Recruitment Matters International March Newsletter
Hello from the team at Recruitment Matters International!
The UK is facing its biggest drop in living standards on record as wages fail to keep pace with rising prices, and soaring energy costs are set to push inflation to 8.7% in the final 3 months of 2022. If you are a recruiter, get ready to negotiate even harder on your candidates' remuneration rates!
From our perspective, thankfully, demand continues to be strong for our online open courses, all of which are delivered via Zoom. Here is our latest 2022 training schedule .
In this month's newsletter:-
Warren provides the first of several articles he is planning on mental health, starting with "Helper's High."
Ideal Marketing Company MD Jess Shailes provides 15 suggestions for keeping your customers happy and, therefore, retaining them.
We have a fascinating feature on resilience in the workplace from Jerry Wood, MD at Beaumont Wood Recruitment.
JMW's Simon Bloch and Emma Salkin examine the implications of a much-anticipated judgement on the case Smith v Pimlico Plumbers. This case concerned the right to paid annual leave under the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Working Times Regulations 1998.
Lastly for news of our full range of recruitment services, including upcoming training courses, check out "What's new?"
Helper's High
Contributor: Warren Kemp, CEO and Trainer, Recruitment Matters International. Warren is also a qualified Mental Health First Aid Instructor
There are no quick fixes for ill mental health. If, for example, stress, anxiety and/or depression can all creep up on us over a few weeks, months or years, then it’s a fair assumption that it might take a few different things and adaptations worked out over time to improve someone's mental health. Mental health is a journey not a destination. It's about adapting and coping with being human.
We are all different. What works for one person might not work for another. Well intentioned words may be welcomed by one and rejected by another. (BTW "I know how you feel", however well-meant, is totally inaccurate, so please don't say that).
Over the next few newsletters I hope to give you things to try or for you to suggest to someone else who is experiencing ill mental health.
The first one is the "Helper’s High."
If you have ever done a good deed for someone or volunteered for a good cause, have you noticed how much better it made you feel after it and how sometimes that feeling lasts a few days? That's the helper’s high.
That's because doing a good deed helps your brain release endorphins (feel good chemicals). Doing good can make you happier, less stressed, more grateful and more motivated to do more of the same. In other words, a sense of wellbeing and satisfaction.
Doing good for someone or something on a regular basis could mean getting that regular feeling of helper’s high. That for some could be an aid to their journey to find better mental health.
Warren Kemp is CEO and trainer with Recruitment Matters International. For more tips, advice and information on RMI, visit https://recruitmentmatters.com/ telephone 0800 0749 289/ +44 (0)1529 410375 or email info@recruitmentmatters.com.
15 ways to keep your customers happy
Contributor: Ideal Marketing Company MD Jess Shailes provides 15 suggestions for keeping your customers happy and, therefore, retaining them.
What’s better than gaining a new customer? Retaining a happy repeat customer of course! Here are some simple yet effective ways you can make sure your customers return to you again and again, because let’s face it, they don’t have to!
- Encourage feedback at all stages so that you can discover what your customer really feels about their experience with you.
- Keep in touch. Most customers leave because of perceived indifference. This means that you didn’t necessarily do a bad job, just that you didn’t keep in touch enough. You might not have the time to call every customer personally, but you can make time to send out a newsletter or a postcard to customers on at least a monthly basis.
- Generously give added value. If you are good at what you do, the chances are you have knowledge that would be useful to your customers. By sharing at least some of that information, you do two things – demonstrate your expertise and appear generous. Newsletters, seminars and websites are all places where you can share knowledge with your customers and potential customers, while enhancing your reputation.
- Avoid misunderstandings. Clear communication at all stages is very important in keeping customers happy. It’s important to manage customer expectations at all times by making timelines clear and letting them know what input you need from them.
- Provide value for money. You may charge more than your competitors, but if you represent good value in the eyes of the customer, then they will be happy. After all, you expect to pay one price for a lunch in a burger chain and quite another in an exclusive restaurant. Both experiences can represent value for money as it is the overall experience we pay for. But don’t take it for granted that your current and potential customers understand this value. You may do work behind the scenes that they would benefit from knowing about. Communicate the ways you provide value, so they don’t regret or rethink their decision to work with you.
- Be easy to do business with. Do people have to spend ages chasing you? Are your opening hours restrictive and your staff elusive? Break down all barriers and make it as easy as possible for people to do business with you. Show your appreciation of the fact that they want to part with their hard-earned cash.
- Sort mistakes FAST. We all make mistakes, but one of the ways a customer judges your business is how quickly you accept that you have made a mistake and then make an effort to sort it out. If you have got something wrong, it is down to you to correct it as quickly as possible, apologising and working to minimise its impact on the customer.
- Be approachable. Do you like dealing with people? If not, what are you doing talking to them? If you know you are a grumpy, backroom person by nature, then use the skills you do have elsewhere and put somebody who loves dealing with customers in the front line.
- Be upfront. Honesty is always the best policy. If you ever try twisting the truth or worse, telling an outright lie, it will come back to haunt you. If you can do something, say so, but if you can’t, be upfront about this too while offering an alternative. Your customers will appreciate your honesty and admire your integrity.
- Be positive. We’ve all got problems, but if your customer asks you how you are, don’t use that as an excuse to talk about all your stresses or badmouth your other customers.
- Excel at what you do. You have to be good at what you do if you’re going to retain customers in the long term. Every piece of training you and your staff undertake will help to retain customers, so don’t short change your customers by skimping on this. Invest in the best systems, equipment and people that you can afford to make sure that when people come to you, they are getting the best and that you are doing everything you can to stay the best.
- Be different. In today’s crowded marketplace it’s important to stand out from the competition. Make sure your customers remember you for being the company that is always changing, always improving and always coming up with great new ideas.
- Exceed expectations. It’s no longer good enough to be OK. If possible, always aim to exceed your customers’ expectations. Promise to deliver by Tuesday, but deliver by Monday lunchtime. Send extra items with no charge. Drop off personalised gifts such as mugs or calendars.
- Take responsibility. Most of your suppliers and competitors will blame someone else when things go wrong, but if you take responsibility, you will tell the customer what they want to hear; namely, “I will take complete responsibility for sorting this out. Let me look into it, find out exactly what the situation is and I’ll get back to you with an answer by X o’clock”. Even if you don’t know everything you hoped you would by that time, call them back when you said you would with an update.
- Encourage referrals. What gets rewarded gets repeated. If you send a thank you letter and voucher when a new client is gained as a result of a referral, do you think your customers will do it again? By making it clear that you appreciate the effort they have made to refer business to you, you are making it much more likely that you will continue to receive business in this way. It is not so much the gift; it is more the fact that you have taken the trouble to acknowledge the kind referral from a customer.
For a free consultation about your marketing needs, from branding to PR to digital marketing, visit idealmarketingcompany.co.uk or call 01858 44 55 43.
How to be resilient in the workplace
Contributor: Jerry Wood, MD of Beaumont Wood Recruitment
There’s no doubt that the challenges of the past two years have affected us all on both a personal and professional level. The pandemic, increases in prices, instability in supply and of course, the recent developments in Ukraine have all led to heightened pressures. The key to navigating the difficulties faced in our everyday lives is resilience.
Successful businesses will be able to withstand adversities and bounce back from these difficult events. We’ve taken a look at how you can grow resilience in the workplace to develop personal growth and boost the effectiveness of your team.
Why is resilience important in the workplace?
A resilient workforce brings many major benefits to a business as it enables a positive approach to work. This leads to increased proactivity, better problem solving, and greater motivation. It’s also closely linked to well-being so can help prevent absenteeism and improve people’s performance.
Resilience is a key strategy to tackle stress and address challenges in work. As employees generally identify their job as the number one cause of stress in their lives, it’s incredibly important for employers to improve as part of their workplace culture.
The benefits
- Better handling of challenges
- Improved communication
- Reduced burnout and presenteeism
- Creating a competitive business
- Setting realistic expectations
- Better relationships amongst collegues and suppliers
- An openness to upskilling and developing
- Good organisation and time management
- Willingness to give and receive support
Ways to boost resilience at work
1. Understand the five pillars of resilience
Resilience is made up of five pillars: self-awareness, mindfulness, self-care, positive relationships and purpose. By working to strengthen these core interlinking pillars, you’ll be able to identify areas that you or others already perform well in and those which need working on.
2. Analyse strengths and weaknesses
Self-reflection is a great way to develop resilience. A good opportunity to do this is with regular 1-2-1 sessions and 360 feedback for everyone in the team.
3. Improving emotional wellbeing
Negative automatic thoughts can be deep rooted and so improving emotional wellbeing will take time. An effective tool could be to write down negative thoughts as they occur and evaluate their validity. Over time, your mind will learn to ignore and replace negative thoughts with more realistic, healthier ones.
4. Goal setting to promote an inner drive
SMART goal setting can help your team to set realistic and achievable goals and provide a framework in which to improve productivity and inner drive.
5. Looking towards the future
Promoting a growth mindset will help your business to be prepared for unexpected challenges and enable you to be more open to change and adaptation. A great way to achieve this is by developing critical thinking and accountability skills. This forward-thinking approach allows you to learn from a situation to positively affect the future.
6. Developing healthy relationships
Sharing experiences with others in a workplace can have big implications for resilience. Not only does it improve communication, but it also builds an awareness of other roles within the business. This then encourages feedback, continuous improvement and promotes a more inclusive work environment that motivates and enthuses employees.
7. Promoting a good work-life balance
By supporting physical wellbeing, you can positively affect productivity in the workplace.
Huge shifts in working practices during the pandemic have led to the growing popularity of hybrid working – where employees have a mix of working in an office and at home. This increased flexibility could help improve pressures felt from commuting and stress.
8. Continuing personal and professional development
Ongoing development is key to resilience. Personal or professional development plans (PDPs) are a great way to encourage this as it breaks down learning goals into manageable tasks. It can also help you to identify any skills gaps within your team.
Are you looking for a resilient focused leader for your business?
Resilient, focused workplaces can find progressive and innovative ways to tackle the challenges of their business. It has become a highly sought after talent when recruiting senior positions as a recent study by CV library showed. They reported that over half of employers see resilience as a key skill for candidates and over 70% viewed the ability to adapt, one of the core aspects of resilience, as a key skill.
If you want to discuss any of the content of this article, email jerrywood@beaumontwood.com or call 01295 720365 / 07720 286694.
Smith v Pimlico Plumbers
Contributors: Simon Bloch, who is a Partner at JMW Solicitors LLP and Emma Salkin, Paralegal
In February 2022, the Court of Appeal released a much-anticipated judgment on the case Smith v Pimlico Plumbers. This case concerned the right to paid annual leave under the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Working Time Regulations 1998.
Prior to this decision, the general position (as confirmed in King v Sash Windows) was that workers should be paid for accrued yet untaken annual leave gained during their employment. However, it was not generally permitted for workers to make claims for periods of taken annual leave which was not paid by their employer. There was also a limit on claims for such holiday which pre-dated the two-year mark once a claim had been brought.
Smith v Pimlico Plumbers continues the discussion in King v Sash Windows and extends the right to paid annual leave under the 4 weeks permitted by the Working Time Directive 2003. The judgment does not concern the additional 1.6 weeks leave afforded by the Working Time Regulations 1998.
What is the case about?
Mr Smith was a heating and plumbing engineer who worked for Pimlico Plumbers from August 2005 to May 2011. Pimlico Plumbers classified Smith as a self-employed contractor and consequently Mr Smith took periods of unpaid leave for the entirety of his engagement with the business. Mr Smith stopped working for Pimlico Plumbers in May 2011, following which he brought a Tribunal claim under both the Working Time Regulations and the Employment Rights Act for unpaid holiday pay.
In 2019, the Employment Tribunal decided that Mr Smith’s claim was out of time as it was not brought within 3 months of the final deduction in 2011. The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed Mr Smith’s appeal, following which he finally appealed to the Court of Appeal.
What did the Court of Appeal decide?
In a separate case concerning the same parties, which went to the Supreme Court, Mr Smith was found to be a worker and not a self-employed contractor as Pimlico Plumbers had argued. This affected the judgment regarding holiday pay in this instance.
The Court of Appeal said that the right to paid leave is a single composite right, and that Mr Smith should be paid for both historic taken and untaken leave for 6 years. This expanded the employee protection afforded by Sash Windows, where King only permitted to claim for untaken leave.
They further disagreed with the established decision in Bear Scotland Ltd and Others v Fulton and others. Here, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that where more than 3 months has elapsed between deductions, the series between the deductions is broken and consequently anything before the 3-month break can no longer be claimed. The judgment in Bear Scotland massively limited historic holiday pay which could be sought by Claimants in Employment Tribunals. Smith v Pimlico Plumbers disagreed that more than a 3-month break between deductions could defeat a continuous claim for unpaid annual leave, and they referred Smith’s claim back to the Employment Tribunal for determination on the remedy. Smith originally claimed £74,000 for holiday pay, which was in respect of 6 years accrued annual leave.
What are the future implications for employers?
This case could lead to huge financial burdens for employers who, prior to Smith v Pimlico Plumbers, were only liable to pay workers for untaken leave in the previous 2 years. Now they are liable for taken leave as well for the entirety of their employment. Additionally, if employers are facing claims for holiday pay dating back several years, then workers with variable pay may be entitled to a different amount of holiday pay each year. This places a further administrative burden on employers to keep accurate historic records.
Smith v Pimlico Plumbers further highlights the importance of classifying staff correctly. If a situation arises similarly to this case where the worker is incorrectly identified as a self-employed contractor for 6 years, then this increases the liability of employers for backdated holiday pay.
The Court of Appeal further emphasised the importance of employers reminding workers of their entitlements and encouraging them to take it before the end of the leave year. The Court of Appeal created the following wording to be inserted into the Working Time Regulations 1998 at regulation 13(6): "Where in any leave year an employer (i) fails to recognise a worker's right to paid annual leave and (ii) cannot show that it provides a facility for the taking of such leave, the worker shall be entitled to carry forward any leave which is taken but unpaid, and/or which is not taken, into subsequent leave years.”
This article is for general guidance only and should not be used for any other purpose. It does not constitute, and should not be relied upon as legal advice.
This article was prepared by Simon Bloch, who is a Partner at JMW Solicitors LLP and Emma Salkin, Paralegal. To contact Simon, please email simon.bloch@jmw.co.uk or call 0161 838 2628 to discuss any matter in this article or any recruitment issue at further length.
What's new?
Interactive online open courses to look forward to in the next few weeks include:-
Winning Exclusivity & Selling Retainers
Business Development
Two Day Introduction To Recruitment
Candidate Sourcing
Become A Mental Health First Aider - two day course
FREE Mental Health Awareness - one hour session
Mental Health First Aid Champion - one day course
Remember that we can come in-house to you via Zoom or visit your offices to deliver face-to-face training in a Covid-secure environment. It just needs a bit of forward planning, so do contact us as soon as possible to discuss your potential requirements.
We continue to welcome subscribers to our FREE pre-recorded online training programme ku.dos to help provide further support for you in your recruitment career.
If you think that mentoring or consultation via telephone, Skype or video conferencing could work for you, please contact us to have a chat about your options.
Looking to hire? If you have any recruitment requirements, check out our RPO and RPR services.
For more information on all our courses and our other services and products, visit www.recruitmentmatters.com, email info@recruitmentmatters.com or call Ken on 0800 0749289 or, if you’re overseas, 0044 1529 410375.
Contact us
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Tel: 0800 0749289 / +44 (0)1529 410375
Email: info@recruitmentmatters.com
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