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DBA HR Solutions - News


Vacancy – Assistant EC & I Engineer

November 16, 2011

Our client is a diverse, progressive and successful company that prides itself on building careers for its staff. They now wish to recruit an Assistant EC & I Engineer.

HNC or equivalent in electrical or instrumentation and control engineering.

•Strong work experience in an engineering role in a 24/7 environment.

•Have a thorough knowledge of industrial instrumentation systems.

•Knowledge & experience of working at a COMAH site.

•Development, implementation & evaluation of systems, upgrades, improvements & modifications.

•Successful planning and management of outage related issues.

•Exceptional interpersonal, influencing and communication skills.

•Potential and wish to develop further within the business.

The salary will be negotiable between £30-£35k with large company benefits.
Please apply via vdm@beepemail.co.uk using ref 1111-2 and indicate your current salary and notice period. Your CV should be in MS Word format only.

Uncategorized

Does George Osborne need some Industrial Relations training!

February 1, 2011

Now the world of industrial relations is predominantly about relationship building is it not? Just like other relationships in life, it takes persistent effort to initiate and maintain a healthy bond. Unlike general life relationships, however, the association between management and unions isn’t always voluntarily entered into. Despite that most management teams accept, however begrudgingly, the role of the trade union in the workplace and work hard to accommodate them. As the scale of the trade union involvement becomes more prominent in larger workplaces so does the need for effective management communication that nurtures a healthy relationship built on mutual respect and shared goals. It is my belief that in most workplaces this is achieved relatively well to the credit of both management and trade union representatives. In spite of the difficult times the good work goes on unabated.

One crucial skill for management negotiators is an understanding of what makes people tick (including TU Reps) and the expertise to put across your point of view eloquently and positively, ensuring in turn that positive interactions continue to produce positive outcomes. If all the inputs are positive there is much less chance of negative outcomes. Step into the picture one Chancellor George Osborne!

Now, he may have just missed auditions for the pantomime villain roles around the country so this may be behind his latest statements to the BBC at the weekend. Taking aside any potential accusations that he could be quoted ‘out of context’ what on earth made him think that saying that he hoped to have “…a mature, grown-up conversation…” (with the unions) didn’t stand a decent chance of being misinterpreted? Certainly most experienced workplace negotiators would only say such things if they fully intended to lob in an incendiary device into discussions. The underlying message that Mr Osborne doesn’t somehow think the unions are being mature or grown up can be gleaned from the short statement without having to worry about context. The potential for it to be received as an insult would be evident to an undergraduate business student let alone a Cabinet Minister.

I’m as sure as I can be that all the industrial relations workers around the UK will be happily looking forward to shaking Mr Osborne warmly by the throat for stoking up union belief that they should prepare themselves for confrontation. There are only two possible explanations for him saying the words he did – the first possibility is that it was a well-considered statement judged to prompt an excessive trade union reaction that would strengthen public opinion against them. The second is that he was just being inept because he lacks workplace exposure and is merely holding onto an antiquated doctrine espoused by previous Conservative governments in decades gone by. The former is a risky strategy that could very easily back fire because public sentiment is not as it was 20 or so years ago when they’d had unions to the back teeth for the most part and could quite easily see that the unions enjoyed too much power. The latter is quite simply unacceptable in a senior appointed figure in Her Majesty’s Government.

As an HR professional of more than 20 years standing with ample practical exposure to trade unions in a variety of workplaces I simply couldn’t understand the forcefulness with which Mr Osborne has attacked the unions recently. I’m sure most of the rest of the public will have been doing the same as me and that is staring at the screen in disbelief wondering how he’s managed to assess things so badly. Why is he pointing the finger of blame so strongly at a group that has been more controlled and mature in the past decade? The evidence may be in his response to the recent poor economic growth figures which he blamed on the snow in December despite the ONS providing a clear indication that this was not responsible. If the economic plans he has set in place fall of the tracks later this year I already steeling myself for the ‘wrong type of leaves’ accusative finger coming out in the autumn!

Uncategorized

New temporary Contract Engineering service – Interim Engineers

June 28, 2010

We are soon to launch our new service to provide qualified and experienced contract engineering specialists to the process, industrial and IT sectors both within the UK and also overseas.

Interim Engineers will supply high quality personnel to help you achieve what you want to achieve, but avoiding the increase in headcount that – these days – proves almost impossible to sanction.

The dedicated website for Interim Engineers will be live from early Autumn.  If you would like any information about this new launch in the meantime, please contact us, or let us have your name and email address and we’ll be in touch as soon as our new service is launched!

Recruitment

Retain, Retain, Retain – but be careful of the ones you should let go!

January 2, 2010

‘Modern times demand modern solutions’ could be a working philosophy for managers today.

In many ways that is true, but then you also need to ensure that you ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’. Which bit of ‘management speak’ do you choose to believe and live by? They can both provide guidance in decision-making but are they mutually exclusive? The truth is – no they are not.

As with all these sayings they were created in the first place to fit a particular set of circumstances that the creator had in mind. Unfortunately these circumstances are long forgotten but the saying still dominates the way some people think today. Sadly by being drawn into the murky world of ‘gurus’ and ‘management speak’ too many managers are missing vital opportunities to do what’s right and instead blindly follow the mantra.

One such over-used philosophy is – “People only come to work for the money”. If any of your managers are peddling that attitude as their philosophy on the people that work for them, get them to change now or sack them now! No, don’t hesitate, do it now! (Health warning – do it properly of course; following a proper procedure etc etc). Is this an irresponsible instruction? Only if you do it without thinking.

And that’s the problem with managers who think people only work for money. They are unthinking, mono-dimensional dinosaurs that have no place in the modern multi-faceted workplace. People, and more importantly their expectations, have moved on. Much has happened to influence those changes that some managers have recognised and adjusted to whilst Neanderthal manager still fails to see. So what has changed?

Over the last 20 years much has changed in key areas to alter the way people view the workplace and their place in it. There have been changes to demographics, the labour market, the people themselves and to working patterns. Under demographics there are – more dual earner families; families who are more geographically separated beyond town boundaries that used to restrain them; more diversity in the workforce – more women, more minorities, a broader variety of religions and at least four (yes 4!) generations.

The labour market today sees the tightest supply for 20 years and it shows no chance of slackening off in the near future. Some estimates now calculate that at least half of all job vacancies are “very difficult” to fill. People’s expectations of an employer have become much greater, certainly well beyond the steady job and gold watch after 50 years dedicated service. Most do not want to stay around for many years and have a healthy level of mistrust towards companies especially following the outpouring of corporate disloyalty through the 80’s and 90’s. Dramatic reductions in workforce numbers have radically changed the fundamentals of the employment relationship with the ‘survivors’. Add to all this the clear fact that employee pressure, ‘enlightened’ employers, and indeed legislation, have all contributed towards the demands for different working patterns – part-time, flexible hours, teleworking, cyclic contracts and so on. Could all that happen if people were “only interested in the money”?

It is in this environment that you now have to consider how you retain key skills.You know you need to, because a tight supply market means people have the opportunity to move on.They certainly have the inclination and it doesn’t take much to nudge them – a whiff of uncertainty about the company’s future is always enough to generate the recognisable tap-tap-tap on the keyboard as the CV gets dusted off and updated. Once they have started looking, a whole world of opportunity opens up for them.You may be fortunate for a while that in your local area there are a glut of particular skills that mean you don’t have any trouble advertising for new staff – enjoy it while you can, it won’t last.

Companies are waking up each day, some in a permanent cold sweat, as they have to work extremely hard to retain key skills. Of course the one simple answer is, get your pen ready because here it comes – pay more money (Whoops, that’s a suggestion from one of those Neanderthal managers again – I thought you’d just sacked them?). Many companies have already realised that as the problem has got people at its core it is multifaceted and therefore demands a multifaceted answer.

What is important to accept from the start is that a balanced level of labour turnover can actually be beneficial. However, stay too low and you risk stagnating as a business. But stray too high and you have the constant pressure to replace along with all the associated costs. So is there an ideal level? In reality it depends upon what your circumstances are at the time. Some so-called “World Class” benchmarks stipulate that <1% is the only target for credible world class performers. Hogwash!! That is only good when you need a period of stability for particular reasons.Whatever those reasons may be, they will be superseded by other pressing needs as time goes by.When that time comes, you may well want to encourage turnover and to hell with world class performance. In essence, the circumstances dictate what a good retention rate either is or isn’t. As a rule of thumb, however, you should start to wonder if it is too low when you get to 4% labour turnover and too high if you hit 8% in today’s climate.

So what do you do with retention/labour turnover in your company? Well, first of all you need to measure it. Doesn’t take much effort, just record how many employees you have at the beginning of each month along with the number of leavers the previous month. Divide the latter by the former to get your percentage. You can use the same method for longer reference periods, though you may wish to average the number of people employed, to reflect significant changes, and thus produce a more accurate picture of what’s happening.

Once you have done that you can decide what to do based upon the calculations. If it is too low and has been low for a while you need to start thinking about how you can either generate some turnover or ensure that you don’t sink slowly into stagnation both in mind and performance. Those attentive readers amongst you will shout – according to you all you need to do is circulate a story about uncertainty in your business! It’s an option, but a falling share price will not please the shareholders. Better still is to ensure that cultural training and awareness focuses on keeping people alert, energised, positive and with a clear understanding of what levels of performance are demanded in their industry sector to remain successful.

If your turnover is too high, then there are a number of things to do. Firstly you must understand the real reasons. Doing Exit Interviews can get good information if the interviewers are well trained, but it can also get you a whole raft of false ‘readings’. People will throw around comments like – “I just thought it was about time to move on” or “I wasn’t really looking but this opportunity fell on my lap”. It’s at this point that a lot of line managers insist on ludicrous Neanderthal Manager tactics like – demanding the HR department offer the leaver more money. I can save you a lot of time with all these “don’t go, we need you” tactics.

Ask the individual the simple question – “Have you psychologically moved on?” In 15 years experience of dealing with leavers I have never had anyone misunderstand this question and mostly the answer is “yes”. There is nothing sensible you can do at that point to retain someone – treat it like they have already gone – the mind has gone, the body just needs to follow!

The only sensible things to do are to move them away from sensitive front line duties; ensure they work as much of their notice period as you are convinced they are motivated to do; and finally, ensure that you have a structured knowledge-grabbing process to help keep some of their knowledge within your company. By the way, there is no need to ask this question of people you know you don’t want to keep!

The truth behind the reasons why most people leave their previous employer is that they left due to a breakdown in the employment relationship. Put more simply – people leave managers not companies.Work hard to ensure Neanderthal management dies an ignominious death in your company.

Provide meaningful development for managers in:

  • Coaching
  • Caring / recognition / positive management
  • Communication skills (including feedback gathering)
  • Diversity awareness
  • Management through flexibility

Develop your staff with:

  • How to be coached
  • Diversity awareness
  • Self-development
  • Role and organisational sensitivity

Perhaps the most important thing to consistently do well is to have all managers ‘temperature-checking’ the organisation for problems and opportunities. You then have a chance of dealing with the issues that good or bad retention creates for you.

On a lighter side we could adopt the approach of Dogbert as follows:

“Employee turnover can be a healthy thing. It gets rid of highly paid malcontents and infuses the company with a healthy dose of bargain-priced, untrained employees. And you can always compensate for the shortage of employees by making the remaining employees work harder. There’s no logical limit to that.”  (Reproduced courtesy of Dogbert’s Management Handbook).

Management and Leadership Development, Staff Retention

Executive Psychometrics

January 1, 2010

The process of recruitment is riddled with risk – refer back to my article “Recruiting is a Risk Business”. The underlying contention of that article was that any organisation must limit their exposure to risk by systematic, and preferably structured, assessment of all potential candidates. In so doing you should cover the hard and soft skill requirements demanded by the role as it currently stands and for how the organisation needs it to be performed in the foreseeable future.

Determining what these requirements are is critical to the success or otherwise of the recruitment process – if you don’t know where you are supposed to be shooting the arrow, how do you expect it to hit the target? You skimp on this stage at your peril.“Yes, yes, I understand all that!” I hear you say to me with impatience riddled throughout the statement. My 16 years worth of experience, however, tells me that most managers use time constraints as an excuse to devote too little time to this critical early stage in the process.

And yet your whole project, and its chances of success, hinge on this more than any other aspect in the recruitment effort. If you can clearly define what you want when you commence the process, trust me, even an averagely skilled recruiter can spot a well qualified candidate when they see one!

Once the foundations are created you can then build the other aspects around them. That includes the techniques you will use to assess how the candidates match up to your well produced brief.These techniques can be many and varied but are usually bundled together under the heading of psychometric assessment. In my travels the discussions I have had around this subject produce the usual mixed bag from the ‘fervent detractors’ to the ‘devoted supporters club’. So we arrive at the pivotal point in the debate around whether to use these tests or not.

Let’s get quickly to the point:

  • Don’t be dissuaded by feedback from candidates who just don’t like doing these sort of assessments – they are not taking the largest part of the risk remember!
  • It is estimated that upwards of 2 out of every 5 CVs have significan exaggerations, inaccuracies or even bear faced lies – you need all the help you can get to identify them accurately.
  • It is now accepted in all sensible quarters that using interviews alone has strong limitations that discriminate against good candidates that just don’t interview well and yet heap excessive kudos on the skilled interview ‘game player’, or worse, the proficient fraud.
  • The added cost of completing psychometric assessment is usually dwarfed by the level of resources the successful candidate must control or by the costs associated with managing a poor performer out of the business.

If you are not convinced by that lot then you must be an ‘I’m a fervent detractor’ t-shirt wearer. In which case read no more!

In chatting to a number of experienced HR professionals and consultants, as well as using my own experience, the consensus is that most senior managers and executives are happy for other people to sit through psychometric assessment but become markedly more hesitant when they discover that they may also be asked to subject themselves to it.

“I’ve been doing the job for years now, if you can’t assess me based upon that, then I don’t see why I should waste my time doing tests.”This is a fairly typical statement from the small proportion of people that choose not to sit tests.That’s their choice, but it’s your choice to set sensible candidate evaluation processes in place and you lower your standards at your peril.

A significant number of HR professionals, and recruitment consultancies, that offer psychometric profiling, are more than happy to use these tools for all levels below senior management but seem reluctant to adopt them for senior managers and directors. Part of this, I’m sure, revolves around embarrassment – being too embarrassed to ask an apparently time-served and highly successful manager to sit through these tests of their competence.

I chatted to an experienced consultant this week who recounted a story of a candidate for a very senior Engineering Manager position. This candidate objected strongly to being subjected to these apparently meaningless tests of his competence and promptly removed himself from the recruitment process. One has to ask, what was his motivation?

Several likely explanations exist – he was nervous of being exposed as less talented than his CV declared; he was not interested enough in the job in the first place to put himself out and complete the assessment; he was ill-informed about the best practice standards applied in recruitment and you’d have to ask what standards he would apply to recruiting members of any team he managed; he was intolerant to the standards being set by people within a different professional discipline to his own and you can only surmise that he would remain less than balanced, and a potential source of conflict with other professional colleagues.

Characters such as this should be bracketed firmly in the ‘no loss’ category. That doesn’t mean that you should be dismissive or rude towards them but you should certainly make no concessions to the standards that you apply. In each case you should try to persuade them that being assessed is a routine part of the process and is only one part of the decision-making criteria. But don’t waste too much time as fervent detractors are usually intractable in their opinions regardless of any argument or evidence. I would contest that they are not the sort of person you would want in your organisation if that is their approach.

A significant change should occur in the focus of your psychometric tools the higher you apply them up the organisational ladder. The shift should move towards closer scrutiny of the soft skills rather than the easy to measure. Retain the verbal and numerical ability tests by all means as they will add some value to debates around a candidate and cost relatively little money to do. However, the key arena of value will be around the leadership skills and management styles the candidate uses. A mismatch here means that all people within their sphere of control could be adversely affected by them once recruited. It is critical therefore to evaluate them as closely as possible. A good recruitment consultant should be able to offer you help in devising a structured approach to the right tools to use.

Unfortunately a lot of recruitment consultants offer only the more limited first interview service. If that describes your recruitment consultant, work instead with one that can help you assess the right candidate all along the way until an offer is made. After all, if they were true partners with you then their goal should be the same as yours, namely ensuring the right candidate is placed into the vacancy you have.

In closing I would argue that far from being less inclined to psychometrically assess senior candidates I would, in fact, be much keener to do so bearing in mind just how much the presence of ineffective soft skills can have a truly hard impact on any business.

Recruitment

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