A Right Royal Occasion

Any Royal visit is a special occasion, and in Burnley today we got three for the price of one! No less than The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles were in town performing various duties. From meeting and greeting to a visit to Burnley College, lunch at Turf Moor and an update visit to Weavers Triangle it’s been a busy old day!

Whilst Her Majesty didn’t visit us personally (apparently she isn’t looking for a new role nor is she hiring at present…) she was close by and we managed to get this great photo

In the spirit of the occasion and in time for the Jubilee we’ve also designed our own flag

Wonder if it will catch on…?

Eight Hats are better than one

Eight Hats are better than one -

Why it’s so much fun to run an SME...

Driving to work the other day I had that feeling of spinning plates again, and started beating myself up for not being able to focus in the task in hand. But what was the task in hand and what should I have been doing?

Just to make things clear, I am co-owner of a regional Recruitment Consultancy, Neville Gee, based in the heart of Lancashire. Busy, thriving and successful, but like most SME’s, always under pressure to deliver

So I made a list of what I done since getting up that morning, and the many hats I had worn already

First hat of the morning is that of Finance Director. Every day, (including weekends), I go online and check our bank accounts. What’s come in, what’s gone out and making sure the money is in the right place. I update my rolling cash forecast whilst the kettle is boiling for the first brew of the day…

Cuppa in hand, I don my second hat, Marketing Manager. I check our twitter feed, our website stats, blog hits and what my LinkedIn connections are up to. I’ll tweet on anything that catches my eye and ensure all our most recent jobs are broadcast. Today I also spent ten minutes drafting up some content for our next Newsletter

On to emails now, time to pick up the mantle of Admin Assistant. Firstly, delete 50% of all emails as they are pure junk, I don’t need a fake Rolex, I’ve got my MBA (from a reputable source!) and I don’t think I’m ready for any of those pills they keep offering either.  Finally, some interesting emails for me to read and time to catch up on what’s happening

Quick break to feed the dog and it’s time for a bit of the day job (Recruitment Consultant)! Read some CV’s that have come through overnight, assess them and try and speak to the candidates, or at least highlight those that fit what our clients are looking for

We’re close to 8am now so it’s time for the second brew of the day and time to think of the day ahead. HR hat now, and time to plan in and make notes for a couple of individual staff reviews coming up that day. Nothing sinister, quite the opposite in fact, just constructive feedback and goal setting for the coming month

Hat number 6 comes on now as I take on the role of Business Development. You see we have the opportunity of pitching for a £1m contract. These don’t come along every day and we’re up against a deadline. It’s the main focus for me this week, so half an hour won’t go astray on Section 6 “Neville Gee profile”  - that should be an easy one for me…!

I’ve broken off now because I’ve just remembered the phone problems we are still having and that office printer that stopped working yesterday, so it’s time to pick up my I.T. managers hat, and send reminder emails to both phone provider (they shall not be named or shamed though I am tempted) and I.T. support provider

Nearly there now, quick call to my Business Partner, which turns into a ten minute chat about market sectors, opportunities and priorities. I’ll be seeing him later in the day but nothing wrong with donning my Strategy hat for a while

9am is upon us and it’s time for a quick shower and the drive to the office (we’ll worry about breakfast later…). Time to reflect on those spinning plates again….

Don’t for one minute think I’m complaining, I love it. The opportunity of doing so many different tasks, before the day has really begun is quite liberating actually and creates a strange kind of balance to my working life, in fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way…!

"A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life."
Charles Darwin

Leap Year, Look Forward (a Guest Blog from my Business partner, Donnie Doran)

Ok, so it’s actually the 29^th February as I write this and that set me thinking…

It’s not often you’ll get to write a blog on the 29^th February, and it started me wondering what Burnley will be like the next time one comes around, what will be the topic of conversation? What will the local economy look like and will we have tackled the Youth Unemployment issue?

I ask this because coincidentally, on the following day, March 1^st, we are taking part in the ‘Work Inspiration’ event at Aircelle, where up to 800 Year 9 and 10 students have been invited to an Open Day aimed at providing careers advice and information from a different angle, to try and help inspire students about their career opportunities

We at Neville Gee will be doing our bit, as we firmly believe it is important to support young people by offering some basic tips on what a CV is, what to do (and what not to do!) at interview and how to find a job when the time comes. To make it engaging and entertaining, we’re also offering a prize draw entry for all participants on the inspiration day the first prize of which is for a couple of the young participants to join us as our guests at Turf Moor before the end of the season

The next time a leap year comes around in 2016, these students will be aged 17 or 18, and will be in the early stages of, or just entering the full time employment market. Maybe the University Technical College, scheduled to open in 2013 will be starting to produce its’ first results and the Burnley Bridge development may have started to generate employment opportunities.

Whatever the future, we believe that the building blocks are in place to maximise these opportunities. From our involvement with the Bondholder scheme, through the work we are doing in the Community and with the Prince’s Trust, we have a specific target to place 18 to 24 year olds with local employers. We are also passionate believers in the Apprenticeship scheme, and even as a small employer ourselves, are looking to take on our third later this year

So roll on 2016, I’m sure there are going to be challenges along the way, but hopefully plenty of successes as well, which we should all shout loudly from the rooftops about…!

Stop Press – The Work Inspiration day was a huge success and could be measured in the following terms:

·         Exhibitor Experience – Excellent

·         Communication and Organisation – Excellent

·         Employer Participation – High, can be improved

·         School Participation – High, should not be missed next time

·         Would we do it again? – Without doubt, an excellent inspirational event

The factor that really stood out for the Neville Gee Team was the interest, commitment and mature behaviour of the school students who took part. They were a credit to their schools and Burnley, a truly inspiring group of young people who, when the next leap year comes along, will hopefully be inspired to take on apprenticeships and forge careers in the wide variety of industrial and commercial opportunities available in Burnley.

"How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children"
Charles Darwin

Donnie

More than just a small town in Lancashire…

I’m taking time out in this blog to reflect a little on some perceptions and the contrasting realities of business. I’m also taking a more local theme, having reflected on global matters more recently

I’ve owned recruitment businesses since 2003, and before that held senior finance and operational roles across both the public and private sector, so I feel I’ve got a reasonable steer on what success looks like, and not many would immediately see that as Burnley, that famous old mill town in the Pennines

The truth is though, that despite the setbacks the town has had in the past, it is set fair for the future. In the last few weeks there has been some phenomenal news coming out of the area. We have seen the following announced:

·         Veka, a Lancashire window frame maker announced it was creating 100 jobs in Burnley

·         Fort Vale, a world-leading engineering specialist announced plans to take on 250 staff

·         Velocity Composites have announced they are moving to the area to set up their advanced research, development and production facility here

·         AMS Neve, the worlds’ leader in professional audio design, who have won many  international film and television awards are based in Burnley

·         The aerospace sector is at its most buoyant for years

·         The £48m Burnley Bridge Business Park scheme has been given the go-ahead with £3.8m of European funding, and is expected to create 1000 jobs over the coming years

·         One of the country’s first University Technical Colleges has just  been announced, to be based in the historic Weavers Triangle development, with the aim of training the advanced engineers of the future (Burnley can now boast THREE Universities in the town!)

·         Prince Charles, a long-time fan of the town has announced his third visit in four years to the area

These are just some of the good news stories – there are many more on the official Burnley Bondholder website  - http://burnley.co.uk/category/news/

All this at a time of doom and gloom and economic uncertainty -yes, there are challenges in the area – funding is tight and  unemployment is high, oh and the football club are having a bit of a mixed season too…, but there is much to be optimistic about

There are many quality driven organisations in the area, whether it be in automotive, aerospace, light engineering, manufacturing or the service industries. It is simply not the case that the only real expertise exists in the big cities and conurbations, so next time you are looking for a job, or a new supplier, or even a Recruitment Consultant, maybe pay a little bit less attention to location and more to quality, potential and ability. Who knows, you might find it closer to home, more effective, and quite possibly slightly better value!

It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin

The Incredible Shrinking World of Recruitment (part 3)

How events across the world can impact on your business...

For those of you who have read my previous posts on this subject you will know that I see good and bad in this fast changing world, and that the impact of world events are felt incredibly quickly, even in the relative backwaters of East Lancashire

We have had another example of this just recently. Fortunately, our local economy has been partly protected from economic slowdown as there is a strong aerospace manufacturing presence in the area. Demand throughout the supply chain has been high, and we have been able to place as many engineers and skilled CNC operators as we can find. Happy Days!

 My wife then  coincidentally picked up on some good news. She keeps a close eye on the U.S. markets and came across a news report that Boeing had just secured another major order and had sorted out its internal problems and was on the up. Time to invest! Double good news was that Boeing use an engine manufacturer close to our base which could only be good news for the local aerospace supply chain and further down the line ourselves. We already had one aerospace client who had taken a large number of workers from us on long term temporary contracts. Happy days indeed!

But then the world got nervous about the ability of the Greek Government to service its debt, and Italy showed up on the radar as the next one to worry about (whatever happened to worrying about Ireland, Portugal and Spain?), the Euro was on borrowed time, the French banks were over exposed and President Obama wants to spend money and create jobs but will Congress let him etc, etc, etc….

Within a week our client scaled down the temporary workforce as orders were slowing down further up the supply chain. Of course that’s the very reason they choose to use temporary labour and they are right to do so. The positions will come back of course, it’s just that no one is exactly sure when – it could be 2 weeks, 2 months or 2 years?

In the meantime we will keep doing what we do, because we know we do it well. We will keep talking to our clients, we will keep identifying and looking after good candidates, and we will keep watching what’s happening in London, New York, Rome, Athens, Tokyo, Beijing, not to mention of course Burnley!

Have you had an experience of world events impacting on local issues? Let me know…

It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. Charles Darwin

Flat Spots and Hot Spots - it’s not all as it seems...

“North West unemployment rises”

This was the headline in the July 14^th edition of the North West Business Insider. It goes on to quote statistics saying that unemployment in the region had risen by 24,000 in the 3 months to May 2011. Now I’m not going to dispute these figures, I’m sure they are based on factual evidence, but it is important to paint a balanced picture, and I can only report on what we see from our base in East Lancashire:

·         The demand for permanent staff is at a two year high

·         The number of temporary workers we have out on assignment is at a two year high

·         Certain industries, most notably aerospace, are booming

·         There is a shortage of skilled and semi skilled engineers across East Lancashire

Which brings me back to my headline – flat spots and hot spots. How can the local economy balance these two trends and how do organisations and employees cope with such variety?

We’ve taken a sector by sector approach. For example, we’ve seen organizations across East Lancashire crying out for CNC Machinists to meet the demand for their products, especially within the aerospace supply chain. We’ve also seen would be candidates confused, unsure and reluctant to move whether it be through lack of confidence in the economy, the organizational culture they might walk into at a new place of work, or simply the cost of fuel for travelling that extra 10 miles to work every day of the week

We’ve worked hard in this sector to try and ease the logjam, and have created a skill-specific website http://www.eastlancscnchub.com/. It’s a simple idea, organizations seeking skilled and semi-skilled CNC workers register their details – where they are, the skills they require, the pay rates they can offer. Candidates too register similar details – how far they will travel, what specific skills they possess and what wage rate they are looking for. Then it’s a simple matching process (well, not quite so simple, that’s where our experience comes in but you get the picture…)

Of course you may feel that this isn’t a great deal different from a traditional Recruitment Agency approach and in some ways you would be correct. We’re simply taking the basic principles of what we do and applying them in an innovative way to meet a specific market need, which is coincidently exactly what we say we do!

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. Charles Darwin

Strategy, Mission Statements and Visions – which is which and does it matter?

We’ve all done the courses, we’ve heard the Strategy Consultants speak, we’ve listened to the Business Consultants who say that without a clear Vision the Company doesn’t know where it is going. Without a clear Strategy it will never get there and without a Mission Statement it will never know why it even exists. Well, something along those lines anyway...

The truth is, that having successfully completed an MBA, having spent over 16 years working in the Marketing Industry and even after having co-owned and run a Recruitment business for nearly 8 years, I still get confused about which is which, which comes first and why any of them make a difference?

I’ve worked in large organisations where many days have been spent agreeing them between different factions of an extended Management Team, the result being a compromise statement which means something to everybody but nothing much to anybody - to the outside world they probably appear complete waffle!

I’ve worked in small organisations where anymore than half an hour talking about such things is seen as a complete waste of valuable time that could otherwise be spent selling, producing or fee earning

So what is really important?

Well, I do think it is important to have a simple Vision Statement, agreed by top level management that sets out what they want the organisation to be seen as

I do think it is important to have a Strategy, but probably not in the traditional sense. I don’t know whether it is just me or the changing business climate we are in, but I believe strategies need to be infinitely flexible, to take advantage of and react to market conditions, to allow for innovation and to cope with disruptive forces in the market

So that leaves the Mission Statement. Where does this fit in and what value does it add? Is it any different to a Vision Statement and do we really need both?

Answers on a postcard please....!

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life”
Charles Darwin

Cuts, Culture and Commercial Reality

Bringing it all back two years on…

I had the great pleasure the other evening of being invited to the VIP opening of the new £35m Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield – the biggest art space created in the UK in the last 50 years outside of London. It gave me the chance to bump into many in the fields of Arts, Museums and Cultural institutions generally. Despite the magnificence of the new Gallery, much of the talk was around the current Public Sector funding cuts, and how these were impacting on their world – falling visitor numbers, difficulty in maintaining valuable collections, lack of investment in new facilities and 10% or greater staffing cuts

Prior to setting up in Recruitment, I actually spent a couple of years working in a senior role in this sector, so I know the impact this will have, but even more, I worry for some of those employed by these well respected institutions. It was brought home to me when I bumped into an old acquaintance in the cloakroom of all places. I couldn’t quite remember his name, nor which institution he actually worked for, not even his exact role. Like many in this world, he stood out (actually, in the cultural setting of a Gallery Opening maybe it was me in my boring grey suit that stood out…). He was wearing a lovely bright green suit and carried a stylish leather satchel. I think he was a curator or collections expert, and I began to wonder what would happen if he were to be one of the unfortunate 10% whose position may become redundant

The Government accepts that there will be significant public sector job losses as a result of the cuts necessary to balance our books, but argues that these will be more than offset by the increase of jobs in the private sector. Let’s not argue about the figures for now, let’s take the view that they just might be right.

How does this affect my acquaintance, let’s call him Mr P, who has spent his entire life in either education, or institutions such as Museums and Galleries. Let’s say Mr P is a subject expert on 19^th Industrial Art, or 20^th Century railway engineering, or a myriad of other subject matters. When his employer simply must reduce their headcount, and they decide that a higher level more generic knowledge is the least worst way to save money, where does Mr P go? What are his transferrable skills? What could he possibly do in the Private Sector of commercial benefit that also meets his individual needs and ambition? Let’s face it, he may have spent much of the last 20 years buried in books, doing research, cataloguing exhibits, writing papers – what is there out there for him?

At an organizational level too I have great sympathy. I have first-hand experience of what these institutions are trying to achieve. 10% cuts with no real means of generating extra income (coming after many years of funding freezes) is going to be tough, but then I think back to my own organization and some of the painful decisions my co –owner and I had to take two years ago:

• We cut our staff by over 50%
• We closed an unprofitable division
• We persuaded our remaining staff to take a 25% temporary pay cut
• As owners, we had to pump more of our own cash into the business
• We personally guaranteed loans
• We had to work harder and longer
• We slashed our own pay, to levels less than those earned 5 years ago

Our strategy worked. We’re still here, turnover and profits are back up, business is brisk and we’re employing again. So while part of me is despairing of the impact on these cultural projects, part of me is thinking it’s no worse than we had to endure ourselves. The staff we released didn’t get big fat redundancy packages, nor have big pensions to fall back on, not at all. What we could offer was assistance with outplacement, skills assessment and finding new roles.

We also had to change. We had to innovate, find new markets, recruit staff with different skills and attitudes. Who knows, maybe Mr P has hidden talents that haven’t been exploited cocooned up in the vaults of his research centre. I hope so, because these are genuine passionate intelligent people. Unfortunately, they are living in a world which might still value them, but right now just can’t afford them

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. “Charles Darwin

The incredible Shrinking World of Recruitment (part 2)

How events the other side of the world can impact on your business...

The earthquakes and Tsunami in Japan were shocking to the whole world and I know we all felt immense sympathy for the Japanese people. We all at least tried to comprehend the devastation to human life and were constantly reminded of the impact on the Japanese economy. The aftermath is only now starting to filter into the wider world however as this tale will tell....

Three months ago, our business was celebrating as we were appointed as a key supplier to a local business based in East Lancashire to recruit and manage a large pool of temporary labour on a long term basis. They were a Tier 1 supplier into a major motor manufacturer, and having got over the recession, were at last starting to increase production again. For two months all went well. The recruitment campaign was successful and our workers hit the ground running. They earned good money with the prospect of long term employment. We earned a steady and consistent income and our client gained a competent and motivated workforce. What could possibly go wrong?

The Tsunami

Once we had all got over the initial shock we began to think about the consequences. You see our clients’ contract was with a Japanese manufacturer. Initially it was business as usual, then there was the prospect of increased orders as work was distributed around the supply chain and then came the reality. A tier 6 supplier of the most basic and simple components in Japan was unable to maintain supply. Whether it be through production or distribution challenges the simple truth was that the whole supply chain ground to a halt. The instruction to halt production for a minimum of one month was given.

So now here we are, just over a month on from the disaster. Our temporary workers are back to square one without a job, our client can do nothing except sit tight for a month and await further instructions, and we are left to try and find alternative employment for our workers, otherwise, we may have to go through the whole recruitment exercise again in four weeks, or six weeks time, or eight....

Don’t feel sorry for us though, for our problems are nothing compared to the Japanese people, but do take a moment to reflect on how worldwide events can have such a serious local impact

“It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin