Eloise’s January 2022 News – New Year Goals, Recruitment Predictions, New Service, HR Bits

Hello, Happy New Year and welcome to January and 2022

I hope you’ve managed to get some downtime and have had a good break.

How are you settling into 2022? Are you busy reviewing your goals for the year?

It’s great news that we’ve not started the year with the lockdown a lot of us were anticipating. I hope your business is coping with the number of covid cases we’re seeing though and the impact that can have.

Working from home after the Christmas break when a lot of us have been mainly at home for a couple of weeks can take some adjusting. I’ve got some tips later in this post about how to change things up.

Resolutions v’s goals

I’ve read a lot recently about not setting new year resolutions. The reasons being that they tend to be big asks without specifics. Things that don’t always fit in with our reality and are likely to get forgotten about or broken.

Instead, it’s all about goal setting. Having aims you’d like to achieve for the year, broken down into different areas. It could be health / fitness / career / family / friends etc. Maybe even broken down further, whatever works best for you.

The idea is that your goals align with your life and ambitions. With the aim of keeping focussed and on track. They need to be documented somewhere where you won’t forget them – on your wall, in your phone etc. You could have overall goals and then monthly actions. Mood boards, checklists, a mind map – whatever makes you accountable to yourself.

My personal goals for the year…

Some of my personal goals for this year are to get fitter and to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK and LOROS.  This is in memory of my Dad, who passed away in September last year.

I’ve broken this goal down to make it achievable but stretching. For January, my children (12-year-old twins Jacob and Daisy) and I are running a marathon. Thankfully not all in one go but 26.2 miles over the month.

Having this type of goal is keeping us all motivated without having the pressure to run every day. It’s a positive focus, it’s good for our health, it gets us outside and talking without distractions. It’s going really well so far.

If you’d like to support us or our chosen charities we’d really appreciate it, click here.

I’d love to hear about your goals and aims for 2022.

The recruitment market predictions for 2022

According to the REC JobsOutlook survey, the jobs market is still very buoyant and business confidence is high overall. However, there has been a dip in available opportunities compared to the frenzy of the previous months. This has been attributed to uncertainty around the Omicron coronavirus variant.

The main takeaways from the report are:

  • Temporary workers will be in very high demand in the first quarter of 2022
  • Business confidence in hiring staff remains higher than business confidence in the economy
  • The end of the furlough scheme doesn’t seem to have impacted the number of available candidates in the market
  • They anticipate a highly competitive labour market in early 2022 with employers needing to make strong offers to attract talent.

So, the story remains the same. The key is to build your employer brand, offer competitive packages and don’t hand around with your recruitment process and decision making.

We’ve launched a new service – candidate checking

This is an exciting one. We’ve added a new string to our recruitment bow.

The feedback we’ve received from businesses over the last 12 months has been how time-consuming and tricky it can be to run all the necessary or required checks on new/prospective employees.

We are giving you the option to have it all done for you. New employee and candidate screening is about to become really easy.

We are providing a flexible, pay-as-you-go service to check candidates and employees. You can order background checks in any combination from the list below. The links will give you more information and you can view a sample report:

  • Data Checks
    • Employee Credit Check
    • Identity Check
    • Sanctions Check
  • Reference & Qualifications Checks
    • Professional Membership Check
    • Character Reference Check
  • Employment Reference/History checks
    • Employment History

Get in touch for more information.

Tips for working from home in January

If you’ve spent most of the Christmas break in your house, and now you’re transitioning back into full-time work from home, it can be hard to summons the motivation to stop watching films and eating After Eights and to get back into a good working pattern.

Five of the things we’re doing as a team are:

  • Sorting out our designated workspaces
    • For some of us this is a study and for others it’s a desk in the lounge. What is important though is to have a space where you work. Even if that means setting up on the kitchen table every morning and then clearing it all away again at the end of the day. The space needs to link your mind to working and not relaxing.
    • We’re also decluttering our workspaces. Sorting through the pile of papers and recycling what we don’t need anymore. We need to feel like we can breathe in our workspaces and not like we’re drowning in last year’s stuff.
  • Getting the right visuals in eyesight
    • This is a personal thing, for me it’s a whiteboard with my to-do list on and my goals mood board where I can see them. For others it’s post-it notes and mind maps etc. Whatever motivates you and keeps you on track.
  • Setting our schedules and designated team time
    • With many of us having childcare responsibilities as well as work commitments it’s super important for all of us to know when each of us is available. We all keep our Outlook calendars up to date and shared.
    • We also have a morning check-in videocall. This is great for making sure we’re at our desks and switched on every morning. We all run through our daily goals which also helps to make sure we have given thought to how we’ve planned our day. It’s also good to see everyone’s faces.
  • 20 minutes outside
    • This is a new one I am introducing that I heard about from a friend. I want myself and my team to commit to 20 minutes outside every day.
    • It could be running, walking, standing outside whilst making a call, gardening, parking further from the shops to get a stroll in, wrapping up warm to sit and read a book outside on a bench.
    • Whatever it is that gets everyone outside for a minimum of 20 minutes every day and it can be different each day.
  • Music whilst working
    • I find background music can really pep me up. I’ll go through phases of instrumental jazz music just to break the silence and then times where I need something to sing along to for a few moments. It really does help with overall mood and focus.

A couple of HR bits to highlight – Statutory Sick Pay

Two main Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) details have recently changed that it’s worth highlighting here for you:

  • Rebate Scheme for small businesses

If you have paid SSP to an employee for a covid related absence, you can now recover up to two weeks SSP back. This is for employee absence from 21st December 2021.

Click here for more information.

  • Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) Employee Self-certification

Employees could self-certify for absence due to covid for the first seven days without a doctor’s note. From the 17th December 2021, it has been extended to twenty-eight days. Although the rules will be reverted to for absences beginning on or after the 27th January 2022.

 

 

And that’s it for another month.

I hope January is kind to you and I hope to speak to you soon.

Eloise

We recruit throughout the East Midlands covering Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland and the surrounding areas, especially Market Harborough, Lutterworth, Leicester, Corby and Kettering. We help people find their perfect job and match suitable jobseekers with businesses looking to hire the best candidates across our five specialisms – Sales, Marketing, Accountancy & Finance, HR and Office

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