Very interested to talk to any Project Engineers, essentially with experience of food manufacturing projects, ideally within highly automated food factories, looking for a permanent role with plenty of projects across the UK + international travel. Call me, in confidence on 07881 631686 or 01909 512180. Thanks, I look forward to hearing from you. Ginnie Riley, MD, Harmas Riley www.harmasriley.com
Working closely with NPD, primarily focussed on packaging development, including design, construction and specification, this is a pacey and dynamic operation which offers significant challenge and scope. Supplying premium food products to the major multiples and wider market, you will work cross functionally supporting this complex business in developing new and existing packaging products.
Relocation assistance may be available.
Please ring Ginnie Riley for a confidential, non obligatory discussion to find out more. 01909 512180 or 07881 631686 or mail me directly at ginnie@harmasriley.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
BU QA Manager- North East or East Midlands, with Global Food Group. For more details – call Ginnie Riley on 01909 512180. All conversations are held in the strictest of confidence.
* Global Food Manufacturer
* £competitive + benefits (including relocation)
* Tel: 01909 512180 for confidential chat, or email your CV to ginnie@harmasriley.com
http://harmasriley.com
It’s not just about ‘bums on seats’ anymore, but it’s also about attracting the right type of person into your business (needs to be a good culture fit) who can hit the ground running (employers haven’t the luxury of time or resource to train and develop) and make an immediate impact. Coupled with a stringent qualifying checklist, including preferred knowledge, experience and skill sets it’s as tough as ever to break into the industry, particularly mid career.
The upside for employers trying to retain staff however, is that there is real nervousness to leave, employees are not wanting to make the mistake of “out of the frying pan in to the fire”. This risk adverse reaction in these gloomy economic times, is also slowing down natural market movement. Job stability / security and family values (flexibility) are now the key considerations. This is also reflected in the relocation aspect. 15 years ago relocation was a lot cheaper, quicker and an easier process all round. Even the most ambitious are taking stock, as priorities have shifted.
So when we peruse the latest edition of Food Manufacture, straight to the back pages, if there’s such a demand for talent – why isn’t the job section bursting with vacancies, like the good old days? (Interestingly, nearly every advert this month (November) is advertising a Quality or Technical role – just one sector fishing for a shrinking shoal of talent in a very big pond). Increased competition for top performers hampered by a shrinking pool of talent – Employers are getting wise to this now and this is reflected in their recruiting methods and the way they go about identifying suitable candidates. Have a look at the Blue Chip Food Groups and the Major Multiples activity on Social Media – Recruitment Managers are all networking like its going out of fashion. Changes in technology are clearly driving the way we communicate and recruit.
So the pendulum now swings the other way. It’s not about candidates responding to adverts and chasing the employers, but employers targeting potential employers – they are now doing the chasing.
Studies in future recruitment trends suggest that there will be a growing demand for the services provided by specialist recruiters. Considering the current mix of skill shortages and economic conditions, this makes total sense, doesn’t it?
Ginnie Riley, Owner and Head – Hunter, Harmas Riley – Specialist Search in Food and Drink
Tel: 01909 512180
If you have a background in Safety, Health and Environmental within the arena of food manufacturing, I would like to hear from you. I have a number of regional opportunities within an organisation which is experiencing tremendous growth. For a non obligatory and discreet conversation, please call 01909 512180 and ask for Ginnie Riley.
- required for successful and acquisitive Food Group. This position would suit a mechanically biased Engineer with experinece of civil and capital projects within food manufacturing.
Please contact Ginnie Riley, 01909 512180 for a secure and confidential discussion.
It’s becoming more and more common to hear the words ‘marketing’ and ‘employer brand’ being thrown around HR and recruitment teams. Against a tough economic backdrop employers have looked long and hard at their cost base with many workforces being trimmed to the minimum. If most FD’s had their way employers would be left with a very few, incredibly talented and equally overworked employees!
These employees are facing increased workloads; shrinking budgets; and more demanding targets to keep the business productive and profitable. In this kind of cost-cutting and highly pressured environment you can understand why employers are looking for ways to attract, retain and engage the best talent.
The priority for HR professionals is to work out just what employees want and need to remain loyal and engaged. The good news is that financial incentives and higher salaries are often not top of the employees’ wish lists. Many companies have introduced talent management strategies, well-being initiatives and family friendly employee benefit packages to appear more attractive to applicants. Employers are going that extra mile by demonstrating a holistic approach to human resources because they understand that by supporting work-life balance it will increase staff loyalty, staff engagement and thus productivity and profitability in the long term.
Employers are also taking advantage of the competitive edge that marketing and branding can provide. Marketing has been described as the ability to promote the right product or offering to the right person at the right time. Recruitment teams face the same issues: they need to have the right jobs for the right people at the right time.
Employer brand is a term many HR professionals have come to hear more regularly. Awards such as The Times 100 Best Companies and Top Employers for Working Families give an opportunity for organisations to build their employer brands, promote their initiatives and be recognised for the extra benefits they provide. It is no different to the “hidden powers” that convince us that Coke is better than Pepsi. Employer culture, values and work ethics will impact the type of talent an organisation attracts and retains. It will also affect the level of motivation, engagement and productivity.
In today’s ageing society and with women accounting for 46% of the UK workforce, the best talent available now more commonly comes with family care commitments. Flexible working has been a major catalyst in improving diversity and talent management strategies. It has grown dramatically over the decade, allowing more working parents to return to work and deliver excellent results.
In the fight to keep the best working parents and carers, employers are offering childcare or maternity support. Working parents and carer strategies are usually a mix of backup childcare, childcare vouchers, maternity consultancy, maternity coaching, training workshops and employee assistance programmes. These schemes have seen return to work rates rocket and childcare related absenteeism plummet.
Women are having children later and thus holding more senior positions when leaving for and returning from maternity. 60% of these women say that childcare is their biggest concern when returning to work. Working parent strategies have seen smoother transitions from working woman to working mum, making the whole process less stressful for the employee and less disruptive for the employer.
However it’s not just childcare that employees are faced with balancing. Many are juggling care commitments of adult dependents, or elderly parents. The minister in charge at the DWP, MP Jonathan Shaw, is fond of quoting that within 25 years the number of people over 100 will quadruple. Medical advancements have meant the sandwich generation is growing at an alarming rate. Some employers now offer backup eldercare/ dependent care or include eldercare support as past of an EAP.
By Ben Black, Managing Director, My Family Care.
Source: HR Review Newsletter
I couldn’t agree more with this recent Grocer article (23.01.10). It’s extremely satisfying! to read in print, something I have been saying myself re the current market . Read on . . .
The economic meltdown spooked people into staying put. But now they’re getting restless. Could an explosion in the job market be just around the corner.
The snow that brought chaos to Britain’s road network last week forced workers to make some tough choices. Sit tight until things return to normal, or take a risk and brave the conditions.
It’s a scenario all too familiar for anyone working in the fmcg sales sector. As companies nervously await the first signs of economic recovery, the jobs merry-go-round has ground to a near halt. Sales jobs are at a premium and with redundancies affecting half of all businesses, employees are opting to sit tight rather than risk putting themselves in the vulnerable position of being a team’s newest recruit.
The standout figure from The Grocer’s 2010 Salary Survey, compiled by Pursuit NHA, is that attrition rates within the sales force fell to an average of just 6%, down from 14% in 2009′s survey. “The impression I have got from the past 15 months is that people are scared of changing jobs. It’s about the devil they know versus the devil they don’t,” says Mark Smith, director of SmithCarey, a new fmcg sales and marketing recruitment business.
What also emerges from the survey, however, is that employees are starting to get itchy feet. Sixty three per cent of those surveyed stated their intention to switch jobs within the next 12 months, suggesting that once the first people do move, it could have a dramatic knock-on effect.
“We could see a domino effect,” says David Evans, consultant at Pursuit NHA. “If a few positions open up, you may see a massive movement back into the recruitment market. It might be forced by individuals, or by companies becoming more confident and starting to recruit again.”
There are signs this is already happening. Just last week, Kellogg’s announced it was kicking off the new year with a major recruitment drive, which would see its field sales team top the 100 mark for the first time. “We went into 2009 with about 50 people, so we’ll have doubled our field sales organisation in the space of 12 months or so,” says Kellogg’s sales director, Mike Taylor.
Those who are taking new jobs broadly fall into two camps, according to recruitment experts: people already out of work, and senior sales executives lured by hefty salaries and bonuses.
“We’ve been approaching people who are currently in jobs, but there has been a reluctance by clients to offer jobs to those people because they want someone quickly,” says Andy Preston, director of recruitment agency Penman Executive. “So in the past 12 months, we’ve been prioritising working on behalf of candidates who are out of work. They’re more willing to accept jobs and are less likely to get a counter offer.”
Pursuit NHA calculates that salaries have increased just 2% across the industry compared with last year, which suggests that across all sales roles, organisations have been keeping a tight hold on the purse strings. But at the top end of the career ladder, they’re finding they have to hire at the top end of their salary bands in order to persuade the industry’s top talent to move on.
“People are thinking: ‘If things don’t go to plan and I lose my job, I’m going to need extra money to put towards any costs I may incur, so I want a 10 grand pay rise to move’,” says Evans. “That’s a totally different attitude from before the recession, where people would move thinking, ‘if this doesn’t work out I can just get another job’. Those other jobs aren’t there at the moment.”
If organisations are having to pay big bucks to attract sales people, it stands to reason that employers are having to offer strong incentives to ensure they keep hold of their most valuable assets. The survey found examples of managers being paid 50% of their salary up front as a two-year bonus, refundable should they leave within the next two years.
“There’s been a significant rise in companies offering counter-offers to keep people. As soon as good employees hand their notice in, they’re being offered a two, three or five grand pay rise, because the cost of replacing them has been so much more significant than losing them,” says Preston.
Evans concurs that the industry’s top sales talent is in a powerful negotiating position. “If you are a talented individual and you’re getting stifled because there aren’t internal roles available, then the options are to go out and find another job or stay where you are. If the organisation wants to retain you and ensure you give what you’ve always given, then they need to offer some kind of incentive.”
At the sales director level, such incentives have been in the form of increased bonuses as opposed to higher salaries. While an average salary has increased 3% to £92,439, an average bonus has risen 17.7% to £22,185. A senior national account manager, meanwhile, can expect to earn over £53,000 and a further £11,000 in bonuses.
“If you’re a senior NAM in one of the top 50 fmcg companies, you’ll be paid very well to look after that business,” says Evans. “The big retailers are squeezing really hard on their suppliers so you need your top talent to manage those discussions.”
Despite the rewards being offered to senior executives, there’s no sign of junior employees being forced to accept less money to balance the books. Only territory managers, whose average salary has increased by just 1%, are having to make do with a below-2% pay rise in 2010 although they are being compensated with a 21.2% average increase in bonus payments.
“Higher-end or top-band salary increases have to be paid for somehow, but I’m not sure they are going to have much effect on the salaries of lower positions,” says Evans. “I think employers will look at their total budget and headcount first.”
More than half of respondents said there had been sales redundancies in their organisation in the past 12 months, while 32% had seen a sales recruitment freeze. In many cases, employees who survived the cut have had to assume greater responsibilities; 51% said they had seen an increase in their hours in the past year, compared with just 8% who said their hours had decreased.
“In previous years, when a food manufacturer had a new customer, it would appoint a new person to look after that customer,” says Preston. “Now they’re using current staff.”
That greater responsibility has brought greater stress, according to Smith. “People are definitely under more pressure. Clients have told me they’ve noticed an upsurge in how hard people are working over the past 15 months. Some bosses are saying their employees’ output has gone up by as much as 15%. Staff don’t want to make a mistake because they are scared of what might happen to their job if they do.”
If the jobs market is to open up once again, employers and employees will need to overcome this fear factor. Smith believes it will take an upturn in the performance of the wider economy for confidence to return. “When people see the outlook improving, they’ll be more inclined to buy a house or a car or a holiday. They will also be less nervous about changing jobs. The more career-minded people think: ‘I’ve sat here for 15 months with my head down, but I’m getting to the point now where I can’t sit here any longer’.”
There are already signs of movement. The example of Kellogg’s demonstrates that businesses are still actively looking to grow their sales forces, although in Kellogg’s case, through unconventional avenues. The cereal maker is stressing that previous sales experience is not essential for its newly created roles.
“We’re looking at people who haven’t chosen sales as a first career but have taken a different tack, such as finance or marketing,” says Taylor. “They can bring a different perspective, new ideas and fresh thinking to a national account manager role. This is about tapping into that market.”
With a glut of talented graduates struggling to get a foot on the career ladder in worse-hit professions, the next generation of account managers may not be salesmen by trade but accountants, marketers or lawyers.
One thing the experts agree on is that activity in the first quarter will give a clear signal of how the jobs market will perform in 2010. “It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out in the next few weeks,” says Preston. “I do believe some people will see the economy starting to settle down and decide now is the time to get out there and look for their next career opportunity.”
And if they start to move in numbers, the first domino will have toppled.
Source:- The Grocer, 23.01.2010
A Midlands based blue chip food manufacturer, requires an Interim (Concept) Development Manager to support their business for a 9 month period. Please contact us directly for further details.
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