Recruitment Advice

Europe’s largest recruitment company Hays have reported a loss of 31% in fee income. The recruitment group are specialist is HR, IT and Finance have already announced job cuts this year of 650 and will see a further 250 job cuts over the coming months. The latest round of redundancies will mean that over 27% of the workforce will have been affected.

The Office of National Statistics will reveal next month the number of people that are out of work, this is expected to reach around 3.3 million by the end of 2010 about 10.5 of the UK’s workforce. It is expected that recruitment will stay tough over the coming years.

For most organisations the economic downturn has had an effect on business. This means that for most there has had to be job cuts and budgets have had to be slashed. In most organisations the first budget to be cut is training, as it is seen as a nice to have and not priority.

However i think that if the business is stable during a time when business is slow it should be on a list of priorities to make sure that skills gaps are highlighted and filled for when the business is busier. This is the perfect time to undertake any training courses. Internal training course are cheaper and if they can be carried out by a senior member of the team this can boost morale.

External training programmes like  management courses and training to for staff members will help retain employees and improve employee relations. The courses are designed to help improve management and leadership excellence, it helps to improve the company bottom line and helps managers increase employee performance.

For those who are unemployed attending management training courses will help to fill in the gaps in your employment history and may help you in becoming more employable in a large pool of applicants.

I recently wrote about the lack of information given to employees at the RBS and the conflicting stories of job cuts and pay rises. It was confirmed yesterday that the initial  job cuts will effect 9000 employees,4500 people in the UK.

The troubled bank that is now owned 70% by the tax payer have said the cuts have been prompted by a downturn in business and the need to create a leaner structure. The plan is to recoup costs of £2.5billion over the next three years.

The RBS claimefd that the job losses are more than likely to be lower due to natural turnover, less agency staff and voluntry redundancy.

Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer has called on the government to urgently put in place a programme of action to protect jobs and said the union would argue for creative solutions to cope during the downturn.

As the new tax year officially begins it would be no great surprise that the Inland Revenue phone lines are going to be busy, however an anonymous employee has come forward and given information that staff are to ignore errors staff to save time and reach call targets.

The whistle-blower added if a customers calls in with a tax inquiry and you spot a mistake on their record you are to ignore it unless they ask you specifically to look at that mistake. If you write to them the post often goes missing, it just disappears, is put into the bin!

She also added half-a-million payment reminder letters were sent out late last week, meaning people were being threatened with surcharges and penalties that they might not even owe

The Inland Revenue have cut 17,000 jobs over the last three years in a efficiency drive. It is reported that the existing staff are worried about how far this is going to go and how worse can it get?

The Royal Bank of Scotland have planned to cut more jobs over the coming months, the reported job cuts are going to effect different parts of the bank across the world.

Sir Philip Hampton the RBS chairman has planned to speak to the shareholders at the banks annual general meeting in Edinburgh. He plans to tell them to expect more job cuts but it is too early to say how many will go and where?

In February the bank announced a reported loss of £24.1 billion for 2008.

Employee Backlash

I wonder how the Managers at RBS are managing there employee relations? I have a couple of friends who have worked for the bank for quite sometime and have enjoyed the financial rewards over the years. However the last 6 months have been very turbulent.

They have been been placed in a pool for redundancy one week and then less than a month later are being offered a substantial pay rise which is much more than the cost of inflation? They think it is a bit of a shambles and they are not sure what they supposed to be expecting next?