Over at The Thinking Policemans blog Lex Ferenda makes a good point and goes someway to explain some of the shit that G4S has found itself in.
G4S spent many months recruiting staff but failed to ensure that they were still available to work. This meant that as Olympic sites were searched and sealed ready for handover to G4S to guard and keep secure, G4S e-mailed staff to attend work and only a percentage of those actually turned up.
If you have a good work ethic (and some of us still do) and were out of work/ been made redundant, you apply for most jobs that you feel suitable for. I have to say that were I still signing on, I’d have gone for a Locog job.
No matter that it was only 2-3 months at £7.50 an hour, a jobs a job and better than £67.50 a week on the Rock n’Roll.
But I wouldn’t have stopped looking for a permanent or better paid position, after all although my application has been accepted, no contract has been signed, I am not on salary. Even then permanent or long term contract over 12 weeks being treated like shit. I know which would swing my vote.
This is not a new thing with the onset of CRB checks for every position although that has made it worse. But from personal experience and from people I know it can be anything from one to three months between job offer and walking through the factory gates as it were. If your currently unemployed and in the meantime if someone says “You start Monday” Well what would you do?
Whilst I am glad the days of ‘hire and fire’ on a whim have gone, the pendulum has swung (as always) too far the other way, it is now practically impossible to get rid of incompetent staff unless you can prove Gross Misconduct. Probation periods are not worth the paper they are written on ( tribunals citing lack of support and of course racism are par for the course) So yes employers are dotting the i’’s and crossing the the t’s before taking anyone on.
My current job was offered on the 9th September , I actually started on 24th October after all the checks. If during that time, one of the other applications I had out had responded with an offer of more money and/or and earlier start date, what would I have done, who knows? but I would have thought about it a great deal and if it had gone the other way my current company would have missed out on a first rate employee.
So in my rambling way, what am I trying to say, to be honest I have no idea. But G4S fucked up big time, they are a large employer how they did not see this coming is beyond me, or like the banks they did, but knew they would be bailed out and just counted the money.
In the words of Lenny Henry [as Chef] ‘I hate you with a passion you can only dream of’
There's also modern management techniques to blame too. Treat your staff well, you'll get loyalty. Treat them as if only the iron hand of discipline keeps them from eating each other or the customers, and you'll get...well, you'll get G4S.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is, the "loyalty" is one way. You can be as loyal as it is possible to be, be the best worker they have ever had, etc, etc. But they will drop you like a hot potatoe as soon as they figure it would put a few more quid in their pocket.
DeleteOne of the problems faced by G4S is that if they employed the correct number of personnel, they would have had to have done this some weeks ago, thus paying them for doing nothing - though a forward looking company would have spent that time training the staff and putting them through exercise after exercise so they would know what to do in almost every contingency. To do this, however, would cost money and as G4S is a private company with shareholders, this wasn't an option. They messed up big time. But also LOCOG messed up big time. There must surely be someone in that organisation recalling the saying about eggs and baskets. G4S for London, another firm for Manchester, another firm for Weymouth, or wherever the sailing is going to be. The problem is that they are following the political creed of 'one size fits all' where the great unwashed voters are concerned. Even without the benfit of hindsight I would suggest that if the matter of security had been handed over to the military and Police in the first instance, this balls-up would not have taken place. But then Devious Dave would not have had the backing to give so many of them their P45s (which will be put in the post the day after the Olympics has ended).
ReplyDeletePenseivat
"I am glad the days of ‘hire and fire’ on a whim have gone..."
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure. If there's work to be done and you're doing it well, an employer would be insane to let you go. I much prefer the old days where you could knock on an employer's door asking for work and to be told to start next Monday. Back in the dark days of the 1980's recession I could walk in and out of jobs with ease... disproving the cry then (as now) that "there are no jobs".
A couple of years back (yeah, just as the economy went bad once again) I returned to retailing for a spell. This time, the employer's "we are desperate for staff" turned into a month long around of form filling, checks and interviews. And you're left sat at home realising why the jobs are going to China.
Anyway, I'm back working for myself again now. I feel sorry for any employer these days and more for their employees. If we had any sense at all, we'd remove ALL and ANY barriers to starting a job today (or at the very least a week max). Clearly some positions do require checks (CRB etc) but they should be a vanishingly small proportion, not the rule.
Competent staff can't get hired and incompetents can't get sacked. What a wonderful land we're now in.
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