The EU, buy a designer banana for charity, being consistent and more...

Hi

It has been too long since my last post and I thought it was high time I remedied this. So here is an update on life at ReadyPeople towers...

Last week, not content with keeping up with UK employment law, I went straight to the epicentre of Euro-legislation - Brussels, for a day of updates on the state of the temporary and contract market and the legislative process across the EU. I was there courtesy of ATSCo - the Association of Technology Staffing Companies and, on balance it was a great day out! So what did I learn?

UK & Eire are still the very best place in Europe to be a temp or a contractor, 2nd only to the USA on a global scale.

The liberalization of employment practice that enables the UK & Eire to have such a dynamic flexible working environment is spreading, slowly, across the EU – particularly the accession states in Eastern Europe (Poland etc).

Eurociett – the European Confederation of Private Employment Agencies has a small dedicated unit in Brussels dedicated to representing recruitment businesses across Europe and fighting for appropriate liberalization of labour markers to repeat the success of the UK & Eire.

At this point in the presentation, the reporter for a well-known recruitment publication, who will remain nameless, fell into a sleep so deep that some other attendees at the conference were concerned that he had died. If you have persevered through this blog up to now – keep going - it does get a little better!

Lloyds TSB believe the EU economy is looking good for at least the next 3 years – this coupled with the gradual liberalization of the labour markets should mean more and better opportunities for all of us.

We were also given an insight into what everyone suspects about EU policy-making – it is slow, incredibly tedious and is apt to produce gems like this: (EC) 2257/94 stipulates that “bananas must be free from malformation or abnormal curvature and at least 5.5 inches long”. Bananas are classified into “compliant”, “slight defects of shape” and “defects of shape”. This took so long to agree that they ran out of time to define “abnormal curvature” – it has not been revisited in years.

(EC) 1677/88 is to cucumbers as EC 2257/94 is to bananas – but has gone 1 step further in managing to define abnormal curvature – class 1 and class 2 are allowed to curve by 10mm per 10cm of length – 20mm for 3rd class! It serves as a warning that legislation you think has got bogged down forever – can eventually emerge, years after it was first mooted.
I also learnt that coming back on Eurostar in a 1st-class carriage exclusively put on for a bunch of IT recruiters with unlimited alcohol is good fun and an excellent idea, at least until you try and use your sprained brain the following morning (!)

Back home again and my hometown team – Southend United, the Championship team that knocked Man-U out of the Carling Cup this season, have been relegated back to League One - it was a sad, but not entirely unexpected event. On the plus side – our season tickets are not being put up in price this year ;-). Shrimpers have had some magnificent games this year – but have shown a real lack of consistency. The same applies in recruitment – you may not always be able to turn in a superstar performance, but you do need to be consistently excellent – in order to stay up with the real star businesses – the ones that look after their clients & candidates while being ethical & profitable. At ReadyPeople, we are doing well at this, but we’re not complacent! I intend to keep ReadyPeople near the top of the table – and if any of our candidates or clients ever thinks we are on the verge of losing points - I am more than happy for you to give us “the hairdryer” in the changing rooms at half time!

Finally – for what I admit is a more random blog than usual – what on Earth is this “I am not a plastic bag” business about? First we have the stampede at Primark in Oxford Street – now we have £5 cotton shopping bags changing hands for £100’s on ebay! I was wondering if I could extend this magic process to the recruitment world – but have decided just to dip my toe into the water first…

So – this week only, in a desperate attempt to capitalise on my new-found EU banana knowledge - you can bid on ebay for my designer, organic, fair-trade banana – a real banana with the banana-skin slogan: “I am not a biscuit”. 50% of the sale will automatically go to Great Ormond Street Hospital; the other 50% will go into R&D for my next designer fruit and ultimate extension of this concept into my recruitment process “this is not a c-sharp developer” anyone?

Bid for my Banana: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/I-am-not-a-plastic-bag-style-organic-fairtrade-banana_W0QQitemZ300109899346QQihZ020QQcategoryZ60824QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem