Our day-to-day business of sourcing the very best candidates for the very best jobs in IT, Accountancy, Admin & Clerical and Sales & Marketing continues at pace, but we were also invited to tender for the opportunity to supply IT staff to Bupa, the global healthcare provider who have 11m members in 200 countries round the world.

We spent a great deal of time and effort in preparing and submitting the tender document and we’ve just been informed that our stage one submission was successful. We are now preparing a visual presentation and we have to present it next week at Bupa’s headquarters in centralLondon. Wish us luck and we’ll let you know next month how we did!

Are you covered when your employees are on holiday?

The main topic of this month’s blog is going on holiday. More specifically, making sure you’re covered when your employees go on their Christmas vacations. We know everyone is still unpacking from their summer trips and the kids have only just gone back to school, but in reality, there’s only three months to go until the Christmas holiday season starts!

Type ‘winter holiday deals’ into Google, just like your staff are doing, and you’ll find thousands of cheap flights and great deals to every corner of the globe. You’ll soon start to get requests for annual leave, but while everyone is off sunning or skiing, you still have a business to run. Some companies are quiet over Christmas and some are busy but either way, your clients and suppliers need to know you are running at optimum capacity.

Plan in advance – Good forward planning is vital to your business but never more so than with the preparation and training of temp staff. If your admin and secretarial staff are taking staggered breaks, Asset Resourcing can arrange for one temp to cover all positions. This offers you continuity and familiarity with your product, service and workflow systems making them far more effective and saving you money.

What do you need cover for? – Answering the phones, sorting the post and replying to emails are one thing, but talking to stakeholders and clients is something completely different. You can’t expect temp cover to know your business and have the skills required to be involved in corporate decisions so the key is to prioritise what’s immediately important and what can wait until the start of the year when everyone’s back.

Make sure your lines of communication with your business partners, clients and suppliers remain open and transparent and you’ll be sure the deals you put into place before Christmas are still on the table in January.

Does your staff understand their duties? – It may be that with a smaller workforce, employees will be asked to cover certain tasks they wouldn’t normally be expected to do. Make sure they are trained and proficient on any technological or mechanical systems they might have to use and you can go on holiday knowing your business remains operating at full steam.

Use your recruitment company – That’s what we’re here for. We believe wholeheartedly in the development of close and long-term relationships with our clients and through these relationships, we have the ability to foresee any potential staffing requirements well ahead of time. In addition, we aren’t just here for staffing, we are here to provide advice, information and opinions on all aspects of the recruitment process. If there’s something you need to know, just pick up the phone and ask us.

Learn from your temp staff – Not as strange as it may seem. While every temp we provide will do an excellent job for you, it’s likely that because they are seeing your business through fresh eyes, they may have thoughts and ideas about improving efficiency or workflow. An added bonus of using temp staff is that you can ‘trial’ them with the view to growing your workforce either now or in the future.

To conclude, with good forward planning, you will get the temp staff that have the skills and attributes you’re looking for but last minute ‘panic recruitment’ could have a detrimental effect on your business.

It’s up to you.

In the meantime, have a profitable month and we’ll see you in October.

Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing