June « 2010 « Go To Recruitment Employment Blog

29/06/2010

BP reassures staff

Oil and gas recruitment agencies would have heard yesterday, the Senior BP executive addressing the staff in Aberdeen reassuring them that there jobs and the North Sea operations will be safe and BP have no plans to stop this.

The main worry was that with Mexico crises now nearing £2.65 billion may affect other areas of BP operations. BP reaffirmed that they are still on track to deal with the crises and believe they will meet the timeframe of 3 months but this will not cause them to sell assets to fund this such as the North Sea operation.

Elsewhere BP is still going ahead with there Russian venture, which again will not be affected by the Mexico crises.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Goto @ 09:42

23/06/2010

Open for Business

As the nation was on tender hooks yesterday afternoon, the message from the Chancellor was he wanted the sign above Britain to say `Open for Business`.

George Osborne insisted that the country had to share the responsibility of the debt and that it is now time to put fiscal policies into place to reduce this debt. In a speech that I would imagine made everyone feel like we had to grow up and act like adults and maybe for the first time I looked at the budget as a collective means to sort out the finances of the country rather than how it affects me personally. I feel that yes there are hard decisions that have been made and yes every family in Britain will be proportionately worst of, but wasn’t that the idea of the emergency budget, I for one did not expect it to be a rosy speech.

Labour obviously hit back and claimed how this was going to create job loses and spiral the country into a second recession but Labour had already announced some time ago that they have plans to increase taxes to raise £21 billion, £8 billion less than what ConDem’s have just announced but still a large enough figure that would have not pleased all aspects of the economy.

Healthcare recruitment agencies and public sector recruitment agencies heard about 25% annual cuts in budget, these Whitehall departments does exclude the NHS and oversees aid. There were also some promises that education and defence will be protected by these cuts.

The largest jeering occurred when George Osborne announced an increase of VAT from 17.5% to 20%, something that retail recruitment agencies will be wary of as this will of course hit retail outlets the worst.

There were of course many other fiscal policies put into place but too many to go through here. I will say overall it is hard to argue with many of the decisions made I’m sure everyone will have a different view but the fact is we have all been told off and it is time to put money into the nation pot and if we can do this right we will come out of this recession more stronger than before. I think there is only one more point to add, let’s hope England in the World Cup lift the Nation’s mood for while.

21/06/2010

Britain ready for action

For one day only, the people of Britain will not be wondering what game is next on the World Cup but be bracing itself for one of the most important budgets of our time.

Employment agencies will be wondering how detrimental these changes will be, as will many companies and individuals. With George Osborne obviously getting the country ready for his budget speech tomorrow, with colloquialisms such as “Tough but Fair”, his £85 billion package will be across the board with the likely targets of welfare payments and freeze on public spending.

Shadow Chancellor Alistair Darling has a different view and feels that hindering the recovery will cause problems for Britain in the future, problems such as sluggish growth and borrowing in the longer term. These comments seem to fall on deaf ears with George Osborne, who is looking to cut £180 billion a year in welfare, with promises to use this money in other areas needed, such as education, defence and transport.

It is clear though that public sector recruitment agencies and healthcare recruitment agencies will have to be prudent in there planning over the coming years and make sure that there service is adaptable to the changes that will occur.

Filed under: employment agencies,healthcare recruitment agencies,public sector recruitment agencies — Goto @ 10:16

15/06/2010

The public have spoken

Healthcare recruitment agencies received a glimpse of good news when a public poll showed that the most unpopular idea for cuts was that 84% were against the idea of cutting the NHS budget by 5%.

This poll was on the back of Chancellor George Osborne, stating last week that the public will be consulted on how best to find savings of £60 billion a year. The Mail on Sunday carried out a survey, which realised £36.9 billion in cutbacks.

It is quite clear that the UK’s attitude is to deal with the deficit through department budgets rather than tax increases. The current annual public spending bill is around £660 billion, voters suggested that this should be reduced by £130 billion.

Voters suggested such action as 15% reduction in top earners salaries, freezing pay and recruitment drives, 83% said to scrap Child Benefits for more well-off families. However the most popular proposal was `vice taxes` with doubling duty on betting and increase duty on tobacco by 50%, although tax increase on alcohol was less popular.

I do believe it is good to see the ConDem’s trying to see what public sentiment is as I think that to tackle a debt of this magnitude has to have the buy in of the public.

Filed under: healthcare recruitment agencies — Goto @ 10:11

10/06/2010

Stop and Think

This is the message from Unite to Barclaycard this week as they are considering outsourcing their call centres to India. This is of course a concern to call centre recruitment agencies as they hope this trend does not continue.

Firstsource is the company that Barclaycard has approached to takeover their operations and a decision will be made later this year, however with around a 1000 jobs to be lost by doing this; Unite has major concerns about the effect this will have on the region.

The problem I for see from this kind of action is that companies that are even profitable are acting in this manner and with the imminent emergency budget almost upon us with grave warnings about cuts that will occur; I hope that this does not become a common theme.

News also from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) about the rate of permanent jobs being filled in May dropped for the second month running. REC’s chief executive stated that although job vacancies continue to grow, they are doing so at a lower rate, there is also a concern as the overall employment outlook looks bleak with continued recruitment freezes within the public sector.

Filed under: call centre recruitment agencies — Goto @ 10:00

07/06/2010

Recruitment Agencies Beware

Recruitment agencies are hoping for the best now with stark warnings being made by Cameron about the state of the economy and how it is even worse than they initially thought.

With less than 2 weeks to go before the emergency budget it will be a tall order to try and reduce this 156 billion pounds deficit that exists. Cameron even went as far as saying the country should be prepared for some painful cuts and that crossing our fingers and hoping the economy sorts itself out is not the way to deal with this matter.

Public sector recruitment agencies will be most concerned about these comments, wondering what kind of cuts will be made in this area. The task of delivering the news will be by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who also added that we have to address the public sector pay bills.

Clegg also made a statement about the mistakes that have been made in the past and that they will tackle this deficit differently. There will also not allow the great north/ south divide that appeared in the 1980’s when fiscal policies almost created a sink or swim attitude in different regions of the country.

I will only say that from my point of view it is quite clear the country will hear unfavourable news on the 22^nd of June and I do not think it is a coincidence that this news is coming out during the World Cup, hoping that much of the announcement is lost in the euphoria of this competition especially as England are playing in the 23^rd of June.

Filed under: public sector recruitment agencies,recruitment agencies — Goto @ 11:16

04/06/2010

Scottish NHS jobs axed

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon announced that due to the pressure put on her to make job cuts, she will have to reduce NHS jobs by 4000 over the course of the year. This will of course not appease healthcare recruitment agencies, who are receiving very mix signals about how much cutting the NHS will be expected to do.

The problem is 2 fold here, service and cost saving. Ms Strugeon stated that even though the NHS is and always will be a top priority for the government, the fact that there has been a £500 million cut in the overall Scottish Budget, the NHS actually received a funding increase.

Recruitment agencies would therefore be surprised by this information and why there would be a need for job cuts to be made, not only that but the fact that this could as the Unions warned cause concerns over the level of service that the NHS would provide.

The truth of the matter is the NHS budgets are extremely tight and with such little movement in these budgets they don’t allow for cost increases a clear example of this would be Medicine. The cost of purchasing medicine has increase dramatically and without budgets pricing this in then logically the cost of paying for these drugs has to come from somewhere.

The Scottish Patients Association added that it is not Sturgeon faults that money is in short supply but finds it hard to accept comments from the government saying this will not affect patient care. This implies that there was poor management in place before hand that were just taking on staff for the sake of it, extremely unlikely.

We will of course have to wait and see how these cuts will truly affect the NHS service, but with 1500 nurses and midwifery posts about to disappear, it leaves me to think of only one possible outcome in the service provided.

Filed under: healthcare recruitment agencies,recruitment agencies — Goto @ 11:24

02/06/2010

Export, Export and keep Exporting!!

Manufacturing employment agencies would have been happy to hear that the Manufacturing sector is enjoying a strong recovery from one of the worst recessions.

Figures published by the Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) showed that it’s purchasing managers’ index for May was 58 (anything over 50 represents growth). This means it has held its 15 month high figure and also when this figure is compared to February last year, when it showed 35.2, it shows the growth that has occurred over the past 15 months.

This increase is largely due to the fact that we have had a sharp reduction in interest rates and the weakening of the pound. The slight concern of all this is that the Eurozone which are where we are mainly exporting to, are now beginning to suffer as well, with the weakening of the Euro. This could then have ramifications on our export business. Therefore we do have to take all this good news in this sector with a bit of caution and hope that the rise does continue and for recruitment agencies the need for more staff continues as well.

Filed under: Manufacturing empoyment agencies,recruitment agencies — Goto @ 11:13