Sirona Says

"Get to work, or it will be the Cattle Prod for you!"

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been much talk in the press about the idiotic decision to use a TV presenter to help drive down the numbers of long term unemployed people. It seems that many of the writers agree with me that a self opinionated, arrogant and 'ratings focused' person is probably not the way forward, and that there must be a better more focused way to help this group of people.
Enter the Australians, with an idea of how they should approach their long term unemployed.

Recently, one of their new politicians, John Williams, made his maiden speech in the Australian Parliament. In it, he was a little outspoken(!!!) on the subject of unemployment......."There are many people living on employment benefits who were 'determined not to work'. The long term unemployed are simply getting a free ride on behalf of tax payers of Australia and it is about time they received a touch on the backside with a cattle prodder to get them off their butts and actually do some work!"

He continued, "Those who were capable of working should not receive a dole cheque unless they made some contribution to society." He continued, "I believe that if you are in good health and are capable of working, then you should work. However, I do believe that the genuine unemployed should have a safety net and should be helped through their tough times until they find employment."

Now, while I wouldn't disagree that there is probably a section of the long term unemployed in the UK that could probably do with a cattle prod, it is of course not the approach (shame, I hear you cry!!!). But the metephoric short sharp shock could be used.
I agree with John Williams, that a good number of them have no intention to work, and that something needs to get these people of their backsides!  The trouble is that we have gone so far down the politically correct route, that it would probably be against their human rights to make them work, if they don't want to!!

It got me thinking, what other methods - fair or foul - could be used to "encourage" the hard core "don't want to work" unemployed back to work?
I will start the ideas with something simple..........Fair - manditory community work projects, Foul - Chinese water torture!

Now its your turn, what would you do? 

Teach your children to speak chinese!

If you think we have got talent issues in the UK, then think again! China, now one of the new superpowers of the world, is needing to feed it's exponential growth with talent. Therein lies the problem. One, there isn't enough skilled people to meet the huge demand and two, one of their biggest problems is retaining employees, particularly Management.
Competition is stiff for Managers in China and high turnover just compounds the issue. Management-level attrition rates in China are more than 25 percent greater than the global average, and replacing a high-performing manager can cost 300% to 2,000% of that individual’s salary.

Jonas Prising, President of Manpower North America, says,“The United States is the biggest investor country in China, yet many of its companies are struggling to generate the growth they want because of people issues. Recruiting the right people, retaining the best staff and developing leaders of the future are difficult tasks in any market. For foreign companies operating in China, there is the added difficulty of understanding how to adapt talent management strategies to the country’s unique business culture and values.”

The rapid economic and social change that has already impacted China in a big way in the past few years has spurred a skills shortage that is expected to be massive in the next few years. The labour shortage in China is even more problematic than in other nations because it is most severe among managers. 40% of companies find it difficult to fill senior management positions.  Mid-level managers are also in short supply, particularly those who are Chinese nationals and can interact with local people.

So is it any wonder that search for talent in China has gone online, in this extreme example of a candidate driven market. The job board stats would be a dream for online companies in the UK, with the Chinese employments sites such as Zhaopin.com and 51job.com having daily hits in excess 4 million. But when you realise that China’s population is well be over 1.3 billion people you realise that it is just a drop in the ocean.

So if you are advising your children which GSCE's to study, or you really do want to give you little generation Z'ers a leg up into the global workplace, then start them studying mandarin or cantonese!!

Discrimination, what discrimination? - China's 'Skills for helping the disabled' guide

China has never been known for their caring and compassionate approach to people, so I guess their latest public statement will not necessarily surprise too many people. The subject is of course the Olympic Games in Beijing later this year. Like all large sporting events, they need many volunteers to make them work, and there is no shortage of people wanting to take part. But they have embarked on a specific recruitment campaign  - to find people that will help with all the disabled athletes and visitors to the Olympic Games. That's great, until you see some of the content in their 'Skills for Helping the Disabled' guide!! Here are some of the pointers in the recruiting guide that describe disabled people as:

• "special group with unique personalities and ways of thinking"
• "Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective. They can be stubborn and controlling . . . defensive and have a strong sense of inferiority"
• "Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially when they are called crippled or paralysed. Do not use ‘cripple’ or ‘lame’ even if you are just joking."
• "volunteers should not sit in someone’s wheelchair just to satisfy a personal interest"
• "often optically disabled people are introverted"

I believe legal action is already forthcoming - it's a shame some of the highly paid consultants didnt consult with the western world first!!

The Y Generation speaks it's mind - at the TARGETjobs 2008 National Graduate Recruitment Awards

Last week saw  an awards event that will make graduate employers take note. The Targetjobs 2008 National Graduate Recruitment Awards are now an established benchmark with regards to who are getting it right when it comes to graduate recruitment. As the majority of the awards (all except one), were voted for by 34,000 students  - the classic Generation Y demographic - the results do provide a great view of what these future recruits see as the way forward.

The 'big' award went to IBM UK - The Graduate Employer of the Year. The big blue machine is obviously reinventing itself for the youth of today, but with the scale of the organisation they are able to offer very diverse career opportunities. For all this, they still don't value recruitment enough to put them on their homepage - you try and find recruitment on it!! 

The award for the Best Graduate Recruitment Website went to QinetiQ, a fast growing employer of choice. Nice touch to appeal to Gen Y'ers is the new technology video section, not surprisingly aimed at energy saving - a particular favourite with them at the moment! You just compare this clean informative and appealing site to the brand new career site from McDonald's which is truly awful (what is with all that black)!!

I guess the 'most obvious' award  - The Most Popular Graduate Recruiter -IT and Comms - goes to, yes you have guessed it.....Google. Self explanatory really. But it will be interesting to see if the US issues will effect Google's UK recruiting for next year.

There was an award I was looking forward reviewing - The Best Student Marketing Campaign (50+ grads) - was won by GCHQ . The problem is that as it is part of the British intelligence service, I unsurprisingly couldn't find it!!

Reed's Recruiting Emergency is behind the times!!

Anyone seen this offer from Reed today (it arrived in my inbox)? They have tied their summer advertising campaign into the 'old'  999 emergency services dialing number - pricing the package is £999.

Come on you Reed marketing department isn't our government telling us that we are part of the European community? If you didn't already know the European wide number you dial for the emergency services is now 112.

So as a business within the European community I would be more than happy to have the same deal, based on the 112 emergency number, at £112!!! .........chances of that happening .............slim!!!   (It would be a great bargain though!!)

Japan's idea of a work/life balance

In the western world we are all complaining about talent shortages, and are already starting to plan to recruit the younger Z generations. But in Japan the government are taking their future shrinking workforce to a new level!!

They are trying to convince women that the work/life balance actually involves having more children AND staying at work!!  They have already failed in many attempts to get women to work in the first place, and combined with declining birth numbers and more people retiring  this has contributed to a forecasted shortfall of 20million+ workers in future years. So now they have moved on to try and convince women to have more children and either go to work or stay at work! Baby bonuses will be next, or commission schemes based on the number of babies you have! And what happens if they don't play ball with the government? Let's not go there.........

New Job boards - are they a front for massive ID theft?

This post started out as a flippant remark made to someone yesterday, but it made me think further.
There seems to have been another influx of new job boards coming into the already crowded space recently. My question is simple and worrying at the same time. What would stop a foreign owner (doesn't have to be foreign of course) setting up a job board? Then building up a database of CV's quickly, with some fancy promises, only to disappear to 'farm' all the personal information they have collected and commit massive ID theft?

As far as I am aware there is nothing to stop them doing just this. All they have to do is set up a company, fill in the Data Protection Act form (which they will obviously abuse), build an appealing website and off they go!!

Slightly worrying thought isn't it?

Banks being innovative with Web 2.0 - surely not?

The usually conservative banking industry is starting to wake up to the fact that Web 2.0 is changing the way their employees and customers interact with each other. It is two Canadian Banks that have taken the lead - Scotiabank and Royal Bank of Canada.

Scotiabank is using technology from Microsoft to introduce an internal Web 2.0 social networking platform aimed at encouraging information sharing and collaboration among its staff. This platform enables employees to share, store, organise, search and manage information using blogs and wikis. As part of the programme, the bank is creating online user profiles for staff members. Commenting on the move, Robert Fournier, SVP, enterprise architecture and methodology, Scotiabank, says: "By leveraging the knowledge and experience of the Scotiabank team with a business focused social networking platform we are enabling staff to better serve customers by sharing best practices and identifying experts and skill sets regardless of geographic and organizational boundaries."

Royal Bank of Canada has  launched a financial advice blog written by students that can be accessed via its fan page on social networking site Facebook. They have selected six full time post-secondary students at Canadian universities to write daily blogs on money management, which along with videos, are available through the bank's Web site as well as the "RBC Bankbook" page on Facebook.

I wonder how many other banks will be taking the same innovative steps, and moving with the times. Living in the UK, with our ultra conservative banking community I fear that these 'innovations' will take many years to filter through!!

Alison Wright the departing Chief Marketing Officer at EGG gets free industry CV promotion

Is it me or does the marketing world like to look after their own? I have just had my weekly news email from Marketing Week, and one of the headlines is, "A marketer looking for a new posting is Alison Wright, who is leaving her position as chief marketing officer at Egg". Now obviously it is a shame that Alison has lost / or is leaving her job (likely due to the merger), but Marketing Week don't stop there!!   In the headline content of this email (sent out to 1000's in the marketing industry, probably including many recruiters), Alison Wright has been given a big favour with some 'availability' promotion, and some marketing of her career. Not her fault I know but does it have to this blatant?

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!