The company, which has offices in Nottingham and Leicester, has made the investment in both new hardware and software. Top of the range PCs and laptops have been introduced for all staff and four high performance servers have been installed. The centerpiece of the changes is a new ITRIS Recruitment Management System, supplied by recruitment software expert ITEC Systems.

The ITRIS software will allow Macildowie’s consultants to quickly find the best candidates for clients in its three specialist areas of recruitment – HR, Finance, Procurement and Supply Chain. The overall speed of response and quality of communication for both clients and candidates will be improved, and the management team will benefit from comprehensive management reporting.

Commenting on the investment, Paul Milling, Director of Operations at Macildowie, said: “Over the last 18 months, the business has grown significantly. Not only have we employed an additional 22 consultants, but we have also launched our Procurement and Supply Chain division. As such, a new management system was required to support this growth and facilitate further expansion.

“Finding the perfect solution involved a rigorous procurement exercise, with tenders from eight different suppliers. However, we felt that the ITRIS software offered the flexibility and speed that we needed to help the company continue to go from strength to strength.”

The new management system is part of a continual investment programme at Macildowie, which was launched in 2007 when the company was acquired by Synetecs Ltd. Other significant investments include £100,000 to facilitate the move of Macildowie’s Leicester team to new offices at Meridian Business Park in late 2010.

For more details on Macildowie, visit www.macildowie.com.

The team now faces a visit from the judging panel and a long wait until the winner is announced in April. However, everyone is looking forward to showing the judges Macildowie’s unique approach to recruitment and how staff are motivated to achieve outstanding results for both candidates and clients.

Keep an eye on the news section for an update on Macildowie’s progress.

A procurement and supply chain team leader from recruitment specialist Macildowie has been named as this year’s ‘Rising Star’ at the Enterprising Women Excellence Awards 2011.

Claire Fletcher impressed the judges of the awards scheme, run by the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce, after launching Macildowie’s procurement and supply chain division in 2010.

The ‘Rising Star’ award is designed to recognise the efforts of those in the workplace who have gone the extra mile and achieved unrivalled success – something that was evident from Claire’s entry.

In an 18-month period, Claire secured contracts with high profile clients including Boots, Eon and Rolls Royce. She also took the division from a standing start to achieving a turnover of more than £500,000.

The judges were also impressed with Claire’s ability to juggle her career and fundraising efforts in her own time. In the past year alone, she has helped to raise £5,000 for the Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice in Peterborough, which offers care for adults with progressive and advanced illness.

Commenting on Claire’s success, James Calder, director at Macildowie, said:

“Claire has a work rate to rival the best and is an example to others at Macildowie. She has shown guts and determination to establish a new division, raise the name of the brand and achieve impressive figures. She did all of this in the midst of a recession when others shied away from growth.

“Commercially minded procurement and supply chain professionals are hugely desirable as demand on both sectors continues to increase. Clients are seeking candidates who can adapt, take on more and adopt the flexible approach required in this fast changing industry.

“Claire and her team continue to find the right people for public sector and blue chip procurement and supply chain roles and this award is testament to her amazing efforts over the last 18 months.”

The ‘Rising Star’ award was presented to Claire during a ceremony held at Derbyshire’s historic Chatsworth House.

For further information on Macildowie, visit www.macildowie.com

As a result we’re able to bring a brand new service offering to the market place, at no extra cost, which allows us to provide a truly holistic view of the individuals on your shortlist.  Most people agree that CV’s are a one dimensional piece of paper, we’re able to give you BPS approved personality and natural ability results to ensure you take on the candidate who best fits your business culture.   

We know we’re recruiting from a different angle because this service offering is exclusive to Macildowie in The Midlands, but you’ll have to call us to find out the details, as we don’t want to just give away our crown jewels! 

To ensure that our clients have access to the best candidates in the market we continue to invest heavily in our research team who are constantly searching for the most talented individuals across The Midlands, seeking to find the very best passive candidates in the region.  This ensures that these candidates are exclusively registered with us; in fact a significant number of all of our placements come from candidates who aren’t registered anywhere else.

Finally, we realise that anyone can make a quick statement about how brilliant they are.  We take the time to build long term, added value partnerships, which is why we’ve truly embraced social media, spending considerable time and money to deliver our knowledge in a bespoke format according to the requirements of you, our customers.  For the past 12 months we’ve been running Linkedin Workshops in order to help coach you on how to use social media for recruitment purposes, suggesting ways of reducing your time and money spent on recruitment.  All we ask in return for the time we invest is for you to use us exclusively on your next vacancy.  To register your interest in using us to recruit or to find out the dates of our next Linkedin sessions please get in touch by emailing us at stars@macildowie.com

The past few years have been somewhat of a rollercoaster when it comes to workforce motivation. A mistake that many have made is to assume that the recession caused a lack of motivation amongst staff, but I’d actually suggest that the tough economic period had the opposite impact.

Cuts across the board, resulted in a dramatic decline in the number of available positions. This meant that people became a lot more grateful to have a job and were motivated to fulfil that role to the best of their ability in order to hang on to it.

However, the reduction in staffing levels meant that those who survived were often asked to take on duties from other roles. Sometimes these were tasks that had previously been performed in a more junior role and people found themselves practically doing the work of two members of staff, all for the same, and occasionally, less money.

Now that things have slowly started to look more secure, that initial motivation is waning for those members of staff who feel that their efforts haven’t been recognised. This is why we’re now seeing greater movement in the jobs market and this is why business owners and HR managers need to ensure that their motivational efforts are maximised.

A lack of motivation is often far too quickly attributed to the tangible issues of salary and benefits. Money’s regularly seen as a prime motivator, but I believe that other, less obvious, factors play a much greater role in the de-motivation of a workforce.

Having spent the past 14 years in the recruitment sector, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people searching for a new job and, in many cases, a whole new career. A significant number of those who come to us have experienced a lack of motivation in their current role and this is normally the result of taking decisions based on one, or a combination of, the following macro factors:

• The feeling that there’s nothing left to learn in their current role and that, going forwards, it would be a flatline situation rather than continual development.

• A lack of engagement with the job and with the brand as a whole.

• A general lack of excitement and passion for the current position.

These are the key motivational aspects of work. If an individual feels that there’s no chance of progression and feels undervalued and unappreciated, they’ll look elsewhere. It’s something we’ve seen time and time again.

Remuneration and benefits packages are really by-products of the above motivators. They are the micro decisions and factors that stem from career development, engagement and passion for the job.

Those companies that have used the recession to focus on talent development, who’ve provided training and shown individuals that they’re willing to help them learn, improve and enhance their careers with the company, are the ones that have come out of this with highly motivated teams still intact. These are the companies that are now in a strong position to go forwards and make gains in their individual sectors.

Whilst there are many who get it wrong when it comes to staff motivation, there are others who make it a priority, and Lloydspharmacy is a great example of the latter.

The senior management team makes a point of holding regular ‘people days’, where time is spent discussing ways to keep employees motivated. One technique that works particularly well is the way they handle each individual’s learning process. Once a particular learning cycle is complete, the management team looks at moving that individual to another part of the company to keep things fresh and challenging. It’s this kind of approach and focus on talent development that helps to keep motivation levels at a maximum.

I can’t help but think that as these companies push forwards, others will be left behind, wishing that they’d used the down period to their advantage and continued to look to the future rather than getting too overwhelmed by the present.

The new recruits will be split across the company’s Nottingham and Leicester offices, with each focusing on one of Macildowie’s three areas of specialist recruitment  – HR, finance and procurement and supply chain.

University of St Andrews graduate Tom McMillan joins the team with five years experience in financial recruitment in both London and Nottingham. He will now be tasked with looking after the qualified finance interim desk for Nottinghamshire.

Hollie Stone, newly graduated from the University of Leeds, will work on procurement and supply chain recruitment across Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, whilst Joel Stevenson will focus on positions up to £25k in the same sector, having previously studied law and criminology in Sheffield.

They will be joined by Richard Cook, a graduate who has previously worked in finance for both IBM and Alliance Boots. In his new role, Richard will focus on recruiting part-qualified accountants in both Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes.

Continuing Macildowie’s reputation for talent development, Hollie, Richard and Joel take on their new roles after graduating from the company’s long-running Talent Pool trainee scheme.

Commenting on the new appointments, Macildowie director James Taylor said:

“We’re continually raising the bar in order to create the strongest team possible and to ensure that our clients continue to receive the quality service and recruitment solutions we’re renowned for.

“Tom, Hollie, Joel and Richard are all great additions to that team and join us at a time of growth, both internally and in the recruitment sector as a whole.

“Macildowie has always had an ethos of investing in young talent and our new consultants are no exception. It’s also hugely rewarding to see that a number of them have joined us from our own trainee scheme, clearly demonstrating that we have the capabilities to produce the very best recruitment experts.”

It was recently revealed that the Talent Pool scheme is set to take on the highest number of trainees in Macildowie’s history, with 16 individuals entering the training process over the next 12 months.

For further information on Macildowie, visit www.macildowie.com.

Having spent the past 14 years in the recruitment sector with Macildowie, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people searching for a new job and, in many cases, a whole new career. A significant number of those who come to us have experienced a lack of motivation in their current role and this is normally the result of taking decisions based on one, or a combination of, the following macro factors:

• The feeling that there’s nothing left to learn in their current role and that, going forwards, it would be a flatline situation rather than continual development.
• A lack of engagement with the job and with the brand as a whole.
• A general lack of excitement and passion for the current position.

These are the key motivational aspects of work. If an individual feels that there’s no chance of progression and feels undervalued and unappreciated, they’ll look elsewhere. It’s something we’ve seen time and time again.

Remuneration and benefits packages are really by-products of the above motivators. They are the micro decisions and factors that stem from career development, engagement and passion for the job.

A mistake that many have made is to assume that the recession caused a lack of motivation. I would actually suggest that the tough economical period had the opposite impact.

Everyone is all too aware of the cuts that took place across the board, with the result being a dramatic decline in the number of available positions. This meant that people became a lot more grateful to have a job and were motivated to fulfil that role to the best of their ability in order to hang on to it.

However, the reduction in staffing levels meant that those who survived were often asked to take on duties from other roles. Sometimes these were tasks that had previously been performed in a more junior role and people found themselves practically doing the work of two members of staff, all for the same, and occasionally, less money.

Now that things have slowly started to look more secure, that initial motivation is turning to resentment for those members of staff who feel that their efforts haven’t been recognised. This is why we’re now seeing greater movement in the jobs market.

Those companies that have used the recession to focus on talent development, who have provided training and shown individuals that they’re willing to help them learn, improve and enhance their careers with the company, are the ones that have come out of this with highly motivated teams still intact. These are the companies that are now in a strong position to go forwards and make gains in their individual sectors.

Whilst there are many who get it wrong when it comes to staff motivation, there are others who make it a priority, and Lloydspharmacy is a great example of the latter.

The senior management team makes a point of holding regular ‘people days’, where time is spent discussing ways to keep employees motivated. One technique that works particularly well is the way they handle each individual’s learning process. Once a particular learning cycle is complete, the management team looks at moving that individual to another part of the company to keep things fresh and challenging. It’s this kind of approach and focus on talent development that helps to keep motivation levels at a maximum.

http://www.macildowie.com/

James Taylor
Director of Macildowie, specialist financial, HR and procurement and supply chain recruitment consultancy.

That so many senior executives from such well-established and successful organisations were prepared to invest up to half a day of their time, speaks volumes both for the background and stimulus of the meeting as well as the topic and theme, which centred on the sourcing, recruitment, development and retention of talent in the East Midlands.

The meeting was generously sponsored by the recruitment consultants, Macildowie, and supported by speakers from Nottingham Business School and Cadbury Schweppes. The key messages from each speaker, were acknowledged by many of the delegates, and punctuated by a respectful and at times, even animated murmur, as discussions about many of the salient points took hold on each table.

The dynamic for the meeting was set from the start, when it became clear that senior HR professionals share none of the inhibitions which their executive peers seem to, when it comes to discussing and debating topics of mutual and shared interest; even though many of them may be fishing from the same pool, as they each attempt to attract executive talent. The ‘War for Talent’ was very much the top of mind theme for discussion and debate, and the common thread running through each speaker’s presentation. Examples of nurturing talented individuals and trading them for profit, a quid pro quo in the world of professional football, brought home the vulnerability which many organisations face in implementing their programmes of talent development. The group recognised that employee engagement had to move on from being just a nice to have buzz word into becoming a strategic business imperative in these difficult economic times. For example, employee engagement strategies have been a cornerstone of Cadbury’s Holistic Approach to Talent, for a number of years, resulting in a five process cycle to talent management starting with the culture of the organisation and ending with alignment to the business objectives of Cadbury.

We were reminded that in today’s digital world, social networks provide instant communication and that the new generation of talent have grown up in a World where the reset button is only a finger-tip away. Consequently, organisations are having to come to terms with a mind-set that employment is only a temporary or interim experience and that employees expect to be able to reset their careers as frequently as they may their interests or their friends. Not only does this mentality heap huge pressures on organisations to remain fresh, but it adds greatly to the responsibilities of senior executives and their line-managers to monitor, assess and develop the teams they are responsible for. In the competitive World of employment, it may appear as if the employer holds the winning cards, however, it is the talent which holds all the aces, particularly as the employment pool continues to shrink in the UK as a result of retirement and opt out. The East Midlands in particular are probably more vulnerable than most, due a mix of industry in the west and agriculture in the east, which makes it a challenging region to both attract and retain talented individuals; and this in spite of the excellent access and communications in the region. As a consequence, one of the key messages for organisations in the East Midlands, is one of HR Planning, which requires considerable foresight, vision and commitment from the executive management; and this at a time, when the focus is clearly on streamlining and cost management.

In summary, the inaugural meeting of the East Midlands Elite HR Leaders Forum showed that it is possible to persuade senior executives from as diverse industries such as Shipping and Pharmaceutical, Confectionary and Education and Brewing and Textiles, to meet, discuss and share the challenges and opportunities which each of them face in their own sectors. 

It is perhaps unsurprising that this initiative has sprung from the East Midlands, where much of the creativity, innovation and invention which has shaped this country in the past 300 years has its roots and foundation.

For Macildowie director, James Taylor, who is based at the company’s Leicester office, this was a particularly pleasing project to work on. He explains: “Many of the 14 had worked for the previous company for a long time and the concept of suddenly having to find a job was quite alien to them. We were fortunate to work for Carrington Carr locally, which is a business on the upward curve, and we were able to re-home the candidates there.”

Carrington Carr and Consumer Money Matters (CMM) specialise in activities such as will and estate planning and a range of other financial services.

Antony Crossman, commercial director at Carrington Carr Holdings, says: “We’ve been working with Macildowie for over ten years now, and this is a perfect example of the way they can link employees and businesses together”.

“When Macildowie heard that there were to be redundancies at the other company, they used their contacts to get CMM through the door, so that we could tell those who were looking for jobs about our employment opportunities.”

James added: “What we’ve helped to achieve on this project isn’t new. We have such a broad range of clients, that these opportunities often come up but not in such great numbers. It is nice that we were in the perfect position not only to secure the livelihoods of the employees, but help a client on the upward curve to recruit.”

With offices in Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Northamptonshire, in addition to financial recruitment, Macildowie also provides specialist recruitment services for the HR and procurement and supply chain sectors.