Vote for Best UK Recruitment Blog of 2007

My friend and yours, Louise over at uk:recruiter, has had a jolly good idea and set up a vote for the Best UK Recruitment Blog of 2007. The voting list can be found here.

Yours truly is on the list, but I can say I won't be voting for myself. In fact it'd be remiss of me not to suggest that you vote for Louise herself, as her blog has been one of the highlights of the blogging scene for me in 2007.

There's lots of good blogs on there, and doubtless a great many more who just aren't on the list yet. When I started reading blogs (over 2 years ago now) there were very few I could find with any sort of recruitment bent. The growth in numbers represents both the staggering speed with which blogging and 'Web 2.0' is changing the way we do business and the ability of recruitment professionals to buck the outdated trends of their fore bearers and embrace the times.

I've had a great 2007 and hope everyone reading this has too. Here's to an even better 2008!

Apologies! (And Merry Christmas!)

I'm really sorry everybody, I meant to write a post after the Christmas party but before the Christmas break but never got round to it; how rubbish of me!

So apologies for the unexpected and overly long break and (better late than never):

Merry Christmas!!

I hope everybody had a good one, I'll be back with more content in the New Year!

Party time!

So we've got our Christmas party on Saturday. I know there's a variety of stories in the papers at this time of year about offices banning parties for fear of causing offence to non-Christians, others ranting about political correctness gone mad and so on but to be honest I'm of the opinion that the party we have every year doesn't do any harm (except to people's livers). I am aware of the offence such a tradition could cause though, and the inequities and inequalities in most workplaces regarding religious holidays and the like. I still think it would be a shame to lose our December-time shindig though, as it's so good for morale, getting to know colleagues, relaxing after a hard year etc. It's not that we don't socialise any other time (we do with regularity) but I'd say that the Christmas party is the one social event that everyone comes to.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this though, all comments welcome or email me on james at omnirms dot com if that suits better (just trying to avoid the spam bots harvesting my email there; if you do email just remember to change 'at' to '@' and 'dot' to the traditional full stop mark, like this '.')

Anyway, our party is going to be in Manchester city centre. The place is called Manchester235 and we've got a traditional turkey dinner in one of the restaurants, followed by drinks, dancing and gambling in the casino and bars. Should be great, thoroughly looking forward to it (although, less looking forward to having to buy a new suit, as I tore the one I was going to wear so have to brave the Saturday shopping traffic!)

About Omni (Squidoo)

I get quite a few people asking me to tell them more about Omni and what we do, particularly the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) part, pretty regularly. Rather than bleat on about it repeatedly therefore, I decided it would be a good idea to have a place (other than the website) that I could direct people to. With that in mind I created a Squidoo Lens for Omni.

Squidoo is a great site set up by (amongst others) Seth Godin. It allows people to create a 'lens' (essentially a micro website) on any topic they fancy. There are lenses about pretty much everything, including (but definitely not limited to) art, religion, Humphrey Bogart and Manga.

Building a lens is easy (although creating the content is obviously as tough as creating content for anything is - for help with that see this lens). The 'technical' side of things takes less than half an hour though.

Here's the Omni lens. It answers as many questions as I could think of about Omni and hopefully should prove useful for people. If there's anything that you think should be in there but isn't, then just let me know!

New Omni client: May Gurney!

Well things have been wrapped up even more promptly than I expected them to be, so as hinted at yesterday, I'm pleased to announce the signing of a brand new Omni client!

The lucky people at May Gurney, one of the UKs most successful construction services companies, will soon get to talk to our wonderful account management team everyday! This is a fantastic client win for us and will in fact likely be the biggest on our books, in terms of numbers of hires etc.

This was also a really quick one in terms of sales life cycle, thanks to a combination of hard work from the sales team (Luci and Howard especially) and real organisation and diligence from the guys over at May Gurney (Sarah particularly helped things run as smoothly as possible). We're pleased that we managed to convince them we were the right organisation to partner with (there were a couple of others in the running) and really excited about starting working with them.

This is hopefully just one of many new clients I'll have the pleasure of announcing here over the coming months; 2008 looks like being easily our busiest year yet. Every new one we sign up is special too, as it goes some way to helping us achieve our ambition of improving recruitment for the whole world! (No harm in thinking big!)

So hi again to May Gurney, and here's to a fruitful and fun relationship for all concerned!

Exciting client news...

I'm pleased to say that I should have a great, client-related announcement to make soon. As I've mentioned before, we've been busy on the new client side recently and although I won't count any chickens etc right now, we're confident that we'll be saying hello to someone officially very soon.

Watch this space!

Creativity, Copyright and Presentations

I want to point you to something today that aptly illustrates 2 things that I can frequently be found ranting about: the woeful state of our arcane copyright laws and the prevalence of terrible presentations. Whilst both are worthy of a standalone post of their own, that will be for another day. Here, I'm relying on Larry Lessig to effectively combine the 2.

This video is of a recent TED talk by Lessig on the effect that copyright laws are having on creativity. Lessig asserts that creativity is being stifled and that we are moving from a 'read-write' culture (i.e. creative) to a 'read-only' culture (where people simply 'consume'). I think he's spot on with this and the law is falling way behind the times. If it fails to catch up soon we are essentially criminalising the majority of people born after 1980 (Gen Y) who are IT and web savvy and keen to express themselves via social media, blogs, user generated content (UGC) and the like. Lessig's comparison with the common-sense approach taken to repeal outdated property laws in relation to land is effective and apt.

That brings me nicely to the second part of my rant; that you just don't see a lot of good presentations. I must have seen 40+ presentations from potential suppliers and many more at conferences, university etc. Yet I could count the number of good presentations I've seen on one hand (in fact only 2 stand out of real note - Noam Chomsky when I was at university and a talk by Jeff Pfeffer on Evidence Based Management at a Chicago based HR and IT conference). Even my colleagues are inclined to give bad presentations (despite my frequent desperate pleas to change things) because it's just the way things are done. My argument that your typical PowerPoint, death by bullets presentation is boring and ineffective is met by the counter-argument that everybody does it that way, so it must work.

Yet in this world of terrible presentations, poor presenters and horrific slideware, there is hope. Not many people embody that hope as well as Larry Lessig. Watch his talk; I promise it'll be time well spent. He is passionate, articulate and funny. He has great slides (his style of slideware is in fact famous, and there's a presentation method named after him, The "Lessig Method"). He commands the room and steers the audience to his way of thinking, whilst as a viewer you take a tonne of information away with you, surely the ultimate goal of any presentation.

I promise I'll put up some separate posts on presentation and copyright more generally, when I get round to writing them! Also, here is probably a good time to point out that despite the lack of widget on the subject, anything you read here is under this Creative Commons License. That means you can copy it, print it out, link to it etc with appropriate attribution. Basically you can't take it and charge for it, or alter it. For more information about Creative Commons check out the site.

Quote of the Day

The most important thing a leader does is set the example. In many ways that's the only thing a leader does.

Wally - on it, as ever.

Motivating Generation Y...

(Pic credit: gapingvoid.com)

Generation Y, or Gen Y, are the youngsters in the workforce. It’s a bit of an Americanism (often the worst kind of business-speak anachronism) but it’s becoming common parlance, and therefore worthy of some attention.

So to break it down, here are some definitions to start with if you're not familiar with the term. First up we have the Baby Boomers, then Generation X and now Generation Y.

Born in 1981 myself (I’m 26 in a couple of weeks, 17th December if you want to send a present…) I’m in Gen Y, just! I should therefore be fully up to speed with my own generation and emotionally intelligent enough to understand my elders too, if the definitions are to be believed. There’s been a lot written on the subject and whilst some of it is accurate (common sense you might even say) some is as out of kilter as you can get, not totally surprising given that all 3 terms are seriously sweeping generalisations. I read an article today though that came to me from Reuters, via Wally Bock. It lit a bit of a creative fire in me, so I decided I’d tackle the subject myself briefly.

First up, the Reuters article.

From that we glean some useful tips. Younger workers want positive engagement. They need praise, recognition and “patting on the head”. Older workers couldn’t care less about that apparently; the boomers want “clear direction” instead. Apparently they’re “past” looking for praise.

Anecdotally this may well have some backing too. Ask around your office and see what people think (particularly any emotionally intelligent managers responsible for boomers, X-ers and Y-ers).

Yet it is clearly a simplification. Rather than just requiring ‘praise’ per se, I would argue that Gen Y are the group most likely to want to do meaningful work that adds value (sweeping generalisation and simplification in itself I know, but bear with me!) This need for ‘meaning’ can’t be fulfilled in all roles; not everyone can have a job that gives them that warm fuzzy feeling that an assuaged social conscience can. So the praise and recognition can act as a replacement for this.

Additionally, Gen Y is the teamwork generation. Y-ers are more likely than boomers or X-ers to embrace collaborative working and the possibilities that the hive mind offers. This team ethos is predicated on praise and recognition, a team can’t survive and succeed if everyone is busy working away for their own benefit and never stopping to say well done to others in the group.

So whilst the article may broadly be reporting an accurate picture of the generations, I can't help but feel it's missing a trick by not looking at why Y-ers want praise (the article seems simply to point out the trend and suggest that boomer or X-er managers should be exploiting it). My biggest problem with the article though, is the following line:

Generation Y are portrayed as self-centered and demanding in the workplace -- and it's all true

This isn’t the case to my mind. In reality Gen Y believe in endless possibilities and are inherently optimistic. This optimism could be perceived as selfish (trying to change the status quo, seemingly for their own benefit) but in actual fact it’s massively egalitarian. Gen Y wants to change the status quo for sure, but they have a bigger picture in their sights; Gen Y truly wants to change the world! There’s a guest post on Penelope’s blog that expresses this confusion a lot better than I can, so have a read of that.

As a Gen Y-er I’m naturally inclined to defend my peers, so apologies for the natural bias there. But I truly believe that the new trends in business for collaboration, transparency, trust, happiness at work, creativity, innovation, social responsibility and so on are going to define the coming years. These trends are most associated with Gen Y, but there’s plenty of X-ers and boomers who buy into them too. So in true Gen Y style, I’m keen to work with these people to make these modern methods the norm.

The Reuters article raises an interesting point, but misses the crux of things for me. Rather than pointing out differences for the sake of it why doesn't it instead highlight how the gaps in each generations skill set could be negated by co-operation. Surely the ideal team is driven by relentless Y-ers, grounded by realistic X-ers and guided by experienced (open-minded) boomers?

As the cartoon above (by the imperious X-er Hugh) attests, change isn't what you should be afraid of.

3 Recruitment Tips

Today I want to put my 3 best recruitment tips out there for people. These are the simple ones; there's a tonne of other stuff you could do. However if you start with these 3 you'll be on the right track.

1. Focus on 'direct' recruitment. That is, rather than relying on recruitment agencies and search and selection companies (headhunters) to provide you with potential candidates, find them yourself. You can do this by giving the job to someone in HR (make it their main role though), or by engaging an RPO like Omni, AMS, RPO Solutions etc. There should be adverts on the major job boards (like Monster, Jobserve etc) that you put out there, branded with your logo and driving candidates to your site and your info, not an agency.

2. Improve your recruitment selection process. Even if it's good, it can be great. Make sure that screening is done properly (again, either by an appropriate HR or recruiting partner, or by an RPO) and that CVs are reviewed efficiently. Then make sure you have a clearly defined process including telephone screening, any testing and face-to-face interviews. You should not have more than a 3 stage process, maximum. That would be 1- telephone screen 2- testing 3- face-to-face interview. If you can get your testing process online you can add a second face-to-face stage. Otherwise you just annoy candidates.

[Note: it should go without saying that your selection process should fall into line with all relevant employment legislation and HR mandates on things like discrimination etc]

3. Build your Employer Brand. This is very different from your corporate brand. Your corporate brand (i.e. the one you sell to customers) might be of tradition and authority. But your offices might be fun, creative and vibrant places. If you sell to potential employees that you're traditional, authoritarian, grey, when in actual fact you're cool, innovative and bright red, then you're missing a trick (and probably a heck of a lot of potential superstars).

This is a really brief post of something that is a much bigger story. If you're interested in improving your recruitment process across the board (and no it won't require you spending hundreds of thousands on 'consultancy' and revamps and the like) then I'd love to hear from you. I'll either be able to help myself, which will brighten up my day no end, or I'll be able to point you towards someone who can. This may be a colleague here at Omni, but it may just as likely be a 'competitor' or other brand; I get a kick out of helping however I do it.

New Omni Employee

I don't usually announce it on the blog when new employees start at Omni (although I should do, so hello to Jenny, Jo, Clair, Nicola, Emma and Howard, all of whom are reasonably new round these parts). However I had to make an exception for the newest member of the team.

Alfie joined us this week for the first time. He only came in for one morning but made himself at home straight away. He proved exceptionally popular with the ladies in the office, but is the sort who'd get on with the gents too. He's a tenacious and lively character and should be a big success with clients too. Some nepotism could be suspected, as Alfie does live with Rob, the MD. I think in reality though, it's safe to say he's here on merit.

You can see a picture of Alfie here...

All the best to him in his Omni career!

The 'War for Talent' in the Accounting Profession

Hi all, I'm back after a couple of days off work. I caught a Kanye West gig and went to the best all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet I've ever been to, so a good few days overall for me!

Today I thought I'd point out a piece by the MD of Omni, Robert Leggett, that went in Accountancy Age magazine recently. It's an opinion piece and worth a read for those in the profession specifically or more generally interested in recruitment.

You can read the article here and any comments or questions about Rob's point of view, direct my way and I'll get him to answer them if that's of interest to anyone.

Great post for you to read...

...but it's someone elses, not mine! Just had to draw people's attention to a great post (and a very open and engaging ongoing discussion in the comments) on Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist blog. From the post:

Today, educators take a child’s lack of social skills seriously. Parents should also. For educators, any nonverbal learning disability (like not being able to tell if someone cares about what you are talking about) is treated as significantly as a verbal learning disability (like not being able to speak.) Yet I am stunned by how many parents brush aside recommendations from educators to get help for their children by saying to themselves, “My child is so smart.”
Smart is not an endgame. Even in a toddler.

Penelope is highly adept at bringing her own experiences to bear on what are always relevant and sometimes undiscussed subjects and this is another fine example. She also does it with an honesty and openess that I admire greatly (and strive to emulate myself here).

Hope you find the post interesting; if so pop the blog in your Google Reader and you won't be disappointed.

UK:recruiter

As I haven't for a while, I thought today was a good day to plug Louise's uk:recruiter blog list. It's an invaluable source of information for me and if you have any interest in the recruitment scene you should definitely check it out. There's even a blog by a certain somebody you all know on there...

Happiness at work - 5 tips to try today!

Everybody, it would seem, is getting into happiness at work. This is really great! I’ve been preaching the happiness at work schtick for a while now, ably assisted by Ollie, and inspired by the likes of Alex Kjerulf, Ricardo Semler, Penelope Trunk and others. I truly believe that I can go and sit down with my boss and say to him categorically – "if the people who work here are happy people they’ll be more productive". I believe fundamentally in the cause and effect of increased happiness leading to increased motivation and productivity.

So it’s really good to see others taking up the happiness at work message too. Via Louise Triance comes a service from Jobsite that assesses people’s level of happiness and recommends changing jobs to increase overall happiness if there is a shortfall. Whilst the sell is obvious (I’d expect that Jobsite have more to gain if their surveys suggest unhappiness in most participants) it’s nice to see an organisation in the recruitment marketplace embracing the idea that work is not just somewhere you turn up for 8+ hours a day, but that instead it’s somewhere you actually can go to be happy.

Happiness at work is a vital element of the organic growth of an organisation. If a company wants to retain talented staff in this new business environment, then employee satisfaction levels need to be high. Sure, this means paying the right salary and providing the right financial incentives, because pretty much everyone has to pay the bills. But it’s inherently more than that too. As I’ve said before (and will keep saying over and over) it’s about engagement above and beyond the normal “I need a job to keep a roof over my head and feed my kids” concept. It’s about creating an environment where people are so happy that they’d do anything to keep the company going. Those people who really ‘love’ the company, i.e. are completely emotionally engaged with it, will work their behinds off to see it succeed. They’ll also pull out all the stops in times of strife just to get through the bad patch (these are the crazies who’d do the work even if no one paid them to!)

Now you might sit here reading this and thinking “yeah, that’s all very well in another company, but in ours where we’re just making widgets day in day out, who’s going to be that passionate about working for us?” Fair point, in essence. It’s a common notion that we can’t all be Google, with a raft of cool people, eager to sign up. Like many common notions though, it’s complete and utter BS.

You’re worried because you’re not making uber-sexy products, or you’re worried that it’s just too tough to get your warehouse staff excited about stacking boxes right? Well worry no more. Happiness at work can apply to everyone. Call centres (notoriously high attrition rates) can be happy places. Production lines can be happy places. Banks and leisure centres and council buildings and hospitals and schools and compliance units and McDonalds and everywhere else can be happy workplaces! It’s about doing some basic things right. Here’s 5 to try straight away:

1) Take a look at the working environment first. It should be as bright, fun, pleasant and conducive to work as possible. If it’s drab, dirty and dull then change it. A couple of K spent doing this will be recouped in productivity easily.

2) Train your managers to be happy people and to encourage happy people. Every manager that thinks that screaming, shouting and generally acting like a delinquent 13 year old is good ‘people management’ either needs to get a lobotomy or get a new job. No exceptions here. If you’re in any doubt go read Wally Bock’s blog. The number one impediment to happiness at work isn’t people's boring jobs, it’s crappy management.

3) With a nice place to work and happy managers who are encouraged to make their teams happy, you should start to see an improvement straight away. When this happens, capitalise on it! Address any issues with salary, bonuses and the like here to avoid any potential lingering problems. Then hit the next big one, holidays…

4) Some places get holiday allowances spot on. In the US this is rare (holiday entitlement really sucks over there). Here in the UK we’re a lot better at it. Better, but not always good. Here’s the thing though – giving people more holiday truly costs you nothing. You can harp on to me about lost man hours with people off on their jollies and so on but this is the place where I get a little tetchy and tell you to shut up I’m afraid. If you give people plenty of holiday you allow them the time to chill and relax, get their heads straight and come back to you an even better employee than they went away as. You should really embrace the idea of ‘work-life balance’. By doing that you'll make your money back in increased productivity. If you work your people into the ground though, then you can expect crap morale, poor standards of work and high attrition.
If you’re struggling with this concept at all, here’s a base level that you should be working to. Copy it verbatim if necessary. Minimum – 25 holiday days for everybody in the company as standard. This excludes public holidays, Bank Holidays etc. On top of that, everyone will earn 1 extra day per year of service. If you need to put a maximum figure in, make it 35 days (although if you’re brave enough my preference is to have no maximum because if someone stays with you in this day and age for 20+ years they deserve all the holiday they can take and they'll be one of your best people no matter how much time they have off).

5) OK, holiday rant over, here’s the final tip. When you’ve done all of the above it’s time to start listening to your people. Where you can, democratise your workplace. People’s inability to affect their surroundings and environment is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness at work. So listen to your people. Give them freedom and autonomy where you can. Basically treat them like adults. They will repay you with productivity, loyalty, evangelism, initiative, innovation and more. The best example is the customer service person who is empowered by the company to do the right thing by the customer even if it goes against what might be seen as ‘policy’. Giving your frontline people the discretion to use their knowledge, judgement and integrity to solve a problem means problems will actually get solved. Say to your frontline people – “if you see a problem that can be fixed and will cost the company up to (insert figure here dependant on circumstances, £10, £50, £250...whatever fits), then fix it yourself. Tell your manager about it after.”

This empowerment is a wonderful thing. Your people are aching to challenge themselves and do the best work they can; you must truly believe that. The reason they don’t demonstrate it now is because they’re probably unhappy. I know it sounds harsh but if you’re the boss that’s your fault, not theirs. Treat them right and they will treat you right. Make them happy and I guarantee they’ll make you very happy (and rich, if that’s your bag).

These are very basic starting points. If any of them speak to you at all though then I’m a very happy camper. I’d recommend getting copies of Alex’s book immediately and giving them to everyone you work with (particularly your managers). On top of that read Semler’s book about how he democratised his company. It’s inspiring reading, but filled with takeaways for the average business to implement themselves.

I’m passionate about happiness at work and believe in time it’ll be the norm. Whilst it’s not though (as I said above, we’re getting there slowly), why not try climbing on the cutting edge of the movement and seeing how it feels. You’ll be in very good company and the place will be packed soon enough. In fact your business might just depend on it...

(Note- this post was written mainly in the direction of managers, business leaders, MDs, owners, HR and the like. If you’re not one of those people but are still interested in happiness at work and perhaps how you can make yourself happy, Alex is definitely the expert. Read his blog and buy his book. I’ll be posting about it myself too in the future, so rock on back regularly and you won’t be disappointed.)

Secret Apple sauce

What is in that secret sauce of their's hey? Whatever it is, it's mighty tasty and mighty popular. Whether you're a techno-freak or techno-phobe it's been pretty hard to miss the launch of Apple's super cool new product, the iPhone. Stephen Fry has one and loves it.

Have you got one yet? Are you planning to? It's the ultimate 'I want it' product from what's seen as the ultimate style-over-substance company (although to be fair their products are not just cool as a cucumber, they also kick ass).

If you're not convinced because of the price, or the few bad reviews though (like me) then maybe it's worth waiting for the next big thing - the Google Phone...

Quick one

Back from holiday but still not put up a proper blog post - how lazy!

So this quicky is intended not as linkbait (I promise!) but because I'm short of time and want to share the following wonderful posts rather than quickly knock together something not anywhere near as useful to you. Enjoy them while I get my brain back in the right gear...

• I found this chap via Euan of The Obvious and the post is about the new workforce gap. Loved it and he's now stuffed into my Google Reader
• Another excellent post from Sonia Simone. It doesn't matter what she's writing about, you should read it immediately (and then read all her archives too)
• A typically hilarious post from Scott Adams (he of Dilbert fame) about why he'd like to win the Nobel Prize
• Finally, a science one from Mark 'Herd' Earls. If you're not usually into sciency posts, just try this one, you might like it...

I'm off!

...but only for the next week, you'll be pleased/disappointed (delete as appropriate) to hear.

Sorry for the lack of posts the last few days too, it's been a busy old week as far as these things go. I'd meant to write a couple of posts today actually then my MD told me yesterday evening that he needed an application writing for an award we always enter. Before next Tuesday. And I'm off Monday/Tuesday.

So today was spent doing that. Never really any fun writing awards entries. It's pretty repetitive and making it sound like you're not a narcissistic ass is always difficult. It's done and submitted though, so fingers crossed. (If you're really bored it's the Recruiter Awards 2008; we've entered the Best Managed Service Provider category).

Anyway, I'll be back posting again from Monday 12th, so enjoy the peace and quiet in the meantime! Bye!

You're not the best you'll ever be...

...so don't worry! Make mistakes, fail at things, learn. Whether you've been in business (which I guess translates to alive) for 2 months or 2 decades you're still not the finished article. This could seem scary I guess (when's the peak coming??) but I find it liberating. Fear of failure on the other hand is a horrible, debilitating thing. So don't worry. You're not done yet. Keep on trucking.

About me

I was in the process of writing a post for the blog today and was referencing some psychological profiling that I had done last year. The company paid for all of us to be psychometrically tested using the PeopleMapper test, provided by ASE, in an effort to better understand how we like to work, what gets us out of bed in the morning and who had tendencies towards work-related homicide. (That last bit is a joke).

Going over my results today I thought it would be quite fun to publish them here for all to see. That way everyone will get to know me better and be able to pass judgement more thouroughly about what a pain in the neck I am, with reliable evidence to back it up. Personally I think the results pretty much have me pegged.

I'm still a little agnostic about these sorts of tests (there's a lot of them out there that seem to be dubious pseudo-science) but overall I think that well structured, established psychometric tests can really help paint a good picture of someone.

Anyway, having uploaded the results to Google Docs (meaning it's accessible to everyone rather than being stuck as a Word document just on my PC) here is the link. Have a nosey and I'd love to hear if people who know me think it seems accurate. (To those that don't know me, is this more or less likely to make you want to change that situation??)

Wear it Pink

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and today (Oct 26th) is the Breast Cancer Campaign's annual 'wear it pink' day. So I'm currently sat here in a 'wear it pink' t-shirt, drinking some pink sugary stuff, eating pink sweets and looking at a sea of pink colleagues all around me. We try and raise some money for this good cause every year by doing raffles, a quiz and selling pink cakes, sweets etc. All great fun and the charity bit gives everyone a nice warm, fuzzy feeling.

My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, so it's one of those charities I'm inclined to be a bit selfish about. It's funny how when it hits you directly you're far more likely to see the benefit of raising the money. My mum is fine fortunately; she had some great doctors and nurses and a good surgeon that helped her through it all. It could come back though so it makes you eager that plenty of money still goes into finding the cure for this horrible illness. Plus, depending on the genetics involved (my mum is having some genetic tests in a few weeks, science never ceases to amaze me) my sister, aunties and female cousins could all be in the high risk category. So I have a vested interest in organisations like the Breast Cancer Campaign doing well.

Charity is probably the most rewarding thing anyone can do though. The feeling of knowing you've helped someone (even someone totally remote from you who you'll never likely meet) is completely unique. If you haven't put your social hat on for a while I recommend giving it a go today. It's not too late to join in with 'wear it pink'. Or maybe there's a cause close to your heart. Whatever it is, invest a bit of time and a bit of money in it and I guarantee it'll be the most satisfying thing you do this weekend/week/month etc.

CRM

I'm looking for a good CRM solution for Omni at the minute. Nothing too fancy, just need to better track prospective clients, manage marketing that we do and maybe sync up contacts, meetings in the diary etc. Doesn't need the bells and whistles. Amazing how many different offerings there are. Even with a good idea of what you want it's easy to get 'sold' by the shiny toys out there.

Anyone reads this and has experience with or knowledge of the market, then do let me know.

When bad employees go bad...

The following landed in my feed reader today from Kris Dunn's HR Capitalist blog. In this post he details an occasion when an employee at a previous company took it to the absolute extremes to land a couple of extra days off. From the post:

Human nature exists, and HR pros get to the see the downside in employee relations issues that involve anger, ambition, lust, lies, etc. But faking funeral programs to get a couple of extra days off? That's taking your game to the next level.

This is a pretty remarkable story and it makes you wonder about the very nature of people. It also reads like a pretty damning indictment of employees generally. When you get those real ball-breaking bosses (or HR people) who claim that every aspect of an employees work life must be monitored (think banning websites, monitoring email usage, micro-managing to targets etc) this is what they base their defences on. They believe that if you give an employee a proverbial inch they'll take a mile. If you let them on Facebook then they'll do nothing but that all day and productivity will plummet. If you don't require a doctor's note for illness then all of a sudden people will be off to the quacks every week like clockwork. If you let them decide their own schedule then they'll slack off, only work when they absolutely can't avoid it and will happily see your profits drop for their own self interest.

My issue with this take on 'management' and 'employee relations' is that in every way shape and form it's complete crap. The employee skiving off to go to a 'funeral' every couple of month is clearly not the right person to employ. Firing him was the right way to go. But does no one ask why it got to that position? How on earth did it get to a point where he was so unhappy in his job that he needed to fake family deaths to avoid another 8 hours of it once a month? Why did no-one notice that this guy was seriously miserable and demotivated before? How was his regular absenteeism the first warning sign?

Now I'm probably getting a bit too much into the specifics of this one case. For all I know the organisation had been trying for ages to get him engaged and in reality he was just a total jerk. So let's talk in more general terms.

As I've said numerous times, employee engagement should be the number one priority issue for HR and management. If your staff hate you, your company and their jobs, you should be fired immediately. It's no use blaming the employees, or the economic environment, or the bad weather. The buck stops with you. It is your job to get those guys engaged and get them flying. If you can't do it because they're a miserable and belligerent so-and-so then the best plan is to get rid of them (I'll not mention that perhaps you should be fired for hiring the wrong person in the first place, that is a rant for another day). Fire them quickly and fairly and move on. If however they could, would and should be engaged, happy and productive but for your dumb policies/poor working environment/lack of training/dearth of management capabilities/general ignorance/crappy attitude/unrealistic targets/badly planned business (delete as appropriate) then it's your ass on the line, to quote my American friends from the telly.

If you think this is massively unfair and miss the days when you could just shout at people and they'd do exactly what you said for the length of time you specified, then tough. Think this is all wishy-washy liberal nonsense and that these people who abuse your good nature (i.e. the fact you gave them a job in the first place) are just unreasonable swine? Read this.

When it comes down to it, the future of business is predicated on employees not consumers. I will rant on and on about customer experience, making sure you're telling the right story, being remarkable and so on. But if you do all of that yet still treat your employees like children then you are in for a rough ride. Be as remarkable to your employees as you are to your customers though (in fact even more remarkable) and you will see your successes grow exponentially. Happy people are productive people. Productive people who keep getting happier are your superstars.

So next time someone seems to be disengaged address the root cause, not the individual. If you're hiring the right people in the first place there is nothing to stop every single one of them becoming a superstar employee for you. Nothing that is, except you.

Rewards Revisited

Read this post today from the always interesting Incentive Intelligence blog. Just thought I'd flag it up as it ties in quite nicely with a post of mine from a couple of weeks ago about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

I agree with Paul on this one; as I've said previously the non-cash incentives are important but it is vital that you don't forget about the other side of things. Paul surmises it best:

The real answer is - cash and non-cash are both critical in creating an engaged audience. Neither is better. Neither is worse.

Traditionally organisations have been better at the cash part, making sure that salaries are in line with the market and so on, paying bonuses in times of plenty. So I see why the focus is (rightly) on the non-cash, intrinsic side of things. As with everything in life though it is about getting a good balance. Anyone with an interest in hiring and keeping superstars needs to have both sides of their brain working these days, otherwise they just won't be able to keep up.

What makes you go 'Ewww!'?

10 minutes to kill? Take this test from the BBC Science and Nature department on their site: What disgusts you?

Some other interesting tests to do there too. Apparently my brain is about 50-50 male to female in ratio...

Pucker up

Call it coincidence, call it serendipity, but there I was trying to think of a quick post to put together on a Friday before going home from work and I only went and stumbled across an article about something that Ollie, Luci, Craig and I were talking about only yesterday! The issue is the always embarrassing, potential social faux pas that is the new greeting methods for the more continental faction of the UK business community...

Here's the story, courtesy of the ever entertaining and informative BBC site. One cheek or two?

Manchester blog awards

Went to the Manchester blog awards last night at Matt & Phreds as a guest of Jane and Nathan at Smith & Smith; thanks for the invite guys, I had a blast!

I didn’t really know what to expect beforehand, having been to plenty of awards events but never a blogging function before. All the surprises were pleasant ones though, which is always good. If you get chance to go to a blogging event in the future I can give the idea a thumbs up.

The people speaking were, for the most part, great. There was a slightly downbeat 20 minutes or so where an author (who also blogs) read from her new book (can't remember her name sorry, it might have been Elizabeth somebody). The reading was fine but the choice of material could have been better; she read the first chapter which introduces a child character whose mother has just died. It was fairly depressing stuff (and not at all my type of literature) but fortunately it didn’t take the shine off the evening overall. I have to say though (because it feels dishonest not to give full disclosure) that without wanting to be churlish, her writing perhaps proves that there’s a book (or 3) living in everyone.

The best performance of the night for me came from this chap. His name is Chris Killen and he read excerpts from a novel he wrote in the form of a blog post a day for 100 days. If you’ve got some spare time I highly recommend reading it; what I’ve read so far is funny and delightful. He won the category he was in, best writing on a blog and deservedly so I’d say. (Details of other winners can be found here.)

The event was in association with the Manchester Literature Festival, so there was a real literary bent to the evening. That was one of the pleasant surprises actually. The crowd was a real mix and everyone seemed to have a good time.

It made me think about blogging more generally overall. Many of the blogs on show were all very much ‘traditional’, in the sense that they represent online journals. People were pouring their life into their blogs and letting others feel their joy, pain etc (like this blog and this one). All very Belle du Jour. Given that the majority of blogs I enjoy regularly are more like comment or opinion blogs, written by experts in a certain field, it was a refreshing change. In fact when I first heard about blogging that was how I heard it described – an online journal, a sort of public ‘dear diary’. This seemed like a novel idea to me at the time, although didn’t really hold any appeal (I didn’t fancy the idea of detailing my sex life or job dilemmas online in all honesty but to those that do, whatever floats your boat). It was only when I found Hugh and gapingvoid, which led me to Seth and Guy and so on, that I began to see the potential of this medium for me personally. Nice to look at the other side of things too though.

The night was a great one and all credit to the organisers, bloggers, judges etc. I'd happily go back next year, or indeed to similar events. It's great to see that there's real talent knocking around in the Manchester blog scene. Long may it prosper.

Happy workplaces - rated by Revyr

The Chief Happiness Officer today links to a new service called Revyr which has a nice little premise at the core of it’s offering. Essentially it allows employees to rate their workplaces based on 10 key factors. Then potential employees can go to the site and find out what a place is really like to work at before they even commit to applying for a job, never mind attending an interview.

Alex has a nice interview with Jake Taylor of Revyr that’s definitely worth a read. I’ve signed up to the site to try and get on the beta testing list too so I’ll post more as I get more detail for you.

As an initial comment though, I think it’s a fantastic idea. Ollie and I were just talking about it and were absolutely gutted that we hadn’t thought of it first in all honesty! The simplicity factor is really appealing; who wouldn’t want to know what a company is really like before applying for a job there? Without knowing loads about the different factors though I’d say additionally they seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to define what a ‘good’ workplace looks like, and that’s to be applauded. Had it just been based around pay, perks and parking spaces then it would have been a lot poorer for it. Including things like Corporate Social Responsibility and Autonomy really makes this work for me.

Commenting on this service, Paul over at Incentive Intelligence moots that a service like this could really impact on HR people. As he suggests:

All you HR folks out there now have to worry about your "product" (read company) just like all those marketing and product development folks do when they launch a new product/service. Marketing is now an HR function (or has been but not to the degree it will become.)

I agree entirely on this one. With some proper metrics in place it is totally feasible to imagine people ranking and scoring potential employers and focussing on landing a job only at those who have ‘4 star’ or above rating, for example. With citizen-created content growing in popularity and reliability these days it was only a matter of time before that extended to the working world. All of a sudden you need your employees to be evangelists for the organisation. So if someone wants a job in software development in Birmingham, they go to the site, they check out all the different companies with those types of positions then read the reviews, as if they were picking a seafood restaurant in Birmingham. If your employees aren’t evangelists and perhaps rate things a little on the low side then that software developer is going to look elsewhere for her next move. Scary stuff if you’re not big on employee engagement and happiness at the moment…

This is really positive to my mind. The more that companies are pushed to improve their employees’ experiences the better. Plus, this isn’t just a stick-to-beat-the-big-companies-with situation; the carrot for employers is that as they improve their working practices and environment they’ll improve their ability to hire top talent. All of a sudden the competitor down the street who pays the big bucks but burns people out doesn’t have the advantage.

It’s early days for Revyr obviously, but I really hope it works out well for them. I’ll be keeping a close eye and my fingers crossed.

ChangeThis.com

Rather than spend any of your time today reading something that I've written I instead insist that you go read the collective works of many a smarter person than me. ChangeThis is the brainchild of, among others, Seth Godin and the numerous talented manifesto authors that submit their material have done a great job in covering virtually any topic you can think of from Guerilla Marketing to web design to talent management. Contributors include Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid, Guy Kawasaki and even Seth himself.

Brilliant idea, wonderfully executed. If you have the time, lose yourself in a few of these and you will be a far smarter person for it. Feeling particularly smart? Submit your own manifesto for public appraisal and consumption!

If you like Change This then spread the word, it's how the good ideas stick around.

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the topic of intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation at work. I’ve found some particularly interesting blogs recently about the topic, particularly Incentive Intelligence and The HR Capitalist, both of which I’d recommend highly to go into your feed reader (more on that below).

My take on it (briefly though as it is a subject I can talk about at length) is that it seems obvious to say that intrinsic motivation, (i.e. your staff naturally want to work for the organisation because they like it, feel it aligns with their values etc) is the best type of motivation. Extrinsic, (i.e. salaries, bonuses, perks etc) is clearly the more fleeting option. It goes without saying that anybody who is only motivated to work for you by monetary rewards can quite easily, one would imagine, be poached by your competitors and their higher basic salary.

Yet in some ways this, I feel, is used as an excuse not to reward people well for the work they do. Just because you have managed to engender a culture where people work for you loyally and diligently because they agree with the companies mission for example and indeed they would even work for you for less than they could make elsewhere because of this intrinsic motivation, doesn’t mean you should pay them less! Indeed perhaps even you should pay them more! Intrinsic motivation is a rare thing indeed and at all costs you should aim to keep those individuals who have it. A bit of extrinsic motivation on top therefore may well do no harm at all.

Rewarding your star performers and creating an environment where people feel valued and well-compensated for the work they do seems, in the popular American parlance, a ‘no-brainer’. Yet I see countless organisations (particularly in recruitment but in no way limited to that sector) who feel that their employees are trying to 'screw them' for more and more money. I know managers who hate the idea of regular appraisals and performance reviews because they think it gives people the chance to ask for a pay rise!

When it comes to it I try and encourage people to apply this methodology: if a star performer at your company feels that she deserves a pay rise, she does. People inherently (particularly those star performers that are loyal to the organisation) aren’t in work to rip their employers off; if they value the job they do, their colleagues and the organisation as a whole they will act decently, honestly and fairly in all matters, monetary or otherwise. So strive to engender that intrinsic motivation. Make people proud to work for you and keen to see the organisation prosper. But don’t forget about the money too.


[Note: if you’re not reading the blogs you like through a feed reader I’d highly recommend it. I use Google Reader and wouldn’t change now, just to avoid the hassle of moving all my feeds really. I understand that Bloglines have recently added some nice new features though, so might be worth checking out too if you’re shopping around.]

One per child

I was going to write a different post to this today. But then I saw a link on Seth's blog about this project to get a laptop to every child in the developing world. It's inspiring and simple (as the best ideas often are). Individuals should definitely get involved. Businesses even more so. What's $200 (about £100) to your organisation? In fact what's $2000?

Talk to your boss today. Give children the gift of knowledge and the chances they'd be missing otherwise.

Here we go again...

Well that was some hiatus! I’m going to call it a blogging sabbatical because that sounds better I reckon. Whatever the case we’re back up and running so I’m going to try get back to posting here a few times a week at least.

As a brief update on what’s happened in the last 3 months: we’ve moved offices, I’ve changed jobs, we’ve hired 4 new people, re-hired 1 and 2 people have left. So you’ve not missed much.

I’ll start filling in some of the blanks over the coming days and weeks, as well as telling you all about the exciting new things that we’re doing at the moment. There’ll be some big announcements, some (hopefully) informative content, some (undoubtedly) controversial content and plenty for everyone to chew the fat over.

All in all, good to be back.

Training for Economic Growth

Due to the fact that Omni have 3 of our recent new starters beginning their NVQ training this week, I thought it would be worth mentioning how much benefit both the employee and employer can gain from providing training such as this.

So what is an NVQ exactly? – they are work related and competence based qualifications demonstrating that the person has the knowledge and skills required to do a job effectively, and that they are competent in the area of work which the NVQ represents.

They are important for both employer and individual as they not only help improve productivity and competitiveness, they also have the added benefit of improving employee performance and motivation, lowering staff turnover, providing better relations with staff and management (always helpful!) AND can also help the employer to benchmark standards and provide training which is specifically targeted to meet both individual and business needs.

Topics such as this were recently brought into the public arena following the Leitch Report which assessed the UK’s long term skill requirements. Scarily, it was identified that we are falling behind countries such as Germany and France in skills within the workplace – in other words the people within your organisation are a major untapped resource!

A series of recommendations were made including increasing adult skills across all levels and increasing employer’s investment in qualifications in the workplace. This will help us to become a world leader in skills as opposed to continuing as we are and observing diminishing economic growth (quite a frightening prospect).

As a result of this Omni currently have a quarter of their workforce involved in a variety of further qualifications to improve their skills and to help develop individuals to meet the company’s business needs, these include Management NVQ Level 3 and NVQ in Business Administration Level 3, Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) and CIPD courses.

So jump on the bandwagon and ensure your company and its employees are helping to contribute, not only to YOUR growth and development but also helping the UK to become a world leader in skills, ensuring our long term prosperity.

Omni Acheive the Disability Symbol

Many thanks must go to Nicola (Office Manager!), who has helped Omni achieve the disability symbol, awarded by the Jobcentre, by agreeing to take action to meet the 5 Commitments regarding the employment of disabled people.

What are the Five Commitments?

First Commitment - A guaranteed job interview
• To interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for a job vacancy and consider them on their abilities

Second Commitment - Consulting disabled employees regularly
• To ensure there is a mechanism in place to discuss at any time, but at least once a year, with disabled employees what can be done to make sure they can develop and use their abilities

Third Commitment - Keeping employees if they become disabled
• To make every effort when employees become disabled to make sure they stay in employment

Fourth Commitment - Improving knowledge
• To take action to ensure that all employees develop the appropriate level of disability awareness needed to make the commitments work

Fifth Commitment - Checking progress and planning ahead
• Each year to review the five commitments and what else has been achieved, to plan ways to improve on them and to let employees and the Jobcentre Plus know about the progress and future plans

This is a big achievement and Omni join many organisations across Britain who currently use the symbol to promote disability awareness, for further information please contact your local Jobcentre or disability employment advisor.

The age/old question

With age discrimination being a major consideration round here (and in the majority of organisations in the recruitment sphere thanks to recent changes in UK legislation) I found this from Louise very interesting.

Not entirely surprisingly "assumptions about personality and age are exaggerated or incorrect".

T-Shirts and office furniture

Putting together a couple of stories I've talked about recently, here is a post from Guy about his recent visit to everyone's favourite t-shirt company, Threadless. This combines nicely with my recent posts about the office move and potential decor - I don't think we'll be going for the grafitti look but something chilled out and relaxed would perhaps be the right feel given the type of people that make up Omni. Basically I'm of the opinion we don't need to conform to any kind of corporate stereotype; the way things are moving in business now we can embrace the individuality that people have been wanting to see in the new place.

How to fast track your career

Quick link to an interview with Penelope Trunk that Guy has on his site. Penelope is a blogger and author of the book 'Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success'. The interview is really interesting and makes me think the book might be well worth a read.

We're moving house!

As I flagged up a little while ago, Omni are moving! We’re not going far, just down the road actually. It’s an important move though because in terms of current growth levels if we stay where we are we’ll have to sit on each others knees by September! The new office will have enough space for us to double in size, meaning plenty of room to grow into as we expand. Plus there’ll be more space for some fancy meeting rooms, some cool ‘break-out’ areas and all the other fun things that we’ve been talking about for a while now.

Part of the process is going to be getting ideas from people about what they want to see in the new place. What kind of furniture, what colour walls, what sort of ‘feel’ should it all have; it’s massively important that this is an environment where people can do their best work and be productive. Whilst the current office is great the limitations here needn’t apply somewhere new. We have a blank canvas to work on and that’s a really exciting prospect.

So, to all my colleagues out there that are reading this please let me know what you want to see in the new office. You can post it in comments here, or email me or just pop over with any thoughts.

To anyone not an Omni employee but with an opinion, I’d love to hear from you too! How do you use your work space? What gets the best out of people in the environment you work in?

[If you need some inspiration just follow the link from the Chief Happiness Officer’s blog in this post where there’s some food for thought]

Management methods for success

First off apologies for the lack of updates from the HR Forum. 'Technical issues' are to blame initially, but I'll be trying to get some info on it up soon, as promised.

In the meantime, there is someone that I haven't linked to yet but really should have done as his blog is very good. Joel on Software is funny, entertaining, informative and very easy to read. It's a regular of mine and despite my lack of software knowledge I still feel that I get a lot from it. A good example is a series of posts from his archives on management styles. Joel is talking in the sense of how to manage a technical team but in reality it's good advice for any managers. Read all 3 and in order if you can. Highly recommended.

Joel on Command and Control Management
Joel on Econ 101 Management
Joel on Identity Management

Get your boss to buy you a house

Although it sounds crazy an article I read online today seems to be suggesting that in the not-too-distant it could be fairly commonplace for employers to help staff get a foot on the property ladder. And this got me thinking...

The first rungs of the property ladder in the UK have been greased somewhat by rapidly increasing house prices in the past few years. The average price for a house in the UK went past the £150,000 mark for the first time last year. Combined with a staggering 2006 average student debt of £13,252 per person (according to Natwest) it's really no fun at all for a number of those trying to land their first house. Add to this recent interest rate rises and even if a first time buyer manages to squirrel away enough money for a deposit and mortgages themselves to the hilt for a 1 bed flat in the dodgy part of town, they'll still have to be super-frugal to avoid becoming one of the 17,000 people who had their home reposessed in 2006!

All in all it's a pretty glum picture and it makes the response from HSA all the more welcome. By allowing people to save up specfically for a house it takes a lot of the burden off the individual and gives them a suitable target to aim for without being unrealistic. So good work to the HSA!

What else can be done though? What more could (/should?) employers be doing to look after their staff? How about the following:

• Consultations with professional financial advisers provided for all employees, completely free of charge. Absorbing what would be a relatively small cost to ensure that your people don't end up in financial difficulties. Staff with comfortable home lives are happy staff. And happy staff are productive staff, as we know.
• Free or subsidised transport for employees. If the office is out of town maybe set up a minibus service. Reward car sharing, provide travel allowances, generally make it easy and cheap for people to turn up (because let's face it, on a rainy Monday morning turning up may be the last thing they want to do).
• Help and advice on where to live, what the locality is like and any other pertinent information (schools, shopping, cinemas - all that non-work stuff that work gets in the way of). You can find a lot of the info here, so there's no excuse for not providing the basics at least.
• Flexible working hours and locations where possible, particularly to take into consideration family commitments. As can be seen with this handy calculator (the link came from Guy, I think it's Mother's Day in America shortly), a stay-at-home parent is worth serious money. Making their life as easy as possible should be one of an employer's top priorities.
• For larger organisations how about company-owned property that can be rented out to staff at a cheap rate. Not Robert Owen-esque or anything, just some apartments that people can stay in whilst they save up and find their feet. This would be particularly helpful for new graduates or those looking to relocate. It could also help out when hiring specialist contractors who are looking to commute to work for short periods of time.

Obviously all of the above take time, money and effort. Plus, they're ideas off the top of my head rather than fully developed strategies. If employers are to truly offer a unique proposition to potential employees though, there's a lot worse starting points they could go from. Thoughts?

Guest blogger next week - Craig Sweeney

I'm pleased to announce that next week in addition to the regular postings that I'll be making, we'll also have the pleasure of some content from Omni's Ops Director, Craig. Craig is going (along with Robert, the MD) to the HR Forum's annual meet-and-greet onboard a crusie ship called the Oriana. For those who aren't familiar with the concept basically it's a huge networking event where a group of 'clients' and a group of 'suppliers' are trapped on a boat for 3 days and forced to endlessly eat, drink, be merry and (most importantly) network!

Craig will therefore be blogging from the frontline, providing fascinating insights into potential new clients, interesting business opportunities and how to stay on your feet when drinking cocktails on a boat.

Best of luck Craig!

[Correction - the boat is actually the Aurora this year, it was the Oriana last year. Thanks for the heads up Bev!]

'Nice' is the new 'You're fired!'

Although ‘Sir’ Alan can still reel ‘em in with the best of them by snarling curmudgeonly advice at bewildered ‘management’ types his days as the archetypal businessman may be numbered. In workplaces the world over, being nice is fast becoming the new black…

Don’t believe me? Check out this link from Penelope Trunk (which I found via Louise’s blog) that extols the virtues of a spot of home baking for your beloved colleagues and this post (link via Alex the CHO) describing a novel approach to falling profits by a McDonalds franchisee (in fact check out the blog that link comes from generally for 'nice examples, it's called The Nice Blog for a reason!).

Don't mess with nature...

A harsh lesson but one that others would do well to learn perhaps: don't mess with crocodiles...

Meeting hell

A post over at Seth's Blog for all those stuck in that perpetual-meeting kind of hell. You know the type I mean. If you don't, you're lucky!

I like his idea for removing chairs from the meeting rooms personally, I've had a couple of stand up meetings and they went really well. Something else that we're going to try in our meetings is the Six Thinking Hats technique. If it works out I'll let you know!

The best clients

Good post from Dennis Howlett (an accountancy blog that is a riveting read and interesting even if you have no interest in accounting).

It got me thinking about clients in the recruitment sector. Dennis' list should apply to clients in this market too but I'd wager it doesn't for most people. I went to a talk in Chicago last year where the speaker was from the HRO Buyers Advisory Board. The board is an independent HRO buyers group and the membership is a veritable 'who's who' of organisations that outsource some or all of their HR function.

Most of the audience were potential buyers, looking at the possibility of outsourcing. I went to get the 'other-side' info and pick up any tips I could. What I remember best from it though is the following assertion:

All of the groups membership expect and want their outsource companies to make money.

Now this isn't really a surprise when you think about it logically. Yet still, it made me stop at the time and at the end I went over that particular note a couple of times to really make it stand out. Buyers should be thinking of long term relationships and they expect providers to make money over the period of the contract. Something as radical as outsourcing your HR function (or just your recruitment function) is not to be undertaken lightly. So why plan to scrap it in 6 months? Exactly, no one does. Yet that's what happens time and again. The blame for this is often attributed to poor service (and I don't doubt for one second that there is a heck of a lot of poor service out there, I hear about it all the time). Yet maybe more of the responsibility (because I don't like the word blame) needs to be on the buyers, the clients.

At Omni we've got (and lost) clients that are indeed gold standard. And I think we're getting a lot better at saying no to those who just won't be up to scratch. Yet does anyone tick all the boxes from the list? Do any of your clients? If not, what can you do to help them get there?

The "world's local bank" do themselves proud...

Although I think I'm probably incapable of being surprised by the appetite to make money demonstrated by the worlds leading banks, HSBC have this week outdone themselves. You may have seen this story in the news recently but I thought it worthy of flagging up nonetheless as I think with all the advertising money and the massive charm offensive by banks like HSBC it is easy to forget that in reality they aren't the good guys they'd like you to think they are. Customers come second, money comes first. That is and always will be the way of it.

The stand-out quote of the story:

"...not everybody in the world is equal. Some people have higher incomes and need greater services through the bank. These customers demand a better service."

If I was a HSBC customer, that quote alone would be enough to make me switch banks.

Free ice cream!

This post is as simple as the title! Via Martin, the MoneySavingExpert, and thanks to Messrs Ben and Jerry - free ice cream!

Enjoy!

Quick mind/link dump

Hi all! Hope everyone had a great Easter break and got some nice weather. Four days off and I feel fairly refreshed so whilst my brain is working reasonably well I'm going to put together a few links that I've come across over the past days/weeks. Bit of a brain dump to be honest so a real mix of links in there, both work related and not. Hopefully some will take your fancy.

- Seth's most important rule (which my thinking is very much in line with) ties in quite nicely with the secret I divulged last week

- Follow up from Guy on Carol Dweck and the different types of mindsets people have (for background see this previous post)

- An interesting post about stress and burnout at work from a new section of the always interesting PsyBlog.
N.B. Jeremy has decided to start up a Careers section on PsyBlog after good feedback on this post, that I've linked previously. Looks interesting so I'll doubtless be paying it a few visits as he starts to get some more content on there

- An interesting green post here. More on the whole green issue to come...Omni have some very interesting things in the (recyclable) pipeline

- The best t-shirt website known to man: Threadless is very cool and a shining example of a working user community. As the t-shirt says, I ♥ Threadless

- Another non-work link so for your lunch hour obviously ;-) This is something that I've always thought would be a good idea - design your own trainers. Good work Puma! (Not ridiculously pricey either, a good personalised birthday present for someone or just a nice treat for your feet)

That's it for now folks. Hope something tickles your fancy in there. Any comments etc

The secret

I can't believe we're already in April. Where's the year gone? I've had my head buried in graduate CVs and telephone interviews recently as it's backs against the wall time for my clients' grad scheme this year; the assessment days start next week with nearly 120 people being seen in total. Gulp!

Here's a quick post therefore, before I get back to the slog. But it's an important one. I want to tell you the secret. The one thing that matters. I've said it before but I wasn't as blatant about saying it. It's the one thing that impresses me. It's how to get on the PSL I run. It's how to buy some time on the phone with me. It's how to sell me a product and how to get me to evangelise for you. It's how to get noticed by me in virtually any context. It's how to convince me you're worth more money when it's salary review time and it's how you get my job.

Here it is. The secret.

Be Remarkable

(...in that literal sense I've talked about before, meaning what you do, I'll remark upon)

Now you have the secret I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll do with it.

The Effort Effect

I found this link via Guy Kawasaki's exceptionally good blog. The article is right up Ollie's street but should be of particular interest to anyone who manages people or has kids. And if you don't fall into either category it's just pretty darn interesting and well worth being information that you store in your brain to pull out and wow (/bore) people with at parties (or is it just me that does that?)

The article is about Carol Dweck and you can see it here. Carol is a psychologist with an exceptional pedigree so what she says goes pretty much. My favourite bit:

Dweck’s students from over the years describe her as a generous, nurturing mentor. She’d surely attribute these traits not to an innate gift, but to a highly developed mind-set. “Just being aware of the growth mind-set, and studying it and writing about it, I feel compelled to live it and to benefit from it,” says Dweck, who took up piano as an adult and learned to speak Italian in her 50s. “These are things that adults are not supposed to be good at learning.”

Maybe I should pick up that guitar that I put down quite a few years ago now...

Where would you like to work?

Omni are looking at a potential office move soon. The place we're in now is great but just not big enough for the rapid expansion that's happening. If we leave it unchecked it'll be 3 people to each desk, sitting on each others knees and chaos in the kitchen.

When we move we'll have a blank space that will need decorating and furnishing. We could do a lot worse than follow some of the ideas suggested by the always innovative Chief Happiness Officer. (I want a few Sumo Omni bean bags at least! The name fits and everything!)

Really disappointing

There is a story floating round on the blogosphere at the minute that is really quite upsetting. It's essentially a story about bullying and how some people feel the need to make other people miserable. It's a pretty sad indictment of human behaviour in all honesty and it's not my place to get into it in too big a way, not knowing the main protagonists involved. Worth noting I thought though, as the person this has affected most is one of my favourite bloggers and she now may be retiring from the whole scene.

The link to the story is below. You'll also find plenty of comment if you pay Scoble, Hugh or Seth a visit. Important though - the following link leads to what is a quite disturbing post, with very strong language. If you're not comfortable with that please don't click the link.

Here is the link to the possibly the last post Kathy Sierra will ever write (although fingers crossed this is a break rather than a retirement).

Q&A with JP

I've been interviewed for a post that Louise (from UK Recruiter) has just put up on her blog. You can read the interview here.

Almost like being famous this, maybe they'll call me up about the next series of Celebrity Big Brother...

Utterly remarkable recruitment strategy

I like to think that some of the strategies we put in place to find people for our clients are pretty innovative. We're focussed on finding the very best people anyway we can. Yet this blows it out of the water really...

Via Seth, this link describes in detail a recruitment strategy that is truly remarkable. You may think that this doesn't apply to you I suppose because of the effort involved/cost/market sector you work in/type of person you hire etc. For me though it's not about copying what Red5 do, it's about the state of mind involved. It's about your attitude to recruitment. It's about the focus on people. It's about being truly committed to hiring the best and proving your committment. It's about doing things that people will remark on over and over.

Read the post, click the links, absorb the info and then hope you can do something as good as this. Think you can? Ideas on a postcard please!

Do you blog?

Any fellow bloggers out there? Then this link from Kathy Sierra is an absolute must-read. It's from a presentation she gave (man I'd love to have gone to that talk) based around Hugh MacLeod's Global Microbrand idea, which is a theory I subscribe to wholeheartedly.

To my mind it's no coincidence that the likes of Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, Tara Hunt et al follow all of the above without even thinking. The debate about A-listers, access to readers etc keeps popping up in one form or another. Yet when all is said and done the guys 'at the top' all write well, have interesting content and respect their readership. Not to say others don't (narrowly avoided opening that can of worms there!) but it seems to me like a very good place to start for a newbie like me.

Who likes George Clooney?

First off apologies for the lack of posts recently, I've been in and out of the office so much recently. I really need to get into this whole mobile blogging thing!

Now apologies for the shameless 'exciting title - tenuously related post' situation here! This post from Seth is a good one though. What do you choose to do? Do you make good choices? My favourite quote:

Not choosing is still making a choice.

How happy are you at work?

Psychologists such as Amy Wrzesniewski believe there are three ways to view your work:

As a job-you work for your pay check, often watching the clock while day dreaming about the weekend.
As a career-you have set goals and wish for promotion and recognition.
As a calling- something you would continue to do even if your numbers came up on the Lottery. You find your work fulfilling and satisfying resulting in a positive and happy approach to your work.

However, it is now thought that it is not just your ‘job’ which effects your happiness at work but the way you actually view your job, to quote Marcus Aurelius ‘life itself is but what you deem it’.

There is actually a branch of Psychology now dedicated to the study of happiness and nowhere does it mention having lots of money, being stick thin, having a huge house, a beautiful partner or owning a flash car. The 6 areas which are thought to affect our happiness are:

Wisdom: love of learning, intelligence
Courage: perseverance and integrity
Humanity: kindness and love
Justice: Citizenship and fairness.
Temperance: self-control and prudence
Transcendence: gratitude, forgiveness and hope.

There are some very good websites dedicated to helping people become happier (www.authentichappiness.org) and (www.happinesshypothesis.com). So if you’re unhappy at work, it might be useful to think about changing the way you perceive your job rather than simply changing your job???

Feed me Omniblog!

Just a quick post to say that if you're not already using a syndicated feed to view the blog (or in case you're not into the whole feed, newsreader, RSS thing) you can now see all new posts on this site. It's run by Louise at UK:Recruiter (whose blog is well worth a read) and provides a nice portal for related stories if recruitment blogging is what you're into.

What hours do you work?

Quick link for you regarding 'Extreme Jobs'. Just goes to show that the supposed work/life balance revolution is still in it's infancy at best. If your working week sounds anything like the one described in this article though do something about it, quickly. It's not good for you and despite any claims to the contrary from your boss, it's not good for your company. How does it really help if you're great for the first few months in a job then a shell of yourself for the next year?

So act now, before you end up like Barbara:

Before Barbara Agoglia left her job as a director in American Express' small business unit, she was on the verge of burnout. Aside from logging upward of 50 hours per week, she had a 90-minute commute to and from northern Westchester and had to be reachable to clients nearly 24-7.
The breaking point came when her son started kindergarten and she didn't have time to wait with him at the bus stop. "The hamster-on-the-wheel analogy is the best way to describe how I felt," she says. For Agoglia, quitting felt like her only option.

Organisational Democracy top performers

As a follow up to my recent post about Ricardo Semler and Organisational Democracy I can point you to the following list; the most democratic workplaces in 2007. It's a bit of a mixed bag of companies with some names on there you may be familiar with (but I'd bet most not). I'd absolutely love Omni to get on the list and looking at the criteria I think we match up in some ways already. Rob would have to be willing to embrace the philosophy even further to get us on the list though. Wonder if I can convince him to put me in charge of getting us on there for 2008?

Good annoyed

So I had a conversation today with a supplier of ours who hasn't been what I would consider up to scratch. The supplier instigated the conversation though, the manager called me directly to express how annoyed she was that we weren't putting as much business their way as they are used to. The thing is, I like that.

She was clearly annoyed with me because she felt they hadn't been treated fairly. Now whilst that's not a situation I aimed to orchestrate (I wouldn't intentionally want to annoy any of my suppliers) it pleased me that her reaction to that was to challenge, to fight her corner and to look at ways to address the problem. One of my issues for them in reality was that when we started to reduce the business we gave them, no-one spoke up. My main contact didn't call and kick up a fuss. In fact no-one called. For over 6 months.

I therefore don't think we did treat them unfairly. With so many people keen to work with us we can be choosy. I want the best suppliers all of the time. Yet just her calling and being annoyed, good annoyed, has pushed them way back up in my estimations. Had they never called, chances are I'd have never called them back. So her annoyance has really worked for them.

Now that the manager has got involved things are going to start moving. I'm going to see them in a couple of weeks to talk about how we proceed. OK there'll still need to be some improvements to their service. But maybe I've missed things and could improve in areas too. A dialogue will be had, strong opinions will doubtless be expressed and the whole set-up will be overhauled, hopefully for the better. It's a conversation I'm more than willing to have.