Have you thought about what would happen if your key people left tomorrow? Do you have the right people on board? How vulnerable are you to losing talent to your competitors?

The latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development research suggests that over a third of all workers aim to leave their current employment once the recession has subsided and the job market has been re-ignited.

With the average cost of replacing staff estimated by the CIPD at £6,125, rising to £9,000 for senior managers, it’s time to pre-empt any threat of an employee exodus by looking after your valued staff now...

Attend the Talent Forum and stay one step ahead

We would like to invite you to attend our lively, fast moving, interactive Talent Forum on the 5th October at Eastwood Park, just off the M5 North of Bristol.

Our industry experts and entrepreneurs will share valuable tools and insight that you can immediately implement in your organisation, including a FREE half day of consultancy from each of our leading sponsors.

Speakers include Dragon’s Den slayer Rob Law, the man behind Trunki and well known BBC presenter and motivational business speaker Ken Hames, who along with our expert sponsors will cover topics including:

• Hiring the right people quickly and cost effectively
• Developing your best people to deliver business results
• Gaining more productivity from the same (or fewer) employees
• Creating a compelling employer brand
• Making your employees advocates and fans of your organisation
• Developing an exciting and motivating reward and benefits package
• Taking an innovative approach to learning and development

Forum Experts and Speakers include:

Rob Law - Founder, Magmatic and Trunki Ken Hames - BBC presenter and Operations Director, Farscape Development Ian Rummels - Managing Director, PES Chris Bleakley - Director, Resource Management John Tarrant - Managing Partner, DNA

For full details and to reserve your place, visit our event website at www.talentforum.co.uk

LOCATION - Eastwood Park, Failand, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire GL12
8DA. Eastwood Park is easily accessible from Bristol, Gloucester and South Wales and is
just a mile from the M5 (J14).

DATE AND TIME - 5th of October, 4:00pm until 7:30pm

COST - £35 (and bring a colleague for FREE)

Using Social Media To Engage Your Employees

If Twitter can make mainstream headlines, is there a place for it inside organisations? Virgin Media thinks there is, and have used Twitter to increased collaboration and engagement at their company.

Collaboration is fundamental to employee engagement in organisations today where relationships have changed; hierarchies are disappearing; knowledge is more in demand; and individuals expect employers to provide tools that allow them to communicate freely.

Technology makes it possible for employees to connect and communicate easily and quickly across functions, hierarchies, divisions and countries. This sharing of ideas, opinions and knowledge generates incredibly valuable information, vital for informed strategic decision making and, ultimately, business survival.

“Getting social” is a hot topic at Virgin Media – here's how they transformed the way they communicate and collaborate internally using social media tools and techniques.

1. Intranet. This is the main online channel used internally to communicate
2. The Grill.This is a live online web chat, 'grilling' someone within the business. Anyone in the business can ask the individual getting 'grilled' questions, and it is a great way to get views and opinions aired and shared within the business. It is filmed and recorded for the archive.
3. Forum's. These are similar to the intranet, but sit separately within the structure. Although nervous initially regarding the time it would take to manage them, the forums actually self manage themselves and have needed very little moderation. They have proved effective because they invoke different responses from different people across the business.
4. Wiki's. These are information wiki's across the business. They have grown into their own micro communities, as individual sections of the business build up their own 'local' knowledge communities. These engage people differently, because they are reliant on colleagues working together to populate them with information.
5. Twitter. With over 100 offices across the UK, Twitter has enabled connections at Virgin that wouldn’t have happened before. It has opened doors for people needing answers and support on a whole variety of topics – from IT support, to finding solutions to customer problems, to tips on where to get the best beer for those travelling to other offices. They have a 'locked account' (they simply protect their tweets) that currently has 430+ people (otherwise known as “Twits”) in their online community. employees join in on everything from twitpic caption competitions to sending out top tips, (“toptwips”) to help their community keep up with the latest developments on Twitter and other social media tools.
6. Blogs. They currently have 25 blogs being written within the organisation on a wide range of subjects. They actively encourage anyone to blog and share them within the Virgin Media network.

Virgin believe there have been five real benefits from using the multitude of channels as part of their communication strategy:

• Real-time feedback on real-time communications
• Social media has revolutionised the way they are able to reach out to diverse cultures across different geographical boundaries, and link many of them together, by giving them different channels to do this.
• It has helped them move away from just being an information 'top-down' company, by instigating all these 'bottom-up' communication channels. All employees now have a voice.
• The employees can choose which way they communicate with other employees, and how they share information with each other.
• Their employees are now taking responsible for their own communications and information which they are sharing with one another. They are not waiting for Virgin Media to 'tell them something' they are now using colleagues on the network to help instead.

Have your say

Would you consider using Twitter internally to help employees collaborate and communicate? Why or why not? Virgin as a brand is young and innovative, and the corporate culture encourages experimentation of new technologies, but how would you convince leaders of a more conservative organisation to allow employees to try something like Twitter? Let us know your thoughts below!

Next Week: 10 top tips on how to begin to incorporate social media platforms into your communication strategy.

What's Your Brand Doing For You?

In a climate of skills shortages and severe competition for the best potential recruits, how do you best stand out from the crowd? An employer brand has the ability to attract and retain the right people, influence productivity, engage, motivate and innovate. Employer branding highlights the importance of taking the hiring process seriously and the rich rewards it will bring if you get it right. All employers, regardless of size, location and structure, have an employer brand, but many organisations lack the time, resources or knowledge to form a powerful strategy for their employer branding.

Good employer branding has a huge positive impact on an organisation's profile, attractiveness and strength. It's not just about about logos and clever adverts, it's about engaging with job applicants and promoting your organisation as an employer of choice, consistently through every aspect of the recruitment cycle. The way in which a candidate is treated during the recruiting process has a long lasting impact on your recruiting success and ability to attract top candidates.

In a nutshell, your employer brand is the voice and image of the communication you implement to attract and retain employees. It is what identifies you in the marketplace; it's what makes your company distinctive.

Still not convinced it matters? - Five reasons why employer branding really works:

1. Shortage of skilled labour: As the number of possible choices job seekers can make is becoming even greater in the marketplace and as globalisation impacts increasingly, employer branding strategies prove critical. Employer brands act as a psychological trigger in candidate's heads. These are very powerful triggers in the job market and can play a key role in candidate's job choice. Companies that are perceived to be attractive employers will have an easier time to recruit top talent.

2. More with less: a mantra coined during this economic downturn, there is high pressure to cut costs and increase productivity, which has made the need to get the right people in the right jobs even more crucial. Employer branding results in more successful recruitment and retention of top talent. Moreover, by properly communicating the reality of the work environment, companies are more likely to attract talent that fits their organisational culture, thus increasing the people with the right skills in the correct positions.

3. Growth & profitability: hiring and retaining top performers is essential for growth and to maintain a competitive edge. Employees who have the right skills, experience and knowledge, in relation to the critical areas of a business to drive growth, are strategically important. Bottom line, employer branding increases your profit margin.

4. Popularity: research on the talent market reveals that people want to work for companies with great reputations, and they often turn to family members, friends or colleagues for advice and approval when making a decision about which employers to consider. In addition, the consumer/corporate/employer brands are becoming intertwined. If a company is viewed as being an unpopular employer, it will consequently affect everything else and cause disequilibrium in the corporate ecosystem.

5. Strength: being an attractive employer provides a company or organisation more bargaining power, as employees will want to work for them more than anyone else, even those that have rare and in demand skills - irrespective of salary levels. In addition, good employer branding is constantly maintaining an image of being the most desirable employer, and giving the right reasons or incentives to attract the best candidates.

Remember that the actions and activities of organisations are becoming more visible due to the increasing number of people joining and posting comments on social and business networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Employees and job applicants will continue ranking companies based on a higher level of internal insight into the company gained on online communities. As a result, businesses that promote good employment branding and communications will, in the long term, feature high on the “best places to work” lists and their employees will act as ambassadors of their brand. Every aspect of how prospective candidates are handled.

Of course, it is not just the communications aspect of the recruitment process that needs to reflect the employer brand. Every aspect of how prospective candidates are handled is worthy of consideration from the moment they make contact with the organisation through the selection phases to the subsequent offer or rejection. By recruiting intelligently and selectively you can better develop employee branding. Once your employees understand your brand and objectives—and buy in—they’ll be in a better position to act as ambassadors for your brand.

Time for the Public Sector to Get Lean

So far the public sector has been cushioned from the impact of the recession, but it now faces £6bn in cuts. Drawing on the experience of the private sector in attracting and engaging employees during the recession to deliver much-needed change could help the public sector minimise the pain of spending cuts. Times have been and remain tough. The new Government's plans to cut spending are immediate; we have reached crunch time and the public sector will be under enormous pressure to create leaner organisations.

Private employers have come out of what we hope has been the worst effects of the recession, having managed to keep many more people in jobs than had been expected. This has been largely down to the flexibility and goodwill of staff who quickly adapted to emergency measures, including pay and recruitment freezes.

Radical thought and new approaches are now the only hope in satisfying the need to reduce costs and minimise the impact on the UK's employment figures. It's a time for entrepreneurial people management. This will be tough but not impossible. Adaptability is not new to public-sector organisations. Habitual restructure and reorganisation means they are adept at handling change, maybe more so than other sectors.

In our view there are four key actions that could make a difference for public employers, in both the short and long term:

Make sure you have a clear strategy

First-class planning and an ability to move quickly both in thought and action are just some of the skills that will be essential for senior managers over the next few years. When it comes to strategy, impact is needed now but not at the expense of long-term vision. With staff costs often the most significant cost for organisations, the immediate knee-jerk reaction may be to cut jobs but there are alternatives such as pay freezes, pay cuts, flexible working, reducing overtime and expenses.

Tap into existing talent pools

The rationale for redeployment is compelling. Realigning skills and expertise to the areas where they can make the most impact is critical to protecting the quality of services provided and, if undertaken successfully, can result in significant cost savings.

Future-proof the organisation

Establishing the ‘new world' requires alignment at an executive level and engagement throughout the whole organisation. Countless studies have provided evidence of the value of engagement. Key to this, of course, is the ability to connect your own role, contribution and development to the success of the organisation. Helping managers and leaders tap into strategies to manage and lead change is a key component of any transformational agenda.

Keeping people focused

Keeping people on track, contributing and focused on key activities are the mainstay of Employee Assistance Services. Providing immediate support, access to counselling via the telephone, online and face-to-face where needed will keep employees living and working well and achieving more at a minimal cost to the employer.

Strong leadership

Finally, strong leadership is going to be crucial. Leaders who can communicate their vision for the organisation with clarity are going to be best placed to steer their organisations through these difficult times.

How the New LinkedIn Feature Could Give You the Inside Track

LinkedIn have recently introduced a new feature that enables users to follow companies they are interested in, called Company Follow. On the surface it’s a small change, but it could have major implications for both LinkedIn’s individual users and companies. Company updates will let you know about profile changes, new hires, recent departures and promotions within an organisation.

Nearly a million companies already have their company profiles on the professional networking site, and as the LinkedIn blog puts it:

“Starting today, you can be in the loop on new developments, potential business opportunities or even job opportunities by following companies of interest to you… Most importantly, this feature can deliver insights - you may be surprised at - such as the pace of hiring at your nearest competitor or the start of a whole new industry as you see web technology companies hiring geography teachers (for e.g.).”

I think it's a really smart move on LinkedIn's part. LinkedIn has always been known as the professionals social network or B2B networking playground online, so this feature makes sense. LinkedIn users can follow a company, by just selecting the Follow button on the companies profile or a member who is associated with a particular company. They'll be able to easily view the companies they are following and they will also receive recommendations on companies they might be interested in following.

So,where do you begin? Here's a few tips to get you started...

Companies

Companies use LinkedIn for various ways such as building a community, gaining new talent, or watching its competition. The Company Follow feature will ensure greater success for using LinkedIn to it’s fullest potential.

1. A new stream of followers and potential employee opportunity can be built. There is no restriction on the amount of companies a person can follow allowing a followers to build.

2. Pay attention to the competition. If anyone can follow you so can any company so know who is paying attention to you.

3. They said what? Know what the conversations surrounding your business are whether you like it or not. It’s better to know than not.

4. Keep your employees happy. By following your competitors you will know if they are in need of someone who could be found in your company. This provides you with an unique opportunity to keep your employees happy in ways that matter most.

5. Follow freely. You won’t be blocked so follow your competitor to protect your company and find ,if needed, new employees.

6.You may want to keep an even closer eye on what information you and your employees put on LinkedIn now – it was changes to profiles there that revealed that Apple had bought Intrinsity, and that was even before the introduction of this feature.)

Job Seekers

1.Be selective of the companies you follow. It’s imperative to follow companies where you will be of greatest value and that have a good reputation.

2.Discover what hidden jobs these companies may have by staying current its news.

3.Who’s coming and going? Find out what jobs are opening or closing and why.

4.Promotions. A friendly congratulations to an employee receiving a promotion can garner itself into a beneficial networking relationship.

5. Know what “Top Dogs” have joined with the company. By knowing what Executives or Senior Managers have joined you can insight into what the company is doing, accomplishing, or needing, which could be window of opportunity.

Resource Solutions Group (RSG) short-listed for prestigious Award

Resource Solutions Group's successful brand launch and internal marketing campaign, ‘I’m RSG’ has been short-listed for Best Marketing Campaign in the Recruitment Consultant Industry Awards, sponsored by 1st Choice Software.

The RSG campaign relied on the passion and personal integrity of both senior leaders and their staff to shape and transmit our single-minded proposition, ‘Empowered Thinking, Proven Delivery’ and encouraged employees to feel their views were recognised and valued to increase their levels of engagement in the company.

Take a look at some of the RSG videos

“We tried to engage everybody into the new vision for the business. We drew upon our own staff’s personality, ambitions, experience and expertise and then used that information as a platform for developing and delivering our brand message. The beauty of this is that it allows RSG’s proposition to be personalised, instead of becoming some glossy corporate message that is delivered without adequate content. The feedback I have received from all areas of the company has been overwhelmingly positive. Through a smart execution the team have raised the bar and set new standards for internal communications.” said Mike Beesley, Director of Group Sales and Marketing.

The Recruitment Industry Awards judging panel met on Wednesday to sort through ‘the exceptionally high standard of entries’ and the Awards ceremony will be held at Grace in Great Windmill Street, London on the 3rd June, 2010.

The panel was chaired by Recruitment Consultant editor Jim Tanfield and was made up of TEAM UK’s Liz Longman, Elite Leaders managing director John O’Sullivan, Thomas International chairman and chief executive Martin Reed with Front Page Publishing’s Paul Harwood and 1st Choice Software’s Roy Snart.

Judges’ chairman Jim Tanfield said: “The standards for a majority of entries was exceptional and judges had their work cut out to find a winner in each category. There was something incredibly heartening about the diversity of entries, with small and large recruitment firms alike as well as the support services, wanting to celebrate their achievements following a turbulent economy.”

To view the shortlists for all five Recruitment Industry Awards categories, including Best Marketing Campaign, visit http://www.rec-con.co.uk/article.php/news/shortlist_announced/2726

Resource Management is an RSG company

Some Clear Advice: 10 tips for Employers dealing with Volcanic Ash Fall-Out

The volcanic ash blown over the UK and Europe from the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland has caused disruption to the aviation industry on a scale not seen in this country since World War II. This has affected not only those working within the airline industry, but many thousands of others who are stranded and unable to return to the UK.

The latest news reports suggest that flights into the UK may not resume normality until the end of this week at the earliest. With 150,000 Britons estimated to be stuck abroad, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano is going to impact on thousands of employers throughout the UK, as employees marooned overseas are unable to get back to work.

The situation will inevitably have a huge effect on business productivity, with many employees unable to come back to work for an indefinite amount of time and highlights the need for employers to have policies on disruptions to transport and wider disaster contingency plans.

Here at RML, we’ve already had an important meeting cancelled due to a Venice-bound key attendant and some of our own staff members have been left high and dry in both France and Spain. We're communicating as much as possible by asking people to get in touch with status reports and options for travel and we have a dedicated group working on both short and long-term contingency planning.

One of the key concerns for employers will be whether the unplanned absence of stranded staff affects their annual holiday allowance or is treated as unpaid or paid leave.

Here’s a few points you might want to consider:

1.Employers might want to audit their staff to see how many employees are affected. This enables HR to assess the scale of the problem and also analyse whether any extra support is required.

2. Make sure you have a policy in place dealing with the disruptions. This should cover issues such as the steps your employees are required to take to try to get to work, that they must contact their employer as soon as possible if they are unable to get to work, and the consequences of their not being able to make it to work. This should reduce the scope for confusion and disagreement.

3. Require employees to make reasonable efforts to get to work but take into account employees' individual circumstances. Bear in mind there will be extra strain on alternative modes of transport during disruptions and that employees may struggle to get to work even if they do not have to travel a great distance.

4. Consider how you will treat absence due to transport disruptions. As a general rule, employees must be ready and willing to perform their duties, so if they are absent from work without authorisation they are not automatically entitled to be paid. But if an employee is unable to get to work because of a natural disaster beyond the employee's control - you may wish to be more lenient. Remember to be consistent in your approach to avoid discrimination claims. You could discuss the options with the employee on his or her return.

5. If possible, allow the employee to work from where they are stranded. This may be the best option if they are abroad as a result of a business trip. It would be difficult to ask an employee to take holiday if they have become stranded as a result of work.

6. Where employees are unable to get to work because they have been on holiday and have become stranded due to transport disruptions, taking additional paid annual leave may be an option. There is nothing to stop you asking if employees would like to take extra holiday if they are unable to get to work. Many employees will find taking paid holiday preferable to losing a day's pay.

7. Think of other practical alternatives to requiring employees to take time missed as annual leave. For example, some employees may agree to make the time up at a later date or employers could allow employees to swap shifts.

8. Do not place unreasonable burdens on employees who have not been away on holiday and have been able to make it to work. Employers have a duty of care to all their employees and should also bear in mind the maximum periods that they can require employees to work under the Working Time Regulations 1998.

9. Remember that other organisations' employees may also be having difficulty getting to work, which may have a knock-on effect on your staff. Where, for example, schools are closed due to key staff being unable to get to work, your employees may have no option but to take time off to provide childcare. This is likely to fall under the right to take reasonable time off in relation to dependants.

10. The benefits to staff morale and productivity in the long run of paying staff in these circumstances is likely to outweigh the financial burden to the business of paying employees who cannot attend work this week.

Has the incident affected your business? Post your comments below…