Building Britain’s Recovery: Achieving Full Employment

The Government’s White Paper on Jobs published this week - Building Britain’s Recovery: Achieving Full Employment – recognises the valuable role private sector recruitment agencies have to play.

And it’s a role we’re only too happy to step into.

As professional recruiters we know that the longer people are out of work the harder it becomes for them to find the right opportunities. Therefore the sooner practical support is given the better. But it must be the right kind of support. And that’s where we can help.

Recruitment agencies have extensive local knowledge – we know what kind of help is needed and where it is best placed. And we would be delighted to share that knowledge with public sector employment services which, after all, share our aim of getting more people into the workplace.

We’re already involved at ground level. From its inception we have been involved with the Back to Business Club in Peterborough – a weekly group aimed at higher-end jobseekers. We regularly feed job details into the club and I’ve run a workshop to help people focus their job search.

There is a need to stimulate demand too, something we are concerned will be further hampered by the introduction of the Agency Workers Directive.

We’re continuing to work with our regulatory body the REC, to find out where we as an agency can add value. It’s vital that everyone in our industry continues to seek out opportunities – for the sake of individuals, agencies, companies and, let’s face it, the country.

Santa….and 500 of his friends….came early

For anyone who wasn’t feeling very Christmassy the sight of more than 500 Santas running round Burghley Park at the weekend provided the perfect festive mood boost.

For the second year running, we were proud to sponsor the Rotary Club of Stamford Burghley’s Santa Fun Run. As well as entering a team we provided mince pies and hot drinks – including mulled wine – for all the finishers.

And there were over 500 of them – all dressed as Santa!

All that red and white was the perfect antidote to the mud which made the going on the 5km course rather slippery in places. But even that didn’t stop the most enthusiastic participants completing the full three laps.

The sun shone and the atmosphere was wonderful – the whole event had a real feel good factor to it.

And that was, of course, helped by the main aim of the day – to raise loads of money for good causes.

Last year, the total raised by the runners was an amazing £15,000 which went to a number of good causes.

Our team Anne’s Reindeer Recruiters, made up of staff, friends and family, was raising money for our chosen charity the NSPCC. There’s still chance to sponsor us if you haven’t already by logging on to our justgiving page

To everyone who supported us – financially or by cheering us on – thank you so much.

And we’ll see you next year!

Peterborough Salary Survey

The results of this year’s salary survey won’t come as a surprise to many people – the figures show wages have slipped by an average of 3.6 per cent since last year.

We’ve been involved with producing the salary for 12 years and this is the first time it has recorded a drop.

This year 24 of Greater Peterborough’s most high profile companies fed in information about the pay and benefits received by a total of 4,800 employees.

That’s a good sample size and the fact that different industries and sectors were represented means the results provide the most accurate overall picture locally that we have.

We suspected this climate could deliver the first fall in salaries since the survey began but we were surprised by some of the figures – warehouse and store staff were among the hardest hit with their pay dropping 10.2 per cent while call centre and customer service staff saw a drop of 7.5 per cent.

As the figures are averages, they may not represent a real drop in the money in an employee’s pay packet but rather provide a reflection of the result of redundancies or pay freezes.

However they’re interpreted, the figures unfortunately paint a generally negative picture. But then that’s pretty much how the year has panned out in business. The best it seems we can hope for is that the start of 2010 brings with it some market confidence to give business, staff – and salaries – a welcome boost.