and 'cheap little b******,' on an online forum. Shortly before that, British Airways staff referred to passengers as 'smelly and annoying’. Recently, an employee, after adding her boss as an online friend, later described him as being lecherous towards her and said," My boss is always making me do s*** stuff just to p*** me off!!" It took a matter of hours before her fate was sealed in a response from her boss which itself became an internet sensation, with images of the exchange emailed around the world. He replied: "Hi Lindsay, I guess you forgot about adding me on here?" before going on to sack her.

The most recently reported matter concerned a bank worker who lost her redundancy payment when minutes after having received the announcement of widespread redundancies, she described it as the "best news ever" on her Facebook wall. She added, "I speak for myself when I say WoOOOOooooOooooHOoooOooOoo it was pretty damn obvious something like this was coming". A colleague reported her comments and she was dismissed for breaching her ‘declaration of secrecy’. Whilst this matter may well find its way to a Tribunal for determination, it exposes some interesting questions for employers such as what they can do to protect themselves from unwelcome exposure in this way.

Facebook alone has over 500 million reported users with over 200 million of them accessing the site through mobile phones and 700 billion minutes are spent on the site each month. Employers are therefore well advised to adopt strict policies for internet and telephone use during working hours. However, when it comes to online incidents occurring outside of working hours, this involves a difficult exercise of ensuring a balance is struck between the employee’s right to a private life with the employer’s right to protect their business and its reputation. Employers can only take reasonable action in response to comments recorded by employees. Personal prejudices must be kept to one side and action would only be appropriate if the employee has stated something that genuinely puts the reputation of a business at risk. This will entail close scrutiny of what is written and who would be able to see it.

This is clearly a developing area of employment law, and with social networking growing ever more popular by the day, it is likely there will be many more dismissals as a consequence of alleged misuse.

Ben Williams is a barrister at Kings Chambers in Manchester and Leeds, UK

Eight key DOs and DON'Ts for day one

An employee's first day of work is critical in getting the relationship with their new employer off to a good start, but many organisations fail to ensure the experience is a positive one, says human capital expert Anthony Sork.

The four key drivers of attachment are security, trust, acceptance and belonging, he says.

"Where an individual doesn't feel secure, doesn't feel that there's trust, doesn't feel they are accepted or belong, there is an increased risk they will look elsewhere.

"And those perceptions are formed within the first 120 days of employment," he says, starting with the all-important day one.

1. Don't delegate the "meet and greet"
A new employee's immediate manager or supervisor should be the one who welcomes them and shows them around when they arrive on day one, says Sork, managing director of Sork HC.

It is easy for a busy manager to think, "OK, I'll shoot them off to the centralised induction and then I can get on with doing the job that I'm meant to be doing," Sork says.

But welcoming a new worker is not a task that should be rushed or delegated. In fact, those first weeks and months are the time when the manager needs to focus the most time on their new employee.

"It's going to be more pain and stress for the manager during that time, but the investment that they make will pay off in enhancing attachment, reducing the risk of attrition and increasing discretionary effort and performance," he says.

2. Introduce them to senior leaders
Introducing a new employee to senior leaders early on should also be a priority.

All too often, employees turn up and senior leaders are "a shape that walks by, and you get told who they are after they've passed", Sork says.

But senior leaders should be aware that someone new is starting, and make an effort to introduce themselves to the individual. Even a brief introduction shows workers it is not just their manager, but the organisation that cares about them, he says.

3. Deliver on your promises
Following through on terms and conditions that were agreed during the recruitment process is also vital, Sork says.

"If you said they were going to get a new mobile phone, then make sure they've got a new mobile phone," and if you said it was going to be "new", make sure it really is.

"Otherwise you start to erode the trust perception and that's not a good thing to happen on day one," he warns.

4. Give them some space
Basic physical orientation, including knowing where bathrooms and lunch rooms are, is another day-one must. Providing the worker with some personal space is particularly important.

"That could be a locker... it could be a desk, it could be a room, but they need to have ownership of some personal space from day one. Otherwise what you have is someone who feels displaced, so they don't actually feel like they've got a base to go back to, or somewhere to store some personal effects."

5. Enable access and prioritise safety
A new employee's ability to get in and out of the building "under their own steam" - without having to rely on someone else - is also vital.

And personal safety is "one of those deal breakers", Sork says.

"If the perception is that my organisation doesn't care about my personal safety, then that really starts to erode that perception of trust and security."

However, employers often think, "we'll get to that" because it is covered in a centralised induction. "That may not happen for a couple of months... It's actually very important to do those things up front," Sork says.

6. Lay out a plan for the coming days
Providing the worker with a sense of what they will be doing the following day, and in days to come, can help them to develop and meet reasonable expectations.

Give them milestones or expected learning outcomes as well, Sork says.

7. Allow them to contribute
"Another really important thing is that on day one an individual needs to feel that they are a contributing member of the new social structure," he says.

"Something as simple as teaching them the phone system [could] become a really important part of an individual feeling they can actually contribute to the team."

However, a new employee should not be lumped with the jobs nobody else wants just because they are new. "You want to ensure the individual has a clear experience of the types of duties and responsibilities... they have agreed to take on in accepting the role."

8. Don't make comparisons
Comparing a worker to their predecessor is another all-too-common mistake, Sork says.

"Acknowledge the good work [their predecessor] did... but get excited about the new way this new member is going to make the role their own," he says.

Article used with the permission of www.hrdaily.com.au.

breakfast

Our next Breakfast seminar

We are seeing the effects that social media is having on businesses, how we, the public, perceive them and whether we will continue to support them.

It has been recently reported that all four major Australian banks now have a social media team working to maintain their Facebook and Twitter accounts. These teams are also in place to promote new products and respond to messages from customers on their public social networking profiles in a hands-on approach to monitoring their brands online. Indeed WestPac has now amassed a following of over 3204 people on Twitter.

Is Social Media still a quagmire of confusion?

We are now running low on available space for our next Breakfast Seminar, How To Engage Your Customers Through Social Media with Lara Solomon of Social Rabbit.

Chief Rabbit at Social Rabbit, Lara Solomon will introduce you to the wonderful world of social media. The session will explain what social media is (tip: it’s more than Facebook and Twitter!), who is using social media and how it can be used in business to engage your customers and promote your brand.

Details:

Date: Thursday 24th March
Time: 7.45-8.45 (registration from 7.30)
Location: CBD
Investment: Complimentary

If you would like to attend this complimentary Breakfast Seminar, please RSVP with your details and the details of any colleague you will be attending with to Taheeya.rahman@beaumontconsulting.com.au

Recruitment & Selection Training

For those of you that have previously been unable to attend our morning Recruitment & Selection training we are now able to bring you the following date and time:

Date: Tuesday 22nd March 2011
Time: 1.00-5.00pm
Location: CBD

To confirm your place on this training session please email
Taheeya at taheeya.rahman@beaumontconsulting.com.au

Follow our Events Linked In group here and be the first to know about new events we are planning.

temp

Temp of the Month

This month our $100 Temp of the Month prize goes to ….. Mitchell Leroy.

This is what the client had to say:
"Mitchell has taken on his territory with enthusiasm and a professionalism that is paramount in his role. He is very well regarded by the customers in his QLD territory and that has contributed to the success of the Customer Service team in winning the Customer Service Award from one of our largest customers for last year. He has proven himself to be a valued asset to the team and our company. Well done Mitchell."
Trish W - Customer Service Leader

Well done from the team at Beaumont!