Hiring.  It’s not an easy thing is it?

You’ve got to get your job advert out there, look at some CVs, choose some people to interview and work out whether they’re up to the job.

And – not to forget – you’ve got to deal with your inbuilt sense of prejudice.

This isn’t a personal attack you understand – prejudice when hiring can affect us all.

I don’t necessarily mean prejudice in an illegal or discriminatory way, but rather the inbuilt biases we all have that make us predisposed to select people based on something other than them being the best candidate for the job.

Having helped our clients with the hiring process in the past, and heard a client genuinely justify a choice of who to hire on the basis that he’ll “be good fun down the pub”, it’s fair to say that it’s an issue that exists, and one that we all have to deal with.

Why is all this important?

I’ve just finished reading “Blink…” by Malcolm Gladwell, and in the book he tells the story of how orchestras have changed over the years:

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This case was frustrating because my client had really bent over backwards to help, and it had backfired badly.

The employee had resigned, and then said that as she was intending to move up north, and things hadn’t been finalised, could she stay on till the end of term (this was in a preschool). My client agreed (this was before I was advising her, I hasten to add) because she was having trouble finding a replacement.
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I was on my first cruise last week, island hopping in Greece.

Needless to say, it was beautiful and the weather was even hotter than in the UK!

As well as some proper R&R on the beach, we got out on a number of excursions, including the Parthenon and Ancient Olympia, and at each stop we were dropped in front of the cruise line’s “preferred suppliers”.

No doubt the commercial relationships between the cruise line and the local shops are mutually beneficial, but what was interesting was the different approaches to get us to go in the shops and spend.

And like the wind and the sun, there was a type of approach that worked and a type that didn’t.

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I was speaking to a golf club this week about a head greenkeeper that wasn’t performing.

There was a long list of things that this person:

• Wasn’t doing but should be doing…
• Was doing but shouldn’t…

…plus general comments about him not being ‘proactive’.

But the cherry on top?

 “He has not been doing his H&S tasks of risk assessments, training or making his staff wear PPE”.

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Now that the holiday season is upon us, you might feel that your staff aren’t really working at their “full potential”.

But take consolation that they are probably working more than this guy!

A Spanish civil servant has been banned from holding public posts, after his bosses found out that he had skipped work for a decade.
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I’m currently working with one of our clients on a professional negligence disciplinary case.

The employee going through the disciplinary process is a standalone bookkeeper in the company and he’s been there for over two years.

And he’s been making mistakes.  A lot of them.

He’s been on holiday for the past two weeks, and while he’s been off we’ve taken the opportunity to find out what’s been going on.

As it turns out, there’s been A LOT going on, and very little of it has been good.

He’s no fraudster, but he hasn’t been claiming the VAT or paying the suppliers, he’s been logging PAYE to sundry expenses and he’s never ever done a bank reconciliation.
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