Reality of immigration rules

Immigration seems to always find a way into the news. The report of the raid on a burger chain (see story here) hit the headlines 2 weeks ago and public opinion was divided in suport of the employer and the employees affected. Regardless of the popular view point is, as an employer it is important that you are in compliance as popularity will not be a saving point if you are found to run afoul of the law.

Despite being raided, the chain provided a robust defence in showing that they had done all that they could do; within reason and  in good faith; to ensure that they were hiring people, with a legal entitlement to work.

So what can you do to make sure you are recruiting the right people?

Practical things you can do include:

1. Make checking right to work documents ae part of your recruitment process PRE OFFER
2. Keep record of right to work documents
3. Set up calender reminders to re check visas of employees with visas that have expiry dates
4. If in doubt seek advice from the home office employer help line  and webpage see here

 

 

Brexit and SMEs. Your view

The vote has come and gone and we are going through the the cycle of acceptance  and whether we are still in denial or pragmatism has fast tracked us at the point of acceptance, any business owner has to start asking the questions of how Brexit will impact your business. 

From a people perspective  (HR and leadership view) looking end to end at your employee touch points, is a good way of determining what those impacts could be. Auditing your touch points from entry/introduction/ recruitment through to exit / resignation/alumni management,  is a good way of thoroughly combing through your people processes; to see where changes may be needed, new processes designed or things can stay as they are.

For example  take recruiting new staff, the audit will raise questions such as:

Advertising- when the exit becomes real will you still have to adhere to rules regarding advertising for staff within the EU when trying to fill specialists/hard to fill vacancies?

Recruitment process- What questions can you ask and what questions are no longer relevant in your selection process? Based on where you are what impact will this have on your selection pool, will you need to widen your attraction area in the (poasoble) event the demographics of your locations significantly change due to this?

Right to work - what changes will be made to the rules regarding this and what new visas (if any) will be introduced?

EU workforce - how many do you have? Is there a record of ALL your employees right to work? What guarantees and guidance has the Government given regarding EU workers already resident here? Will they need to get visas and if so how long? Will you need to sponsor them? What's the cost implications to them and to you?

These are just examples as stated before. It may feel like too much too soon , but of you have EU nationals on your team, it is worth starting conversations, which will assure all your team that you are looking into the possible scenarios that could.play out from this and closely watching all the developments as it plays out. 

Uncertainty can kill engagement and to survive as an SME, you need goodwill from your employees that goes beyond the 9-5 commitment. Taking stock and planning responses with the input of your employees and to their benefit will go a long way to help retain that regardless of how this plays out.

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Recruitment 1st steps for small businesses

I remember the 1st lesson I learnt about recruitment. It wasn't even supposed to be a lesson, Mr Foluso Phillips founder of Phillips Consulting https://www.phillipsconsulting.net/ was just recounting war stories and he talked about the 1st time graduates were recruited into the firm. The firm knew they wanted smart, malleable, eager to learn grads. They knew the time period they wanted to spend in recruitment activities and the departments they would be moved into. They executed their plan as well drilled management consultants are wont  (or should be wont!) to do. They got in the sharpest and the brightest and then realised one small detail.....they had no work for them!

Now this might sound daft, but it is common in my experience for people to think that when the work load appears to be much or the books look to be in black and more ££ are forecasted to roll in, it's time to recruit. Only to find that the forecasted work is not quite what they envisioned it to be. So the question must be asked : is this really a recruitment matter? This is especially pertinent for small businesses because if the why and what is not as defined as the where, when, how and then who, you will end up with a person and set up yourself to fail them and them to fail you.

I find myself saying to hiring managers "First off do you really need to hire?". Ask yourself this before you go down this route as there are many options apart from recruitment when dealing with work load. Based on circumstances, location, budget there may be other creative resources e.g. looking to recruit a receptionist? Is it possible to share a receptionist with some other small business located near you? Looking to recruit a supervisor? Maybe it's time to promote someone and if development is a challenge maybe look at the NVQ route and also explore what support the Government can give you in this regard http://www.liveandlearnconsultancy.co.uk/adult-apprenticeship-nvq-list/ and https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/courses/typesoflearning/Pages/gettrainingatwork.aspx.

Perhaps what you need is short term support with work? Could this be an opportunity to give a job center applicant  a chance to learn AND earn? Need help with physical activities etc packing boxes, stuffing envelopes perhaps it's best you outsource this as it might be cheaper?

At the end of the day the benefit you have as a small business is the ability to see directly the impact you have on employees, that in itself is a grand challenge to make this relationship a positive one. Surely then as with all relationships it deserves the utmost care and attention that you can give it?

Finding realism can be a pain....

Recruitment is not an exact science, which is something we all know (and if you don’t, well now you do). Having watched Oceans 13 more times than I can count (and no I am not telling you why I have eye-balled it so many times!); I cannot help but wish that machines and software did exist that could measure skin temperature and pupil dilation to tell when someone is lying or not. I wish there was an algorithm one could run or a code written that could tell me, how much of what they are saying to me is true or is it all a wish list of unreal responses?

I am envious of Al Pacino's character in the movie, because he had access to the "Greco" – a fictional surveillance system created to monitor gamblers and predict if they were trying to cheat the house or no. If such a tool were real, that to me as the best form of scientific predictability in behaviour ever and is a piece of kit I would give my teeth to have (figuratively speaking of course)!!

But that is not the case. In real life, as a recruiter, I have to rely on a combination of simulations and enquiries in a hope to produce a reaction that will help me make the decision, look across the table and say - "it’s you".  And even then, I will still run checks and ask questions about “you”; to confirm that what “you” told me during the selection process is really…… well…. “you”. And then, I (or someone in the organisation) have to manage “you” ; and if there is a problem with the “imaginative scenarios” (read absolute porkies) that “you” have told me at the start; well that’s when the honeymoon ends and I will begin contemplating separation or even possibly divorce. And given the cost of recruitment and the additional cost (and there are costs!) to letting people go, I would prefer to have dealt with this in the interviewing room or the assessment centre. Simply put, at that stage I wish with all my heart I could look people in the eye and ask “are you lying to me?” and magically, somehow, my words would compel them to tell the truth.

But I am not in Ocean’s 13 and sadly, the Greco is not real and I guess I will have to keep using my guts in determining what is real and what’s fabrication. But, at the rate at which organisations are using lie detector tests as part of their investigations to employee allegations or disciplinary matters (see April 2013, People Management article “LIES! Getting to grips with your biggest workplace problem”) is it ridiculous to believe that at some point in the future, taking a lie detector test might become part of the assessment process when applying for a job? It might just happen.

What's love got to do with it?

The concept of CSR is that if a company is making money off a community it should demonstrate its commitment to its host community and its environment by giving something back. The firm needs to take responisibility on the actions of its activities within its environment and seek ways to ensure the sustained livibility of its host communty. CSR has grown, changed, expanded and retracted but hasn't stopped being a relevant course for any firm to follow. People thought it would be a fad but it has endured till today. The same thing happened when management thoguht turned to business continuity planning (the concept/ methodology of determining how to assure the continutity of business critical functions, so in the event of a disaster or a shockingly interruptive event, critical stakeholders e.g. customers, suppliers, regulators etc; can have access to these fucntions) and quality mangement. Each of these movements were thought to be that - movements. They were called fads and touted to wearout with time. However, till date, there is still a debate on the relevance of each of these processes with those for and against making arguments against them. One thing i have found consistent with all these fads is that all of them demand a rigourous amount of measuring and using the results of measures to inform the next steps of decision making. In other words, a great deal of time, effort and sustained energy had to be paid to the movement. It needs to be "preached" as a movement and "sold" to the masses/ employees forst. It may need to be demonstrated or little "tasters" set out for it to be seen as relevant and for its impact to be shown. this might involve "consistent advertising" and even special " marketing blitzes" for it to stop becoming a movement and be a part of life. Then the focues must expand to it now being for granted, and also then expanded to ensure that the reasons for its existence in the first place be remembered for ALWAYS.

UBS (yes I am still banging on about that!) has responded to the problems its faced by firing 2 members of its top amangement team and stating they will be developing a more rigourous managment structure for the ..desk. they might profit mmore from first of all reading the report from the Boston Research Group titled "National Governance Culrure and Leadership Assessment". they found that 43% of those surveyed described their organisations as "command -control" or leadership by coercion and of thes 43%, half of them had observed unethical behaviour and only a quarter of those were likely to blow the whistle on the perpetrators!! Basically, it didn't matter what the controls said, human beings still made a judgement call on what they would enforce and what they woudl ignore. And herein lies the problem - how do you enforce vlaues of integrity and ethics, when at the end of the day the individual still has the option of choice?

Tips from marketing

Interesting book to read by Martin Lindstom “Brandwashed: tricks companies use to mipulate our minds and persuade us to buy” (see book here) this will make me start questioning my decisions while shopping (always wondered why I was attracted to the chocolate aisle – now I know it’s because my local Tesco pipes slow music over its speakers – nothing to do with me craving chocolate and not having enough will power to steer towards the fruit aisle!). However, the paranoid part of me will be looking over my shoulder to see who is following me and observing my shopping habits (if this book is to believed!)!!

However ,the lessons from this missive are quite intriguing, especially the fact that the art of marketing has been so elevated, that it has become a science. Driven by data gathered from consumers, marketing decisions on what products to develop and push are not “gut” derived any more it seems. It is based on facts, gathered by varying means (clicks on google; “likes” on facebook, online shopping habits etc) analysed by PhD holders (it seems!!) and trends and conclusions drawn by the “mad men”. To be a marketer now, one has to be an analyst it seems.... and it obviously works. Gathering data has become so integrated in the way we buy things that it is no longer noticeable. E.g. if you take out a Tesco credit card, you are able to link it to a club card and accumulate points. What isn’t noticeable is; not only is Tesco now recording data on what you buy in its stores, but now it has access to data on what you buy and where you buy PERIOD! A great outcome (for Tesco) from a subtle change.

Here’s a thought, how come HR (and by extension people managers) cannot be as fact and data driven? Why is it so hard to drill down and derive this sort of data that can translate to informed employee based decisions. For example a number of companies (can I get stats on this?) offer optional choices on benefits, am curious as to how the data offered up willingly by employees are used in making reward decisions or used as negotiating arsenal when buying providers? Or even how recruitment stats are being used to forecast and re-direct recruitment drives and even evaluate recruitment pipelines. (Case in point read this) I am curious as to how well data held on employees that have been in employment over time is used in projections, hr planning, forecasting etc. And I wonder how sophisticated hr can get in gathering and analysing data? I saw an interesting comment on a LinkedIn group I belong to debating the importance of HR professionals needing to know finance or maths  in order to get a job in HR; an intriguing one. My take is simply this: Yes. To be a great HR practitioner you need to have an arsenal of tools to deliver on your objectives. Maths/ stats/ analysis/ facts are tools, once mastered that can help in making value based decisions. My fear is that if we are still asking ourselves this question, we lose sight of the reality of the world we live in- a fact based driven world. Which offers up facts more readily now and we would be shortsighted not to learn to use them. If marketers sell us products and services, HR sells to employees the psychological contracts and employee brand of the company; its value proposition to the staff that carry out its activities.  That makes us marketers, Marketers that must be data driven!

Simple honesty and integrity.

In Nigeria a number of banks have banking schools. I recall when my husband was accepted into the training school of one of them he talked about how even though there was a lot of focus on banking operations and finance for the 6 months he was there (yup 6 months long training school and it was called that – A training school!), there was a lot of focus equally on being honest and having integrity. My big brother is also a banker and her had to attend training school as well when he started out and he spoke about how some of his colleagues at that stage, ceased to be colleagues when they were caught out on things like lying on their cv or qualifications; cheating at a training school test; not wearing the appropriate attire etc. it felt like there was a lot of emphasis on what the behaviours were and less on how smart they were on sealing a deal.

Reading the news about the UBS scandal and the fact that there is a fear that this is not the end of it and there is still more to come, brings to mind these experiences that my brother and husband went through and I find myself wondering if the approach to preparing people for work needs to be seriously looked at and somewhere we need to talk plain and simple about good old honesty and integrity. Forget political correctness and the implications of philosophy, belief and culture – lets just talk about working in honesty and integrity.

There are some people that are ahead of me in this thinking, for years the Lagos business school incorporated a course of doing business in a corrupt environment – no flossing or dressing it up; just plain learning about how to navigate it and what you stand to loose when you don’t deal corruptly and what you stand to gain as well – your integrity and honesty. Perhaps that is an approach that needs to be looked at not just in the banking sector but in any place that releases the responsibility of lives into people’s hands. Weirdly enough the events at UBS proves my point. The trader initiated the deals that led to the losses, but till he owned up, they had NO CLUE what was happening. The perverse, cynical part of me thinks fear motivated him to speak, the opeful part of me wants to believe it was the little part of him that he had tuned off all this time that wanted to be heard – the honest part of him.