Category Staff Recruitment

Maintaining Full Staff Force While Cutting Costs: A Strategic Approach

• Understanding the need to cut costs without reducing staff force
• Strategies for improving staff skill set and productivity economically
• Innovative ways to remunerate staff without increasing financial strain
• Fostering staff loyalty as a cost-effective measure during financial crises
• Balancing a lean staff force with maintaining efficiency in operations

A. Understanding the need to cut costs without reducing the staff force.

normally a lot of businesses during the downturn, face a lot of pressures, the first thing they will do is to cut cost in order to survive the down turn.

Most businesses know surviving the downturn need to cut cost, however, do they do the right thing in reducing cost?

A lot of time, businesses just cut the head count, as the cost cutting is very obvious and immediate.

say you have 100 staffs, and if you reduce the staff force by one third, that mean you lay off about 35 staffs, you save at least 100,000 per month in term of salary.

However, the issue most businesses seem to overlook is the cost involved when situation get better and you need to get more staffs in.

The opportunity cost is the one every one seem to overlook.

B. Strategies for improving staff skill set and productivity economically

instead of laying off workers during the downturn, businesses should try to improve the staff skill set and productivity economically.

during the down turn, since business will be slow, this is the time to send the workers to improve their skill set.

it is also the time to see how to increase the productivity of the workers.

by sending them to train, and help them improve, the workers will appreciate the businesses effort, and will be grateful that the business take care of their welfare in time of challenging business environment.

if the workers are appreciate and grateful, they will learn more and help the company to tie over the down turn.

C. Innovative ways to remunerate staff without increasing financial strain

If a business is innovative, it will find a way to remunerate the staff without increasing the financial strain of the company.

one of the best way to reward the staffs is to make them feel wanted and appreciated.

Perhaps the company can consider giving some shares to the workers and this way, they will feel since now they also own some shares of the company, they will put in more effort and productive output.

AS no one wants to lose whatever he owns.

D. Fostering staff loyalty as a cost-effective measure during financial crises.

How to foster staff loyalty as a cost effect measure during financial crisis?

a lot of businesses may think it is not worth any effort to do so.

Loyalty of staff nowadays does not seem to be in the mind of the employees.

if you look at the trend nowadays, a staff staying at a company, the most is 2 years, seldom you see a worker stays in one company for more than 5 years.

Likewise, employer is not willing to invest so much in employees welfare as employer thinks it is not worth the effort at all.

Employers seem to have the impression that if they invest in employees, they are only helping others to train the staffs.

so how do we foster staff loyalty?

As mentioned above in C, one of the way is to have employee share option scheme,

Respect and trust work both way, if employer does not think employee is worth investing, employee will think no worth to go all out to do his job after all his effort is not appreciated.

Especially during financial crisis, if the employees feel that there is no security in their jobs, they will not show their loyalty at all, as the threat of anytime they will lose their job will put them under undue pressure.

If every day you have this threat hanging over your head, will you be able to be loyal to the company you are working in?

E. Balancing a lean staff force with maintaining efficiency in operations

A lean work force with efficiency in operation is the challenge companies are facing nowadays.

Unless the bosses are willing to work the ground and find out what actually happening in their operation, they will not be able to understand the workers on the ground are facing.

Some management only know in theory lean work force equal low cost in operation.

However do they know lean work force may also be stressful for the workers at the ground level who may need to work overtimes to finish their job.

Are you able to balance this lean work force and efficiency in operation?

Do you really understand the processes and what kind of work force is required in order to achieve the target set?

Most management will take the easier way out by cutting work force, they do not care how the left behind work force complete the job. all they are interested in the result.

Without knowing the process, only emphasis on results, in the short term, it may look good, in the long run, the bad effect may surface.

One of the bad effect will be the staff will be leaving, when he reaches his breaking since he has increase work load and not properly compensated for his output.

In the short term, he may just take it and work on, after he reaches his breaking point, he will realize it is not worth putting the extra if his health and family life is affected.

After all, money is not ever thing, the most important is you may earn good money, the issue is do you have the luxury to enjoy the money you earn.

You will find that al the money you earn is to buy the health you are craving for.

In conclusion, is there any business out there which really care about the welfare of the staffs or they are just chasing their bottom line and please the shareholders only?

The Newest Method of Scam by Scammer using Human Resource Approach.

In the last few weeks, I experienced the latest trick by scammer posting as recruitment agent representing some companies.

It seems that this is one of the latest method by scammers to get to fish money from innocent job seekers.

What are the Modus Operandi of the Scammers.

1. Scammer will post for a job opportunity in some job boards.

2. If an applicant saw the job posting and applied.

3. Someone impersonating the Company HR will then email to the applicant .

4. In the email, the bogus HR will ask the identified candidate whether he or she was interested in the job applied, claiming that they found the applicant experience and qualification is a good match,  and just the right candidate they are looking for.

5. The person would in the email ask the candidate to click yes and at the same time asked the identified candidate to provide the contact number.

6. Reason for asking for the contact number was they would conduct an interview via phone or Whatsapp and urged the identified candidate to attend as the session would be very interesting.

7. Example of the email content is as follows:

Dear candidate I recently saw your resume online and want to know more about your background. We are actively looking for professionals with your qualifications for current and future positions. To discuss this opportunity further, please contact me as soon as possible. We will contact you for an interview through a very interesting process. Therefore, during your entire process, we will contact you by phone or what APP. Please provide your what up number so that we can contact you directly.

8. . A self-proclaimed HR Director would contact the candidates on whatsapp. She explained that due to the pandemic, interviews are now done on whatsapp chat, and not face to face.

9. The interview would proceed with the usual questions like asking what were the reasons’ candidate seeking the employment in the post advertised.

10. Exchanges of messages would go on for hours and the “HR Director” did not reply to the message immediately.

11. Soon the conversation would move to more personal level and HR Director would ask about the candidate hobby and sharing her own hobby.

12. Do you invest in any investment instrument? this was the next question popped by the HR Director.

13. HR Director then talked about how she was in cryptocurrency trading and how much she could make.

14. She further claimed that she just followed her uncle who was expert in crypto trading and in any one night, could easily make USD 10,000.

15. Then she would share her photo and ask to comment on her beauty.

16. She further offered to guide the candidate in cryptocurrency trading even though I had indicated that I would not be involved in cryptocurrency at all.

17. She then sent a link about the trading platform and asking me to register.

18. The whole episode became more urgent as she kept messaging ans asking whether I had registered.

19. When I told her I could not enter the link sent, so she sent a web based link.

20. When I told her I would study the platform first before I register.

21. That was when the true color of the HR Director showed.

22. She would say – wish you find a new job, and got very angry for not registering and funding the platform immediately.

When I decided to stop messaging and made a due diligence check on the platform, and noticed the platform for a cryptocurrency trading was badly organized.

You could see my comments about that platform HERE.

What do we need to do to prevent falling into the trap?

For those job seekers who are actively looking for job opportunity, especially during this trying pandemic created havoc time, we have to be more alert to identify this type of trap and scam.

Normally the recruitment firm or job advertiser will not write such a lengthy email as indicated in No. 7 above. This tells you something is not right.

We may be able to carry out the following due diligence and find out the reality of the job offer.

Steps to be taken

1. Check out the company website.

2. Call the company and find out whether there is really such a HR Director working in that company.

3. Do a thorough review of the links’ given.

4. Do not fund your capital in the platform even you are being pestered by the HR Director,

5. Read all the reviews about the platform and check with the anti scam website about the platform.

6. Ask for video call if possible instead of just Whatsapp messaging.

7. If the Whatsapp dragged on for more than one day, stop the conversation.

 

Why Do People Fall For It

COVID -19 has made a lot of people very desperate and short of income.

Some may fall into cash flow problem and urgently need cash, and scammer pry on this to lure these people.

Realizing human being like to take advantage of money making opportunity especially those quick money, because of this, scammers will make use of this to attract these group of people and scam the money.

The Correct Way

We need to know there is no such thing easy trading especially on cryptocurrency.

1. If you really want to do trading, do it with the one you know.

2. Unless you really know how cryptocurrency trading work, do not get into it.

3. Trade with a platform which you know instead of those online platform where you do not even know who run the platform.

4. Talk to your investor advisers or bankers who handle your financial matters in the bank you deal with.

5. Moreover you can also ask your banker to recommend one good colleague of his who handle investment in the bank and talk to him in person.

You Know You Only Live Once

You Know You Only Live Once, hence try to live a useful and colorful live instead of the one you regret later.

I hope this article will help those who are looking for jobs and may come across similar encounter and learn from it.

If you have similar encounter and wish to share it, please do put your comments and feedback in the comment section below.

latest update on the job scams.

The Straits Times of Singapore covered this in more details on the increasing job scams, you can read the whole story HERE

One of the challenges of any business is staff retention.

Staff turnover is very common in any business and the bosses always face the issue of staffs resigning and having problem to recruit staffs to work especially the right staff.

Why do staff resign?

a lot of companies are not able to keep their staffs for long, the staff turnover is so high, it makes them need to recruit new staffs every month.

Most companies always take the easy way out by blaming the staffs for not able to work long hour and so on instead of reviewing whether all these are because of their own doing which cause the resignation.

What are the effect of high staff turnover

with high staff turnover, the continuity of the work is in doubt.

For staffs who resign, the position will be vacant before the new staff comes on board

worse if the staff resigns and new staff has not joined yet, no one does the hand over to the incoming staff. Incoming staff will not know the background of the transaction.

How to do staff recruitment?

with vacancy in company, the Human Resource Department will need to do some recruitment to replace the resigned staff and get someone to do the work.

The HR department either do the recruitment themselves or engage the recruitment agency and or head-hunting firm to do the hiring.

There are some advantages and disadvantages of doing the recruitment on your own instead of using the headhunting firm or recruitment agency

Advantages

1. HR staffs get to review the applicants’ information closely.

2. Save cost in engaging a recruitment firm.

3. Able to understand the candidates better.

 

Disadvantages

1. time-consuming in sorting out voluminous applications.

2. May not have the time and resource to do the screening of candidate.

Some firms when they think it is too time-consuming to screen applications and do the background check, they will decide to engage a recruitment firm to do the work.

However by doing so, there are some advantages and disadvantages of doing so too.

Advantages

1. Free up the times of sorting out the applications and use the time to do the normal HR work.

2. Recruitment firms have better resources to do the background check of the candidates.

3. Recruitment will do the first round interview and shortlist the “right” candidate for the company.

Disadvantages

1. Not able to know the candidate is the one whom thee recruitment firm has been marketing for various companies.

2. some more suitable candidate may be dismissed by the recruitment firm.

3. Recruitment firms use some filtering software to filter the applications which they have set some wrong benchmark and by doing so, eliminate some good candidate.

Why do some firms use agencies to hire staffs always do not work out well?

Some firms after engaging recruitment firm to do the hiring, if they really do an analysis, will find the candidate/staff recruited via agency, normally do not seem to stay long in the company.

there are various reasons why this is so.

1. As I mentioned earlier, recruitment agency use a software to filter the applications.

2. If they set the parameter of filter wrongly, then good candidate may be eliminated in first filtering.

3. For example, when hiring a CFO, some firm may require candidate to have either a degree or professional qualification, .

4. If the recruitment agency does not how one can be a professional accountant without a degree, he or she will set the parameter and those with professional qualification but not degree will not be selected.

5. If that happens, the good candidate with professional qualification but no degree will miss out.

6. When this happens, the hiring company will miss having a good staff.

because of wrong parameter set in the filtering software, the hiring miss out recruiting the right staff.

We know how important it is to recruit the right staff for the job.

this in a way will ensure the staff will stay longer in the job and not job hopping,

Having the right staff will also ensure the company has less staff turnover, we know high staff turnover is bad for the company, not only it affects the morale of the other staffs, it also gives a bad reputation to the company.

In Astute Business Advisory, we help our clients to recruit the right staffs for the job.

we emphasis the importance of knowing the culture and the work ethnic of the company and we see whether the candidate can fit in smoothly and seamlessly.

the most important thing is we in Astute Business Advisory will not use the software to filter applications for jobs we posted.

We also set priority in getting the groups of candidates who are unemployed and looking for jobs, for those who are currently having jobs, we will not consider their applications.

For those companies who want to hire the right staff, do get in contact us and discuss your requirement and we will advise you what type of right staff you should hire for your company.

Do You Need Staff Recruitment?

How do you go about doing staff recruitment?

What do you do when you need to have a good staff?

These are the questions being asked, especially in a labor market which is short of talented staffs.

If you company need a top talent to compete in this challenging business environment, we can help you in identifying the right candidate. We deliver exceptional candidate who bring good value to your business.

From C- suite, middle management to clerical level and even temporary needs, we at Astutebizadvisory can assist your internal HR to understand your company goals, strategy plan and provide the necessary knowledge and processes to guide the potential candidate to be the asset of your company.

What Can We Do To Help In Staff Recruitment?

We provide the following services in term of human resources management.

1. Identify the need of your company in term of skills and level of experience.
2. Advise your internal HR on what types of candidate you should hire.
3. Formulae the job requirements and scope to match the company’s aspiration.
4. Identify the right candidate for the position.
5. Conduct background check on the candidate before recommendation.

Challenges of Staff Recruitment

1. Competitive labor market.
2. Getting the right staff.
3. The suitable candidate,
4. Candidate who can contribute to your company’s growth, and
5. Meeting the company’s business strategies,
6. Without increasing the cost of human resource,
7. Offer the right remuneration package.

Orientation of New Employee

We at Astutebizadvisory are able to help our clients in this area.

Once we have successfully recruited the staffs for our clients, we have a special orientation program for the newly recruited staff before he reports for duty.

Our orientation program ensures the staff will acclimate to our client’s culture, and ease into his role as soon as possible.

How To Ensure Your Employee Stays On The Job?

It is important that employees stay on the company payroll longer.

High staff turnover is very disruptive for a business, the continuity of work flow is badly affected.

My experience told me about high staff turnover:

It caused:

• Breakdown of internal control and
• Loss of crucial information.

However this can be easily avoided if staff retention rate is high

Do you want to get the right candidate? contact us now.