The Greeks have this wonderful word which we could use to describe some business activities: Leptokurtosis or fat tailed risk describes a more peaked distribution / action than a normal bell curve. *(see note)
The brighter weather makes people think more optimistically, hoping that the flooding in the UK will finally recede – and the land will dry out.
In 2006 the UK Property market was frenetic. It had a hiccup during the Global Financial Crisis, but not it appears in 2014 – its back to being frantic. Properties are moving so quickly that emailed details are often sketchy, (full details rarely get printed), a phone call alerts prospective buyers to view and view now, and really, if you don’t make an offer within the first 48 hours of a property being on the market, then you’ve lost it!
There are Contract races to Exchange with often no time to have a survey, or establish building consents, and just to compound things, almost every property, certainly in the London area, has gone for considerably more than the asking price. You do all this – and then you get Gazzumped.
Activity is becoming similar in the Recruiting world. If you get a call from a Head Hunter or Recruitment agency about a star performer, (often with sketchy work history or CV), unless you instantly telephone interview them or agree to meet up quickly – they will have been picked up by your competitors.
You are harried to organise first and second interviews in a couple of days, followed by an urgency to make a job offer often without enough time to check suitability, culture fit or even references: ‘Make me an offer I can’t refuse’ the confident candidate will demand. This can blow salary scales apart and maybe breach policies and legislation too. ‘All that glisters is not gold’: how sure are you that in this haste, you are not being pushed to employing someone who will not deliver?
So what can you do to ensure you have rigorous, yet swift methods to advertise, select and assess candidates, and still remain within the growing levels of employment regulation?
What every employer must do:
1. Draw up an action to plan to review all HR policies to ensure that they do not discriminate, including now on the grounds of age.
2. Ensure that all employees are aware of and understand the revised HR procedures as well as the relevant equal opportunity/diversity/equality/ ageism policies.
3. Develop skills on Recruitment & Selection – don’t leave it to HR;
4. Expand the objective processes used in Recruitment & Selection to include rigorous assessments to underpin the interviewing process, e.g. Personality, IQ, Competencies and Emotional Intelligence. (more on this soon)
Being open minded offers scope to take advantage of your local, employable population – as one Building Society in the south of England found out when targeting older workers to fill administrative roles. They found themselves tapping into Retiree-returners, a group of people who have a more mature attitude to work and a better understanding of Customer Service requirements as well as better social skills and a sense of humour”.
In the housing market, home-owners need to be opportunistic. So too Employers need to be less prejudiced and more opportunistic to find good quality, imaginative and creative staff. You will then have a wider pool to select from: just ensure that in your haste, decisions remain objective and non-discriminatory.
Or do you want to risk it, and not know until the ‘paint peels off and the cracks appear’?
Patricia Wheatley Burt (FCIPD)
*Definition: Leptokurtosis or 'fat tailed risk' occurs when the shape of a distribution is more peaked than that of a normal or 'bellcurve' distribution.
In such a distribution, small changes are less frequent than in a normal distribution, but extreme events such as large price moves are more likely to happen and are potentially much larger than in a normal distribution. The central peak is narrower, but the tails are significantly longer and fatter