The New Level Health & Safety Recruitment Blog

Britain the safest place to work in the EU!

According to research published this week by the HSE, Britain is one of the safest places in the EU to work. last year 29.3 million working days were lost to injury and ill health, compared to 33.0 million in 2007/8, and apparently significantly less than other EU countries.

Thats down to dedicated Health & Safety professionals like the ones we recruit, working hard to get their message across - well done all of you!

How to work with your recruitment agency to achieve the ultimate aim - hiring the best possible person for your company!

It is a common complaint of HR managers that they don’t get all they expect from their external recruitment supplier, that agencies are full of talk about high levels of service, getting to know you etc etc. As usual when a relationship doesn’t live up to expectations, there is likely to be fault on both sides.  It is very difficult for an agency recruiter to get a really good idea of what you’re looking for if you don’t tell them. Recruitment via ESP isn’t really feasible, is it?

With this in mind, I’ve put together a few thoughts on things that can be done to improve communication and to increase the likelihood of a successful recruitment outcome.

• Provide a job description that actually matches the job. Often we receive job descriptions that are several years old or which were originally written for another position entirely. Remember that the job description is what the recruiter and the candidate take to be your requirements – if you ask for the wrong thing, you’re going to get the wrong thing…. Allowing the recruiter to speak to the current incumbent or the line manager is also very helpful in getting a feel for what the position actually entails.
• Be clear about what you actually want - provide specific requirements, not general concepts. Think about what you actually mean by “good communicator”, “flexible approach” and where you can, give more detail. One person’s flexible good communicator is another person’s inflexible brick wall.
• Meet your recruitment consultant! Many HR Managers don’t want to waste their precious time meeting their recruitment consultant face to face, but if you think about it, without seeing the place where a candidate will be working, meeting some of the team and getting a feel for the company ethos and culture it is very difficult to know what sort of person will best suit the vacancy. Expecting a recruiter to find you the perfect candidate without giving them any information about the company is like asking them to swim the channel with one arm tied behind their back!
  
  
• Offer a realistic salary and benefits package. Ask yourself if you would move from your current position to another company for less money than you’re on now. Of course you wouldn’t, so why expect anyone else to? Take advice from the recruitment consultant if you’re unsure of the market rate – they are the ones dealing with it every day and generally have a pretty good idea of what is feasible. And remember – paying peanuts gets monkeys.
• Move fast - don’t waste valuable time waiting for weeks before booking interviews – even in a depressed market the best candidates will get snatched up while you’re cooling your heels not bothering to move. Also, long delays before interviews tend to give a bad impression of your company and your HR processes – the best candidates will simply go to someone ready to act quickly and treat their application with respect.
• Sell the job and the company to the candidate. An interview is a 2 way street – the candidate is there to sell him/herself to you, but he/she is also there to find out more about the company and the role – you’re both in the spotlight so be prepared and make sure you present yourself in the best light.
• Trust the recruitment agency to manage the offer negotiations – this is the stage at which a third party can give valuable distance to allow honest discussion to take place.

2009 IOSH Salary and Attitudes Survey published this week

I thought that the results of the 2009 IOSH Salary and Attitudes Survey published this week in the SHP were generally good news for the profession! Here are some of the key points for those who missed it:

• The average salary overall was £37,705 with oil and gas being the best paid sector where the average was £57,408.
• The average salary for Chartered fellows of IOSH (CFIOSH) was £58,484; while Chartered members received an average of £42,847, with Grad IOSH and Tech IOSH at £35058 and £3,748 respectively.
• The average salary for non-members of IOSH was £31,384 (non-members made up for just under 8% of the sample)
• Consultant’s rates varied considerably with 29% charging up to £250/day and 19% charging a daily rate of over £551.

Attitudes are changing… according to the survey 43% felt that health and safety practitioners had a higher status than five years ago and 60% added that their company is more committed to health and safety than it was five years ago.

More than half of the respondents thought their job would be changed to include extra duties - around 80% of respondents already have responsibility for fire safety, two-thirds for occupational health, over half for environment, a quarter for security / general FM and a sixth for quality control.

Approximately 80% of respondents said that they wanted to see a government-recognised scheme of accreditation for the profession.

The survey took place in April 2009 and of the 2969 people who responded, 93% were ‘in-house’ employees and 7% were consultants. 1973 people supplied salary details. For full details see www.iosh.co.uk/salarysurvey

Have a great weekend!

Accreditation of the Health & Safety profession - what do you think?

An article in the SHP recently discussed the current and ongoing talks between the main H&S industry bodies about the possibility of accrediting the H&S industry. A transcript of the article is below, and we'd really like to know what you think. Good plan? Bad plan? or don't you care either way? Please click here to complete our very quick poll and let us know!

"The main professional bodies in health and safety have started discussions on official accreditation for practitioners, which would ensure that clients and employers have access to competent and sensible advice.

At a round-table meeting hosted by the HSE on 21 July, representatives from IOSH, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, RoSPA, the British Safety Council, the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM), and the British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF) discussed what a future accreditation scheme might entail, as well as a feasibility study. Details of the study are due to be published by the HSE in mid-August but SHP understands that it will be conducted by IOSH and the CIEH and funded by the HSE.

Said IOSH’s policy and technical director, Richard Jones: “The CIEH is researching existing accreditation models and assessing their suitability. IOSH is doing market research into the small-business sector to determine its appetite for an accreditation scheme and, secondly, researching in the health and safety consultancy community – not just among IOSH members but also those who are members of other bodies – to understand their feelings towards an accreditation scheme. The HSE is also undertaking parallel research into issues around how organisations access competent advice.”

The issue of official accreditation has been around for some time, and was welcomed by the Government in its response to last year’s Work and Pensions Select Committee report on the role of the HSE. However, the Executive is adamant that it will not run such a scheme, nor control or regulate the professional bodies that do establish it.

IOSH has long advocated some form of official accreditation to improve the current situation, in which anyone can act as a health and safety consultant. It said it envisages a voluntary system, which sets down a minimum standard of qualification and experience required to operate as a health and safety consultant.

The feasibility study is likely to be completed early next year but there will be no decision on accrediting the profession before the General Election, which must be held before June 2010."

Discounted training schemes – improve your chances of getting a job!

There’s no doubt about it, it’s tough at the moment trying to find a new job (or even just to get an interview!). There are so many unemployed H&S professionals out there that you really need to make yourself stand out to get the edge over the competition. With that in mind, we’ve partnered with Recruitment Matters International (one of the more reputable training companies around), to offer a SPECIAL DISCOUNT on 2 of their training courses – “How to secure the right job in a competitive market” and “Make your CV and interview count”.

“How to secure the right job in a competitive market” is a 1 day course, normally costing £299 +VAT, but for people referred by New Level Recruitment, RMI is offering a £50 discount, bringing the cost down to a mere £249 + VAT. “Make your CV and interview count” is a half day course which normally costs £99 + VAT. Just tell them New Level Recruitment sent you and you can attend for only £79 + VAT.

These are really good courses, run by very experienced trainers (I know, I’ve been to some of their training sessions before) and represent real value for money, so take advantage and book today!

National Temporary Workers week and the benefits of Interim HSE support

In case you weren’t aware, this week is National Temporary Worker’s week, sponsored by the REC (The Recruitment and Employment Confederation). It’s an exciting event that aims to recognise the contribution made to the

UK

economy by temporary workers and to raise awareness of how important the temporary worker is. According to the latest stats from the REC, the

UK

recruitment is worth £27 billion a year, of which the vast majority (£24 billion) is down to temporary working.

 

When most people think “temp” they think of an office assistant or a receptionist, brought in at the last minute to cover sickness or annual leave. There is a lot more to it than that though – imagine a company who needs some Health & Safety support urgently but can’t afford to take on a permanent employee. Or perhaps they are looking for the right person to take on permanently but need some cover until they recruit. An interim (aka temporary) Health & Safety professional can come in at short notice, stay as long as you need them and ensure you are doing the right things.

 

That leaves you free to relax in the knowledge that all is taken care of, and concentrate your mind on the permanent recruitment process (and on your other work!)

 

It’s an option that’s worth thinking about – it you’d like to talk to us, you know where we are – www.newlevelrecruitment.com or 0845 270 1640.

Health & Safety at Work magazine - industry forum

The latest HSW Magazine is out this week, and it is well worth reading, because there is a very interesting recruitment section - an industry forum featuring New Level Recruitment and some of the other leading HSE recruitment agencies. There are some really useful tips in there on how to get the most out of your recruitment agency, for job seekers and employers alike. Anything that might give you an edge in this market is worth a look, imho!

How to work with your recruitment agency to achieve the best possible outcome

It is a common complaint of HR managers that they don’t get all they expect from their external recruitment supplier, that agencies are full of talk about high levels of service, getting to know you etc etc. without actually delivering on their promises. As usual though, when a relationship doesn’t live up to expectations, there is likely to be fault on both sides.  It is very difficult for an agency recruiter to get a really good idea of what you’re looking for if you don’t tell them. Recruitment via ESP isn’t really feasible, is it?

With this in mind, I’ve put together a few thoughts on things that can be done to improve communication and to increase the likelihood of a successful recruitment outcome.

• Provide a job description that actually matches the job. Often we receive job descriptions that are several years old or which were originally written for another position entirely. Remember that the job description is what the recruiter and the candidate take to be your requirements – if you ask for the wrong thing, you’re going to get the wrong thing…. Allowing the recruiter to speak to the current incumbent or the line manager is also very helpful in getting a feel for what the position actually entails.
• Be clear about what you actually want - provide specific requirements, not general concepts. Think about what you actually mean by “good communicator”, “flexible approach” and where you can, give more detail. One person’s flexible good communicator is another person’s inflexible brick wall.
• Meet your recruitment consultant! Many HR Managers don’t want to waste their precious time meeting their recruitment consultant face to face, but if you think about it, without seeing the place where a candidate will be working, meeting some of the team and getting a feel for the company ethos and culture it is very difficult to know what sort of person will best suit the vacancy. Expecting a recruiter to find you the perfect candidate without giving them any information about the company is like asking them to swim the channel with one arm tied behind their back!
  
  
• Offer a realistic salary and benefits package. Ask yourself if you would move from your current position to another company for less money than you’re on now. Of course you wouldn’t, so why expect anyone else to? Take advice from the recruitment consultant if you’re unsure of the market rate – they are the ones dealing with it every day and generally have a pretty good idea of what is feasible. And remember – paying peanuts gets monkeys.
• Move fast - don’t waste valuable time waiting for weeks before booking interviews – even in a depressed market the best candidates will get snatched up while you’re cooling your heels not bothering to move. Also, long delays before interviews tend to give a bad impression of your company and your HR processes – the best candidates will simply go to someone ready to act quickly and treat their application with respect.
• Sell the job and the company to the candidate. An interview is a 2 way street – the candidate is there to sell him/herself to you, but he/she is also there to find out more about the company and the role – you’re both in the spotlight so be prepared and make sure you present yourself in the best light.
• Trust the recruitment agency to manage the offer negotiations – this is the stage at which a third party can give valuable distance to allow honest discussion to take place.

• Once an offer has been made and verbally accepted, send the offer letter and contract as soon as possible. Delays in sending the contract will certainly result in delays to the start date and may well result in the offer ultimately falling through. If you can’t get a letter out the same day, at least try for tomorrow.
• Above all, TRUST your recruitment consultant – they are only going to get paid when you’re happy so they really do want to work with you to achieve a good result, not against you.

Warning for employers and HR Managers

The HR daily published an interesting article today with some timely warnings for HR managers rushing to cut costs in the downturn. It stresses the importance of considereing your employees in a longer term context and says that some of the most common mistakes HR people are making in the current environment are:

• believing employees should feel lucky to have a job - talented workers are marketable in any economy and always have other options;
  failing to stand up for employees - particularly when they're unfairly criticised. If you're not there for them, they won't be there for you;
  making the wrong cuts - making layoffs or reducing spend in the wrong areas could erode the quality of client service, alienating prospective or existing customers;
  cutting back on training - resisting staff-development budget cuts and enhancing employee skills will pay off in both the short and the long term;
  saving praise for last - failing to recognise workers for their efforts or leaving the praise until it's too late; and
  waiting for an economic turnaround - give yourself a head start; if you have a good idea, don't wait for the recovery to implement it.

Basically the message is - think before you cut, treat people like human beings rather than head count numbers, and THINK LONG TERM - always the mark of a really good manager!

Latest news: massive increase in the number of job seekers using internet

A survey published this week by NORAS shows that the number of job seekers using only the internet for their job search has more than doubled in the last 2 years. In 2007 one job seeker in 16 used the internet exclusivley when they were searching for a new job, and in the latest survey the figure is up to 1 in 7. Also interesting is the number of people using a blackberry or similar device to search for likely new positions.

This information, combines with the ease and cost efficiency of advertising positions on line, mean that the internet is an absolutely essential tool for today's employers and job seekers.