Making employing the right people child's play

There are many business processes that the average company can (and often does) avoid getting involved with: marketing and strategic planning to name two. But there is one area of management that every business needs to master – the recruitment of staff.

Whether you have a business with a few loyal individuals who need to be replaced on retirement, or run a call centre where annual turnover rates exceed 40 per cent, getting it right is critical for the long-term success of a business.

Yet what is already a hugely subjective area has, over the past decade, been made horrendously complex by an avalanche of employment law and human rights legislation, much of it driven by the EU.

Since 1997 the UK has seen an average of 2,685 new laws every year, according to legal information providers Sweet & Maxwell. The two areas of greatest activity have been employment and criminal law.

This flood of regulatory demands has created a whole host of legal service providers, such as Peter Done’s Peninsular, which have set up solely to help employers cope with employment red tape. It has also led to the huge expansion of what used to be known as “personnel”.

From the employer’s viewpoint all this has transformed the relationship with prospective employee from one of engagement to caution. Not only have the laws become all-embracing, taking little account of the pressures under which SMEs operate, the penalties for erring have become draconian.

Perhaps the nadir of this, from an SME perspective, came early this year when Bushra Noah was awarded £4,000 for “injury to feelings” that had occurred during an interview. She had brought a claim of religious discrimination, but that was rejected.

The case was relatively simple. Sarah Desrosiers, owner of trendy city-centre hair salon, Wedge had advertised for a junior assistant. Noah, a Muslim, turned up in a headscarf which she said she wore permantly for religious reasons.

Given the nature of the uberfunky salon, Desrosiers felt that this would not be appreciated by her customers, in much the same way as someone with a dowdy haircut would not be good advertisement for the salon’s skills.

The tribunal refused an application by Mrs Noah for aggravated damages and rejected her claims that the episode had put her off hairdressing. But it did find that she had been badly upset by the 15-minute interview and awarded Mrs Noah £4,000 damages for “injury to feelings”.

Desrosiers, 32, said, “I feel it is a bit steep for what actually happened. It’s really, really scary for a small business.”

Although this toolkit is not about employment law, it casts a huge shadow over the entire process. The very first rule of recruiting is to make sure you and those who recruit for you know the relevant laws – particularly those dealing with discrimination – in some detail. Or employ an outside consultant to advise you.

SETTING THE SCENE
Conventional advice to companies seeking to fill a post is to draw up a detailed job description. This advice, however, ignores the basic fact that most roles within SMEs are fluid. Staff need to be flexible and have a willingness to pitch in whenever needed.

For that reason an overdetailed job description is selfdefeating and could lead to problems at a later stage. The ideal description for an SME is something that contains both the core activities of the vacancy and the suggestion that for business reasons the employee might be asked to undertake roles outside these core requirements.

Once the description is sorted, the recruitment process kicks in. Traditionally, most SMEs have recruited staff via newspapers or specialist magazines. The internet, however, has offered a futher and much cheaper option. This can be seductive but at present internet recruitment – other than in areas where computer literacy is very high such as media and IT – does not produce the response of traditional advertising.

Using the Job Centre tends to be a little hit and miss. The cost, of course, is zero, but a number of companies approached for this article felt that the quality of candidates put forward was unsuitable, despite giving clear guidelines when posting the vacancy. This led to management time being wasted.

Others however felt that for junior low-skill posts, it was the obvious choice. “Why would anyone spend £1,000 to recruit someone on a minimum wage?” asked one.

Using a recruitment agency, particularly for higher-paid jobs, ensures the best candidates but at the highest cost – generally a fixed percentage of salary.

Always ensure that a rebate period is given. This means that if an employee leaves (or is fired) within a fixed period then the agency returns all or a proportion of the fee. Under such arrangements it is imperative that the company monitors the new employee’s performance.

SPEAKING ROLES
Having invited candidates for interview, the interview itself requires structure. Too often SMEs interview people with what is, to all intents and purposes, merely a semi- formal conversation. To ensure that the best candidates have the chance to shine a more formal approach needs to be adopted.

Where practical skills are required – such as a basic command of written English – companies should ensure that they give the applicant a written test, rather than simply relying on qualifications.

Similarly, key verbal questions should be crafted before the interview, together with the type of answers that are most desirable. Many untrained interviewers – usually owner managers – simply ramble about the company and the
job rather than asking for answers to specific questions. The end result is that each candidate gets a different interview.

Without structure the danger is that the “interview personality” of the candidate, which might be very different from their real personality, wins through.

Interviews should last no more than 30 minutes and in that time the candidate should be doing most of the talking. Of course, interviews for more senior positions may take longer.

If a candidate has impressed but not quite enough to be offered a job, they should be invited back for a second interview. And this interview should be carried out in the presence of another manager, so the interviewer can gain a second opinion.

If after this interview you want to make a job offer, do so: but only and critically “subject to satisfactory references”. Ask for two references and check them both. Every time. Googling the candidate’s name may also unearth information, particularly if they use social networking sites such as Bebo or Facebook.

If this seems like too much hassle, then it might be an idea to consider the work of one of the country’s top management academics Dr Meredith Belbin.

His research has indicated that fewer recruitment disasters arise when managers search for people within their own organisation.

And that brings toolkit to one of the important lessons of recruitment. Always advertise job vacancies internally. Even if you believe that you have no-one suitable to fill the post.

Taking on new staff is a challenge, and complicating that by demotivating existing staff is not good management.

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