Eloise’s August 2019 News – New Leadership, Recruitment Challenges, Summer Temp Cover and Headspace

Hello and welcome to August!

I hope you are well and enjoying our good old British summer time! Why is it always the same… lovely sunshine when we’re in the office and rain at the weekends?

Well, we did have an amazing week not long ago. I guess all offices across the country were having the same conversation; ‘how hot does it have to be in an office before everyone gets sent home?’. Am I right? I remember writing about this very question a few years ago. There is no legal upper or lower limit for offices. It is discretionary what employers decide to do.

Although, having said this, I also had conversations with some clients who had said to their teams about coming into work in shorts, but their air conditioning was so good people still needed jumpers and jeans on!

New leadership – Recruiting the best team for Boris

Anyway, enough chat about the weather. As you know, we have a new Prime Minister. Boris Johnson is now at the helm. Like him or not, it is interesting watching him switch into ‘leader-mode’.

He seems to have been tackling three main areas in his early days in his new job:

Team building / recruitment
Customer engagement
Quick wins

To surround himself with the right people, he has been building his new core team. People he trusts. People he considers have the right experience or shared goals. In some cases, people he thinks might bring something different to the table. All new leaders and managers like to work out who their allies are.

We’ve all seen the chicken cuddling and hi-vis wearing images from the past week as he tours the UK, meets the Queen and waves from the door of Number 10. He looks to be working hard to try to get the people of the UK on side as quickly as he can. Sending out a message that he’s not going to dither, he’s going to get things done. That he’s out there on the streets getting his hands dirty.

This is a key strategy for any new leader; integrate with your wider team, be one of them. Find out what you can implement to make them happy really quickly – the quick wins. Is there something niggly that you can sort out that would make a big difference to them? Get it done. Prove your value and worth. Get the wider team backing you.

The things we can learn about leadership styles from politics I find very interesting. And it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. It’s all very well making big speeches. He’ll need to be able to walk the walk to keep the UK’s top leadership role.

Recruitment challenges – Summer 2019

As we go into the second month of Q3, I have been looking at the trends we are seeing in the recruitment market.

I have been writing about the candidate shortage for the last 24 months. But the market now has three main trends that we’re seeing:

Tight talent pool
Pay increases to secure talent
Employee churn rates increasing

The talent pool is still as challenging as it has ever been. There are very few people actively looking for a new job across Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, as well as across the UK. But businesses are also finding that to secure the person they want for a role they are having to increase pay and packages to make their business more attractive.

This is also having a knock-on effect on employee churn rates. People who are having their heads turned are being offered these bigger packages elsewhere. And businesses who didn’t have a recruitment search issue are finding themselves in this position when backfilling.

The main takeaways here are that if you have a new position to fill, you need to make sure your business has strong employee engagement to help attract new people. And that you are doing all you can to retain your current team. Have a read through some of our other blog posts for some useful info –

East Midlands Salary Survey

At Vanilla Recruitment we have recently launched a salary survey to help you benchmark your roles. Plus, we have a vast number of contacts and passive candidates registered with us who are waiting for their next career move to come up.

Get in touch to find out more about how we can support you through your next recruitment journey.

Summer cover – Seasonal temps

If your staffing challenge is seasonal, you haven’t left it too late to get temporary cover.

If you need cover for a day, a week or longer, drop us a line. My team can work with you to get an experienced person into your business to help you maintain your service levels, at a moments’ notice.

Get in touch immediately by calling 01858 898058 or email Sarah Clarke on [email protected]

Headspace – Mental health at work

And talking about the seasonal staffing challenge, now is a great time to help your team focus on their mental health.

It’s such a key topic and vitally important for all us. Encouraging your team to take holidays and achieve a proper break is not only good for them but also for the business.

I hear lots of people going on holiday say, “don’t worry I’ll keep an eye on my emails”. I used to be guilty of this myself. I couldn’t leave my business. I was constantly checking emails and putting in phone calls for updates. But this isn’t actually good for anyone.

We all need clear headspace. Time to not have our heads whirring with work. The rest you achieve by actually switching off is hugely important. We all need time to properly relax and rejuvenate.

I urge you all to make sure you allow yourself positive time away from work and enable your teams to do the same. You’ll reap the benefits. Here’s a useful blog post for you – Health and wellbeing at work – CIPD improving mental health in the workplace

BBQ time

August sees the return of the annual Vanilla Recruitment team and family day. I love getting everyone together for a day of kicking back full of fun and games.

We’re a close team and I think it’s so important to get everyone’s families involved too. Other halves, partners, children and dogs, come together to eat and chat.

I’ve got my fingers firmly crossed for good weather, but either way, we’ll make the best of it. I’ll share some of the photos next month.

I hope you all have a great August and I’ll be back in your inbox in September.

Best wishes

Eloise

We recruit throughout the East Midlands covering Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland and the surrounding areas, especially Market Harborough, Lutterworth, Leicester, Corby and Kettering. We help people find their perfect job and match suitable jobseekers with businesses looking to hire the best candidates across our five specialisms – Sales, Marketing, Accountancy & Finance, HR and Office.