Sirona Says

What would you do with a career break?

Don't you just love it when a company does something different and innovative? Well, while spending last week in Dublin with a client, I came across this piece of innovation from an Irish Bank.

Permanent TSB has come up with the innovative (and brave) move of offering paid career breaks to their staff. Now, there may well have been other companies doing this, but have they done it in a recession? No, the likelihood is that they would have simply gone for redundancies instead.
Obviously the intention of Permanent TSB is to cut spending while keeping skilled workers on standby, rather than lose all that well gained experience. And career breaks are more cost effective than redundancy:
Employees will be given half their salary up to 20,000euros to take a two year break, or 35,000euros to take a three year break. And it is open to staff of all ages and levels!

There will obviously be certain conditions imposed, and of course it won't suit everyone, but to have a career break with a guarantee of a job at the end of it is a step forward for those that are in need of a break.

Then the question comes......what would YOU do if you had a career break?

Mine is a simple one (once the children are self succient) - I would fly to Canada with my wife, buy a motorhome, and spend the time working my way down through many of the US states until we run out of land (ie the Keys)!

What would you do with a career break? (Please share your idea in the comments.)

"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? 

Top 20 Employee Referral Rewards Schemes

I was recently working with a client on their recruitment process, and one of the areas that they were keen to explore was around employee referral rewards / incentives. They knew what they were currently offering was minimal, and wanted to be able to offer a range of incentives to reward their staff for referring new employees to the company.
So using my network on LinkedIn and other contacts, I reached out to all the HR and recruiter contacts (corporate and agency) to see what other companies were doing around employee referrals and what they were giving as incentives. The question that I posed was, "Does anyone know of any employee referral rewards / schemes, that are a little different?" Thanks to the fantastic response I received, I was able to make some excellent suggestions to my client.

Nearly every email I received asked me to inform them of what all the other answers were, so knowing retaining talent is a favourite subject at the moment, I have compiled a list of the Top 20 employee referral rewards offered by companies below (It had to be 20 because there were many good ideas!):

1. Time off. This was the surprising winner, with companies giving time off for successful referrals, ranging from an afternoon, to a day, to a week (very generous!).

2. Cold hard cash! As always money talks, and this ranged from £200 up to £3000 per referral.

3. Travel Allowance. With petrol prices and travel in general getting more expensive, no surprise this came in at no.3. Answers included petrol paid for and train fares covered.

4. Special Event. An example being a fully paid trip to Monaco Grand Prix

5. Holiday. A week away at a choice of destination, fully paid.

6. Restaurant. A long lunch at a good restaurant to include the person referred to the company

Snap, Crackle & Pop off for the afternoon!!

The summer is now well and truly here, and for many companies it is the start of problems. As the temperature starts to crank up, in between the many rain showers, staff start calling in sick and simply skiving off. Their destination - not the doctors or the proverbial sick bed - is the beach, park or back garden to just enjoys the rays of sun.
One large company - who ironically rely on the sun for the products they produce - Kellogg's (UK Office), introduce a Summer Hours Scheme for this time of year. It allows all of its staff to switch off their computers and leave work at Mid-day on Fridays, as long as they have completed their weekly hours quota of 37.5 hours, through making up the hours during the rest of the week.
Last year 90% of the employees took advantage of this scheme - my only question is what happened to the other 10%??

For me this is a great example of the work life balance issue, being used in a fair and appealing way. Jacqueline Grainger, Kellogg's UK HR Director comments, "Flexible working is something we take very seriously, to ensure we provide work life balance opportunities to all employees". I just wonder if the traffic to their career site increases with higher temperatures, as other employers are quite as forward thinking.

Generation Y'ers - not for us, say SME's!

Generation Y staff are surprisingly not in demand for SME companies, says the latest report from the entrepreneur think tank, the Tenon Forum. They claim that these generation Y'ers are often not just up to the job, but also show a lack of work readiness. They also go on to say that over 30% of the SME's surveyed cited poor literacy and numeracy amongst school leavers as a key issue facing their business.

So, while the generation Y'ers are an employers future lifeblood, it does appear that companies that need 'real' skills are shying away from them.....at the moment anyway. So are companies starting to realise that the generation X and the boomer's are actually still worth employing? It appears that they are actively seeking them out!! 

Entrepreneur and Tenon Forum think tank member, Khalid Aziz, Chairman of the Aziz Corporation, says: "We are becoming increasingly frustrated with a lack of work-readiness amongst graduates, many of whom do not possess basic skills, such as mental arithmetic. Those under the age of 40 have never experienced high unemployment and this is contributing to a tendency for younger employees to take work for granted or, worse, treat it as an extension of their social lives. This failure to take work seriously is not an issue amongst more mature employees."

Sir Clive Woodward's 10 Tips for Managers managing the Talent

Sir Clive Woodward has this week in The Sunday Times  given a 10 point blueprint for the overhaul of English rugby. But I think it can amended to be used for senior business managers for their talent management and motivation. So here are my (slightly amended versions) of his 10 point management blueprint:

1. Wear the tracksuit
Don't manage from the office, get down and dirty with the staff.

2. Extremism is good
Look after the good people, but don't be afraid to be a bold leader. The senior manager is that for a reason - they make the decisions and they should be extreme.

3. Money matters
Don't compromise for the sake of money. Don't let people prevent you from putting things in place that you feel essential to succeed.

How companies undermine their employees without even thinking!!

Every working day, we all come across individuals complaining about their employers. They moan about everything form the coffee to their colleagues, and sometimes they complain about the actual work itself!! However, companies sometimes do themselves no favours when it comes to building and managing their relationships with their own staff. They always seem able to completely disregard the feelings of their own employers on a day to day basis.

So if you have ever had the displeasure of being unhappy at work and moaning about your employer, then you will identify with some of the common errors made below:

How Dragons Den star Theo Paphitis motivates his staff

He may well be a famous Dragon from the BBC's series Dragons Den, but Theo Paphitis's day job is as a successful retail entrepreneur, buying and then turning round failing retail brands such as Ryman, La Senza, Partners and Contessa. In a revealing interview in Retail Week he shares a number of his secrets, a key one being staff morale and staff motivation, and how it helped him change a business for the better.