A little extra help
Hiscox’s online BusinessHR service, available free to both policyholders and brokers, offers help on all aspects of managing people, including comprehensive guidance on recruiting and developing staff. Here’s a word from one satisfied policyholder:
“My wife and I provide consultancy and interim management services to the public and health sectors. As a Hiscox PI policyholder, I recently registered for the BusinessHR website and to receive the emailed newsletter.
“Having read the newsletter and perused the BusinessHR website, I have found both to be amazingly comprehensive, versatile and easy to use; the newsletter particularly is very readable. It keeps me up to date now that I am working independently.
“This is not bad at all for a free service – the BusinessHR service is worth the insurance premium alone!”
Derrick Dyas, Grange Lodge Associates Ltd
tips for effective recruitment
The industry is facing a severe skills shortage. How do you find – and keep – the best people? Emma De Vita offers some advice
Start young
According to Neil Beattie, head of the Talent Initiative at the CII, ambitious firms are targeting potential recruits by going into schools and educating 15- and 16-year-olds about the industry in order to backfill the talent pipeline. Most pupils tend to focus on law or accountancy as professions rather than insurance, and this imbalance needs to be addressed.
Brand is everything
Victoria Winkler of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development says: “What talented people think about when they look for a job is the employer brand, so think about how your company promotes itself. When graduates consider who they want to work for, they think about whether their own values align with those of the organisation.”
Sort out your website
The first port of call for many graduates or school-level job seekers will be your company’s website, so your careers section should include more than just job details. “Have a bit about your company, its values, pictures of the individuals who work there and career development opportunities,” says Winkler
Show me (more than) the money!
Talented job candidates want the whole package – it’s called the ‘total reward’. A competitive salary always helps, but Generation Y cares just as much about things like flexible working, individual career development plans and ethical and community values. Think about what makes your company unique and then advertise it with gusto.
Get them engaged
Once you have your dream employee, you’ve got to keep them engaged. Highly engaged employees are easy to spot for their motivation, loyalty, focus and can-do attitude. What’s not so easy is creating the environment that fosters this kind of behaviour. It’s all about putting the right conditions in place to ensure it actually happens.
How to do it
Keep staff engaged by giving them autonomy, strong career development and a firm idea of why their contribution matters – and not just in their first year. Jim Crawley of HR consultancy Towers Perrin says that an engaged employee “has an understanding of where the organisation is going, its mission and how they contribute to it”.
