INNERGISE!

There is no doubt that with the economic downturn and other recruiting trends (LinkedIn, job boards etc.), the recruitment industry took a big hit as companies tightened their belts and look for other ways to manage costs.

We are hearing evidence of the industry taking a positive turn, supported by a recent survey from the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) and Deloitte which looked into performance benchmarking metrics across the recruitment sector. The key findings from the report showed that almost two-thirds of firms surveyed (61%) plan to open offices next year and 70% of respondents highlight financial growth and 66% increasing headcount as the key challenges for the year ahead.

These are exciting figures to see, with the recruitment industry again in growth, but with growth and changing markets often comes challenges. Increasing headcount to deal with the increase in business and deliver growth will be the obvious next step, but how do you ensure you retain your key employees? Keeping the spine of the team and building around it enables businesses to grow with confidence.

Developing and managing the culture is often ignored by many companies but it plays an important part in the workplace and maintaining positivity, productivity and motivation. It will determine staff engaged with the business as well as help attract top class individuals.

Here are the top five steps to establishing and maintain a compelling company culture: which we will explore in coming weeks:

• Vision – develop a compelling vision that engages people
• Values – create a framework for behaviours
• Managing management – start at the top and create role models for success
• Recruit and manage for attitude – be clear and be uncompromising
• Communicate and recognise – bring it to life

We’ll look each of these in coming weeks and today we’ll look at the role of Vision.

We come across two types of businesses in terms of vision – those where people are excited about where the business is heading and those that don’t know!

Failing to develop a clear and compelling vision is to ignore the great opportunities leaders and managers have to engage and inspire their teams and provide direction. People perform better when they know where they are going and like the destination.

Keep your vision short, and if you don’t have a vision work with the team to develop one. Once you develop challenge it against the following characteristics: 

Appropriateness:

• Is it relevant in today’s market?
• Does it compliment the business values?

Challenging:

• Would it be a real achievement?
• Is it an achievable, yet ambitious?

Set Direction:

• Does it help shape strategic agenda
• Does it and will it influence decisions?

Inspirational:

• Does it excite you?
• Will it inspire enthusiasm and encourage commitment

Understandable:

• Will everyone understand it 
• Can it be easily referred to when making decisions

Relevant:

• Does it mean something to everyone (i.e. it’s not just making the boss lots of money)
• Can I see how my role it working towards it?

Contact Innergy for more help in establishing a compelling company visions and building a culture and engaging employees across your business.