People. That’s what ManpowerGroup is all about. We place millions of people into new jobs every year; making a real difference to their lives and helping our clients meet their strategic business goals, in an increasingly unpredictable world.

With 3,500+ offices globally, we’re in a unique position to make a positive contribution to local communities worldwide. Our people volunteer their time, knowledge and experience to help others move up the career ladder and achieve their full potential. In fact, every day of the year, we provide a home for a wide range of community activities – from student mentoring, to interview and CV coaching; and from weekly homework clubs to university networking events, and much more.

Our commitment to empowering people in their career starts right here – at ManpowerGroup itself. We’ve created a high performing, collaborative, learning culture, where we can practice what we preach. By nurturing our people, they enjoy bringing their best selves to work – for the better of our candidates, our clients, and our local communities. Take a look at a few of the ways we’re empowering people in all four corners of ManpowerGroup:

Accelerating our Emerging Leaders

Building a sustainable pipeline of leaders globally is critical to the future success of all organisations. Our business is no different. So, in 2014 we launched our Emerging Leader programme. Combining stretch assignments, development tools, executive coaching and mentoring – this three year initiative builds leadership capabilities and provides on-the-job experience, for our leaders of tomorrow.

We’re already seeing the success of this programme. Our Emerging Leaders are more engaged in their roles, and are progressing in their careers. So much so, that 80% will be in a new role by the end of 2016. We’re immensely proud of their achievements, and our next cohort of Emerging Leaders is raring to go.

Shifting the ManpowerGroup needle for women leaders

We’re leaders at the World Economic Forum and active participants on their Gender Parity Council. So we’re all too aware that organisations are stuck in circular conversations about why we don’t have enough female leaders. There’s been a great deal of talk, but not nearly enough action.

Our talent strategy is crystal clear: an all-male succession bench just isn’t going to cut it. So succession planning and gender diversity are critical aspects of our People and Culture strategy. We know exactly where we want women to progress and by when: by 2020, 40% of our Executive Leadership Team and Key Leadership Team roles will be held by women.

Helping Millennials develop skills to stay employable

Millennials don’t always seek promotions – they seek progression. That’s why we invest in training, create new ways to learn on-the-job, and build opportunities for our people to move around the organisation.

To enable this, we launched our European Graduate Program in 2014. It’s a two-year experience where participants can develop new skills while working on national, regional and global assignments. They enjoy role rotations, mentoring and valuable exposure to senior leaders and peers in other locations and brands. So far, graduates have progressed into a variety of roles in marketing, operations and IT in countries across Europe.

Empowering people through upskilling

Nowadays, the skills businesses need are constantly changing. So we help our people stay ahead of the curve by making learning easy.

Our sustainable learning culture is well and truly embedded into our organisation. In fact, we’ve provided online training since 1998. Through our digital learning platform PowerYou, we offer 7,500+ virtual and blended courses – ranging from negotiation and management, to the latest training in IT infrastructure. Delivered bitesize chunks and continually updated, we make sure our people can learn what they want, where and when they want to learn it.

Building capabilities through career conversations

Naturally, career conversations are a critical component of people management. But it can’t just be a single conversation between an employee and their manager. It needs to be a series of conversations with a wide network of people, to address the things employees care most about.

At ManpowerGroup, ongoing career conversations between managers, our people and their broader network are an essential part of our collaborative learning culture. We develop coaching skills so our people can have effective career conversations. We share this insight with our clients too.

To find out more about how ManpowerGroup is doing well by doing good, download our 2016 Sustainability Report.

Changing global demographics are dramatically impacting the workforce. People are living longer and working older; the workforce is more diverse than ever; and migration is reaching levels not seen for decades. As the war for talent intensifies, employers need to move on from circular conversations about diversity and take action, if they’re going to secure the talent their business needs.

Diversity of people promotes diversity of thought. By adjusting workforce management practices to better tap underutilised talent pools, organisations will see better business results. It is not just the right thing to do – it makes clear business sense.

At ManpowerGroup, we make it our priority to enable all people to participate in the workplace and achieve their full potential. Here are just some of the ways we’re nurturing diversity in the workforce:

Transforming Military Recruitment in Australia

For more than a decade, ManpowerGroup Australia has partnered with the Australian Defence Force to deliver the largest and most complex Recruitment Process Outsourcing solution in the world. Mission critical to the success of this partnership is our focus on sourcing talent from wider pools, attracting the best skills and better representing underrepresented groups. For example, women were previously an underrepresented group in the Australian Defence Force; we’ve now increased the number of applications from women by over 85%.

Opening Doors for Refugees in Europe

ManpowerGroup Netherlands has partnered with the Dutch Council for Refugees, UAF (an NGO supporting refugees in finding work) and the Naturalisation Service to offer refugees re-training and long-term employment as interpreters. Ready and willing to learn, refugees are upskilling or converting skills through intensive courses. They’re then placed into roles as Interpreters. Through dedicated refugee programmes like this, we’re helping individuals utilise or develop new skills, find meaningful work, regain normalcy and rebuild their lives.

Nurturing Diversity by Building Inclusive Workforces

In summer 2016, ManpowerGroup Brazil filled 15,000 positions for one of the highest profile sporting events in the world. We embedded our approach to ‘doing well by doing good’ across the entire event. We created work opportunities for people from local communities; attracted a diverse workforce through outreach in nearby favelas; and hired more than 150 people with disabilities to join the winning team supporting Brazil.

Right Management UK Helps Service Leavers Adapt to Civilian Life

Every year in the UK, thousands of people leave the armed forces with a range of skills and experience. However, they can often find it hard to transition into civilian life. Through the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), we’ve helped 180,000 individuals transition into civilian life after leaving the forces. We’re proud that our approach is working. Over 90% of all Service Leavers transitioning via the CTP are settled into a new civilian job role within six months. Recently extended for a further six years, the partnership is now open to Early Service Leavers too, whether they served for six weeks or six years.

Breaking Down Barriers in Madrid, Barcelona and Zaragoza

Through our Fundación ManpowerGroup INTEGRA Programme, we have trained disabled university students in Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza for over a decade. We train business mentors for our clients and find the best-fit diverse talent. This helps them meet their needs under the Spanish Law for Social Integration of the Disabled. With coaching on topics such as communication and corporate culture, we guide students towards sustainable employment and professional integration.

To find out more about how ManpowerGroup is doing well by doing good, download our 2016 Sustainability Report.

The prospect of outsourcing any – let alone all – of your recruitment requirements to someone who you’ve not worked with before can be an intimidating prospect. And when it comes to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), it can be particularly scary.

But, as I’ve previously discussed, there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about RPO. Mention those three pesky little letters, and people often think of a complete end-to-end, full-scale outsource of all permanent recruitment. That’s a myth. To some extent, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, there are some ‘pure play’ RPOs out there. But there are alternative options out there too.

Your alternative outsourcing options

Let’s look at one of the alternatives. Perhaps you’re thinking about outsourcing at some stage, but don’t want to outsource everything. Maybe you have a great internal team, but they’re stretched to capacity and can’t take on any more work during times of increased business demand. If that sounds like your organisation, then a Project RPO could be the answer.

A project-based RPO addresses a seasonal or business need for large-scale ramp up – either event-based or volume hiring. It can be enterprise-wide, or for a specific skill set, location or business unit specific. Wherever your requirements lie, a Project RPO covers short-term requirements to ramp up permanent recruitment.

Take our work with a national food retailer as an example. When they were opening 160 new stores nationwide, we were tasked with managing the recruitment process for this large scale ramp-up. We turned things around very quickly, and our solution was fully operational within six weeks. With an integrated multi-channel targeted attraction campaign, we attracted 150,000+ applications, conducted 24,000+ telephone interviews, invited 10,000+ individuals to an assessment day or interview, and made 2,100 new hires with a 100% fulfilment success rate.

Realise the benefits of a Project RPO

A Project RPO provides all the benefits of a full-scale outsource. That means a dedicated team, white-labelled delivery, scalability, flexibility, improved candidate experience, employer brand management, and more. But, most importantly, you get all of these benefits without the need for a long-term, contractual commitment. Essentially, it allows a buying organisation to dip their toes in the RPO ocean and test the water temperature, before jumping in.

If you think this kind of RPO solution would be worth considering for your organisation, then you ought to know about ManpowerGroup Solutions. We deliver Project RPOs, end-to-end RPOs, RPO consulting, and plenty more besides. And we’re really good at it. In fact, industry analysts Everest Hall named us as a global leader for six years in a row. And Nelson Hall as named us the largest RPO provide for four consecutive years too.

You can find out more about our Recruitment Process Outsourcing capabilities our website, or feel free to get in touch with me directly for more information.

Age discrimination remains an issue in the workplace, despite increased awareness and legislative protections. In fact, 34% of workers think age – at both ends of the spectrum – is a challenge to their career aspirations.

In the UK, age discrimination laws are clear: hiring managers cannot use language about age nor can employers include a number of years of experience into a job posting. However, there is a lot of focus on a candidate’s experience during the interview process. This can potentially contribute to negative candidate perceptions.

Rise of Boomerang Workers

However, some organisations are embracing generational diversity as a way to overcome talent shortages. So much so, that more retirees are returning to work than ever before.

With the war for talent heating, these ‘Boomerang Workers’ are a valuable source for filling talent gaps. From providing unique skill sets to meeting just-in-time staffing needs of companies – boomerang workers can be an economical, loyal and dedicated talent pool to tap into.

The most successful companies have realised this. So they’re developing customised strategies to cultivate this large and highly skilled talent pool. This is giving them competitive advantage in today’s global search for the recruitment and retention of top talent.

Read the full report to find out more about emerging Boomerang Workers, and for recommendations on how you can build a talent pool of them.

Automation, artificial intelligence and robotics are developing at speed. Just this week, scientists at Oxford University revealed that they’ve developed a machine that can lip-read better than a human. From improved hearing aids to biometric identification – this new AI system has enormous potential.

Developments like this have put the labour market into a period of transition. We’re in a fast-moving world of work, and skills which are highly valuable right now might not hold the same value in a few years’ time.

However, this doesn’t mean there will be fewer jobs. It means there will be different jobs. Some skill sets will become redundant, but others will thrive and new skills will emerge too.

Through this period of transition and beyond, it’s important that workers build new skills that will help them stay relevant and employable. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing at ManpowerGroup – both in the UK and around the world. We’ve been helping people nurture learnability throughout their career journey, so they can build new skills for a fast-changing world of work.

Here’s four of the ways we’re helping individuals re-skill and up-skill:

Advancing careers through coaching, development and degrees

In the US, we’re working in partnership with Western International University to help our workers achieve college degrees, at no personal cost and while they work. This has helped 122,000 individuals increase their earning potential in the last two years. In fact, nearly two-thirds have seen their pay increase by 50-75% from their first to most recent job. At the same time, they’ve been able to balance employment and learning commitments at a pace that works with their busy lives.

Up-skilling 60,000 people in France

In France, we deliver assessment and training opportunities for more than 60,000 individuals through our FuturSkill brand. Added to this, our Bridge to Work programme is helping unemployed individuals get back into the workplace. We’re training them in soft and hard skills, how to take assessments, and how to use learning management system software. We’re proud that 90% of candidates on this programme have been placed into work – in roles ranging from IT helpdesk technicians to customer service representatives.

90% score top jobs on our tailored IT programme

Last year in India, our Experis brand trained 1,000 graduates in IT skills – helping them to build new skills such as testing, Java and mainframe skills. Working with our client, a top Fortune 500 technology company, we developed a tailored curriculum and intensive boot-camp training. Some of the participants were new graduates; others were experienced professionals looking to re-skill and make lateral moves. Impressively, 90% went on to work for our client.

Manpower UK’s 18 year journey with Jaguar Land Rover

In the UK, our partnership with Jaguar Land Rover has been running for over 18 years. In the last five, we have supported 7,000 people into work while they up-skill and achieve formal qualifications to NVQ Level 2. More than 600 of them were 18-24 year-olds who were not in education, employment or training (NEET). They’re now equipped with in-demand skills and enhanced earning potential.

To find out more about how ManpowerGroup is doing well by doing good, download our 2016 Sustainability Report.

Fact: recruitment is time consuming. So much so, that recruitment technologists Lever found it takes an average of 34 days, from the day an individual engages with your company to the day they’re hired.

Why does it take so long to recruit? Because there’s no short cuts. When you’re recruiting someone to join your team, you need to be absolutely certain that they’re the right person. And attracting, assessing, matching, interviewing, referencing candidates in the right way takes a while.

Added to this, research from the CIPD shows the average recruitment costs range from £2,000, up to £7,500 for Senior Managers. And this doesn’t even include the cost of your time, which could add thousands more pounds to the bill.

Time is money. Speed up your recruitment processes, and not only will you find the right person quicker, but you’ll save money too. Here are three improvements you can make to your recruitment processes to do just that:

Change your attraction methods

Yes, you can put an advert on a job board. And yes, you’ll probably get some applications. But are they from the right people? What if the perfect person for your opening isn’t on that job board? What if they’re not even actively looking for a new role? Job boards are great, but they need to be utilised alongside proactive, tailored forms of outreach, to ensure you attract the right people.

Simplify the application process

People are busy. They don’t want to spend hours upon hours completing application forms, assessments, and countless interviews. If they’re interested in joining your company, you need to make the application process as straightforward, quick and pain-free as possible. This will ensure they engage with you and your jobs, over and above your competitors.

Improve candidate experiences

It happens all the time. Candidates apply for a job, and don’t hear back. No feedback, no interaction, nothing. However, while they might not be right for your job opening right now, treat them badly and it’s unlikely they’ll engage with you on an opportunity they are right for. Spend a small amount of time right now on your candidate experience, and you’ll save hours of time on candidate attraction in the future.

---

At Manpower, we can do all of this for you. For 60 years, we’ve helped employers of all sizes find and keep the people they need. We can take on as much or as little of the recruitment process as you wish. And we’ll find you the person (or people) who are the perfect match for your company.

We’ll save you time, without cutting corners, so you can focus on your core business, and still get your pick of the best.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you recruit great talent, get in touch with your local Manpower team today.

When November rolls around, one thing is for sure: businesses across the country start to sprint for the finishing line. They’re focused on achieving as much as they can in the final few weeks, so they can wrap up the year and start anew in 2017. So there’s often a tendency to put off making any more permanent hires until the New Year.

As a result, there are countless missed hiring opportunities at the end of the year. But with talent shortages continuing to increase, businesses simply can’t afford to miss out on great talent. Here are four great reasons why you should recruit in November:

End of year reflections

When the pumpkins have been and gone and festive celebrations are just around the corner, it’s natural to reflect on the year that’s just past. So it comes as no surprise that candidates start to get itchy feet about their job. They might be unhappy with their commute, bored with the projects they’ve been assigned to, or something else entirely. Either way, they’re open to new opportunities – you just need to present them.

Kick start the New Year

Spend Q4 finding and securing the right person, and they can hit the ground running in the New Year. They’ll be on board in plenty of time to hear about your strategy for the year and put their ideas on the table. And as a Hiring Manager, you won’t spend the first month of the year interviewing. That means you can focus on activities that will make a real contribution to the bottom line.

Beat the competition

Your competitors may slow down their hiring, but if you speed it up you’ll be in a prime position to secure some great talent from under their nose. Highlight all of the perks that come with working at your organisation. Flexible working hours, training programmes, advancement opportunities, onsite facilities and competitive pay can all help to draw the best talent.

Build your talent pipeline

Not everyone you speak with will be interested in the exact role you’re recruiting for. But they might be perfect for a role in 2017. Use this as an opportunity to build a rapport and relationship with them, so you’re the first person they turn to when they start to look for new opportunities in the New Year. At the same time, ask them if they know anyone else who might be a good fit for the role.

At Manpower, we know a thing or two about attracting and securing talent. Every year, we partner with 5,000 employers of all sizes, to help them find the talent they need. That means attracting millions of candidates from all four corners of the country. It also means engaging with them in the right way, so they can step in and contribute to your business right away.

Want to find out more about how we can help you recruit in November? Get in touch with your local Manpower team today.