5 Comments so far

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 by

Pete Schofled is that you - Andrea Lawson here - a voice from the past. I am trying to track you down to discuss some business opportunities. I have contacted the Schofield Britten organization through your web site so my contact details are there. I am in the UK visiting from the US week of 13th Oct and would really like to discuss.

Saturday, February 23, 2008 by Peter Schofield

Thank for you kind comments re-the site. You are using it for the exact purpose intended; pointing people at work to particular posts or cases on the basis of "this is what happens here" or "the is what we need to do".

In terms of churn, I'll try and answer briefly here. You can always email me directly if this doesn't answer your question.

First point is, your plight is a common one and has no hard and fast solutions. I'd need to know more about the kind of issues this is creating for you; are the 'stayers' creating a glass ceiling that causes fresh talent to leave, are they under-performing, are they stuck in their ways and reluctant to bring in or adopt fresh ideas?

One thing I can answer here and now is if the problem is that the people you refer to have just been with you too long and have become the 'cynical assassins of progress'.

I have not long finished working with one organisation where the power base was with such people. They carried a lot of knowledge and used their position to block new working practices that would greatly benefit the company, yet loosen their own grip on power.

The employer brand development work we did exposed that, whilst c80% of the company's workforce comprised of dynamic, forward thinking people who readily adopted new practices to improve service to clients, some of the workforce didn't support this.

With one particular department, it was so apparent that three of the team were holding everyone else back, one of them actually stood up in the session and apologised for being in the wrong place, saying that 'to be fair to everyone, it's time I moved on".

I'm not sure if the other two have since followed suit, but it is quite common for an open investigation into 'who would fit in here' to have any misfits realise that their future may lay elsewhere.

One of the greatest retention motivators is a sense of camaraderie and a common cause. If the process you use to develop your employer brand is appropriately structured, you can use it to your advantage by exposing the reverse.

I'm sure you appreciate that this is a massive subject. Do come back to me either on here or by email if you'd like to know more.

Friday, February 22, 2008 by

First of all a big 'well done' for the website. I have been trying to get our managers thinking this way for a long time now. It is extremely useful to be able to point them in the direction of something like this. Please, keep up the good work.

I entirely agree with your comments about some 'churn' being good for an organisation, but how do you encourage it without falling foul of a constructive dismissal claim?

K

Thursday, February 14, 2008 by Peter Schofield

Sorry, David - we lost the comments section for a while but it's all sorted out now.

My views on churn, staff turnover or however it's termed, is nothing radical I don't think.?

Point 1. some churn is very good as it creates room for talent coming through the organisation, amongst other things.

Point 2. Unwanted churn can often be traced back to hiring practice; as in hiring people with the wrong SHP profile for the role in the first place hiring. Or maybe hiring the wrong management to create the right environment for people to thrive.

It's a shame that you only get to experience the bad side of recruitment. Can I be slightly controvertial here and suggest that, maybe, you're just not being discerning enough with who you work with?

Say you went to a petrol station that watered down it's fuel as some kind of scam - if you keep going back there and your engine doesn't function properly, who's to blame?

Natural selection should sort out the good from the bad but, unfortunately, I don't come across many organisations that know how to select a recruitment supply chain; largely because the people doing the selecting don't really understand how good ones work.

All too often companies select recruitment suppliers on irrelevant criteria, like how big their database is, how many consultants they have; as if having twenty glorified telesales people is somehow better than having ten!

It's a big area actually, because traditional agency selection criteria is miles away from where it needs to be focussing on today. I've made a note to run a blog post on the subject.

Look out for it, or email me if you want to ask anything specific - it's working properly now!

Peter

Monday, February 11, 2008 by DavidJ

Good to see the comments back (maybe you'll reply to my last one now!).

Seriously, I would like to hear your views on the benefits of churn.

With regards to this post, I'm afraid I only ever see the bad side of recruiters; although I now good ones must exist as I have HR colleagues in other parts of the group who praise their suppliers highly.

David