Sirona Says

A change is as good as a rest!

Having seen Stephen's excellent rebrand of his Recruitment Views blog, it prompted me to make some ammendments as well. Nothing too drastic, but after a year I felt a change was needed, hence the makeover!  I hope you like the changes!

Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2008 - but where are the retailers?

Having just read my Sunday Times today, in particular the 100 Best Companies To Work For 2008 (250- 4999 employees) conducted by Best, I was very surprised with the results. My surprise is not with the winners, but with the companies that are missing. I am not being specific to individual companies, but to one of the largest employing sectors in the UK  - Retail. More than 3.2 million people work in retail and it is now the UK’s third largest industry behind business services and the health sector, and yet it did not feature once in the Top 100 companies to work for!! Not one retail company!

The only savior came in the form of Mothercare, who came 18th in the Top 20 Big Companies to Work For 2008 (5000 employees+). Surely Mothercare are not the only retailer worth working for in the UK, are they? What has happened to all those other top name retailers? Are they really that poor to work for?

With the continual demand for talent, it isn't a good advert for the retail sector is it? There is nothing like making it hard for yourself is there? All those talented graduates pay good credence to award lists like these and actively target these companies to work for. So is it any wonder the retail sector is always moaning about the lack of talent?

Cities beginning with letter 'B' are not good places to work

If you are looking for a new job, don't go to Brighton, Bristol or Belfast to find one. Thats the message from Badenoch & Clark’s latest quarterly Happiness at Work survey. Apparently, office workers in these cities are the least happy at work - I find that strange having worked in two of them, they are not that bad, honestly!!

The survey goes on to say that the unhappiest profession is HR (again!) with nearly a third of them unhappy in their jobs. Maybe that is why so many HR people give recruiters a hard time then - if they are not happy in their jobs, they could be taking it out on recruiters! (Maybe it's just me who has experienced this??)

The staggering figure the survey does highlight is that 48% (yes, nearly half!) of workers want to change jobs in 2008!! There is certainly a few retention AND recruitment issues  to be addressed there then!