It's party time at our Stockton branch!

Good afternoon everyone,

It's a big day over at our Stockton branch.  It's not just Halloween but, they are nine years old today!

As you can see the members of staff have all got into the Halloween spirit and are really celebrating the fantastic job the team have been doing for the last nine years.

Helena Rutter the Business Development Manager for the branch is not only a brilliant consultant she also has rather a skill with pumpkin carving!  The pumpkin above, as you can probably see, is celebrating the anniversary.  She couldn't leave us without a scary pumpkin as well though could she..

I have to say, I'm glad that one is over in the Stockton office and I'm in the Newcastle branch! Very creepy!

The LMR Stockton branch cover the whole of the Teesside area, supplying temporary staff and filling permanent positions within the industrial sector.  If you have any needs within your business for this sort of service give them a call on 01642 635640. They will be very happy to have a chat and give you more information, don't worry it wont cost you a thing to find out how they could help you.

Though by the look of this picture they are not open for business today! HeHe!

I hope you have a fun Halloween weekend whatever you are up to.  

Until next time,
Anice
Marketing Consultant

A sad day for the Teesside Steel industry

Teesside has experienced a terrible blow this week with the announcement of the closure of the SSI Steelworks in Redcar.  There are 2,200 employees now having to face looking for new jobs in an area that is not known for high employment rates. There have been Steelworks in this area for 170 years so the announced closer is a milestone moment for the region.

Yesterday (14/10/15) the job centre arranged a jobs fair to offer initial assistance to the employees to help them start planning for their futures.  Members of our Stockton recruitment team attended the fair sending two consultants Morgan Hamilton and Joanna Sorbik to see what help LMR could offer to these highly skilled workers.

Here's what Morgan had to say about the experience:

  

'Candidates attended in their droves from all disciplines including, electrical and mechanical fields, plater/welder/fabricators, chemists, Human Resources, Procurement, payroll, production planning specialists, senior management in Operations & Production and even train drivers.

The feeling I got from everyone I spoke to was the positivity from people who had lost their jobs, some of whom had been employed by SSI for up to 40 years.  Some said that the news was very upsetting and there had been tears but they’d then decided it was the time to find something new “and get on with it”.  Those that we spoke to were all well prepared with good CVs and ideas of what they would like to do next. We gave out over 1000 LMR flyers with vacancy details which lots of the candidates were interested in and wanted more information. 

The event was non-stop with over 1000 attendees within the first hour of the event with a constant flow of people coming in up until 3pm. Over 2000 people attended across the day. Some of which were still working at SSI and came to the event after finishing their shift at 2 o'clock. People were queuing all day to speak to us about the job market and the types of clients we work with and the types of roles we recruit for.'  

I am confident that we will help many people to secure new positions and the team over in our Stockton branch will be working hard sourcing vacancies and introducing candidates and employers.

If you are an employer with a vacancy that you think an SSI employee may be perfect for contact our Stockton Branch on 01642 635640 to discuss potential candidates.

We wish all the Ex-SSI employees the best of luck.

Anice

LMR Marketing Executive 

National Minimum Wage changes today.

Good Morning,

It's an important day for employers and employees the National Minimum Wage is increasing.

Hopefully your company is all sorted and all the pay rates have been amended if they needed to be.

But it's not the same for everyone.  It's all about how old the employees are. I'll get to what difference I think that makes later in the post.

Maybe this is not in your job description and someone else has the responsibility for sorting this out. I think that it's something that everyone should at least have an idea about though, you might be surprised by the rates of pay that some of the countries work force earn.

National Minimum Wage

Age	Rate from 1 October 2014	Rate from 1 October 2015
Workers aged 21 and over	£6.50 an hour	£6.70 an hour
Development rate for workers aged 18-20	£5.13 an hour	£5.30 an hour
Young workers rate for workers aged 16-17	£3.79 an hour	£3.87 an hour
Apprentices under 19, or over 19 and in the first year of the apprenticeship	£2.73 an hour	£3.30 an hour

Information taken from www.cipd.com


This also means there may be rate increases for any temporary staff you have working in your company as well. Check out the new rates you are being charged from your agency.
You can find out what LMRs new rates are by contacting the branch closest to you, details in the 'Contact Us' page at the top of the blog 

The National Minimum Wage has had a lot of increases over the years and if your like to see what people where earning back in 1999 onwards take a look at the post from one of our directors Michael Kennedy How (minimum wage) times have changed

In my opinion setting a minimum rate for an hours work is a good thing but, I know other people have different opinions.

I've read about people saying that they are going to stop employing people over 25 to try to save money. Can companies really survive deciding on who to employ with reference to their age rather than experience or being the right fit for the job?  Can they legally do it?  I doubt it!

What do you think?  Do enforced increases need to be in place? Does it make things hard for smaller companies? If you don't agree with them, what do you think should happen to ensure employees get a fair rate of pay for the work they do? What are your thoughts about employing over 25s?

Let me know in the comments.

Anice

How (minimum wage) times have changed

Good afternoon,

My name is Michael Kennedy and I'm a director at LMR Recruitment and Training. I have been working in the recruitment industry for over 20 years. As you can imagine I have seen a lot of changes during that time.

One thing that I have seen changing is the minimum wage.  With the latest changes coming into place later this week, I thought taking a look back to see what the rates have been since 1999 when they first came into place would be interesting. 

National Minimum Wage increases 1999-2014

Since 1999, you can see, we have had sixteen or so rate rises. Some people working in the recruitment industry argued that setting a minimum wage would kill our business. In fact the oposite has happened &  it has helped our industry & workers no longer fear working for recruitment companies 

Change doesn't always have to be a bad thing!

Michael

Welcome to the LMR Recruitment & Training Blog

Hello blog reader,

Starting a blog I think is a bit like starting a new relationship. You’re a little nervous, unsure what the other person expects, not even knowing if they are interested in what you have to say.  But, like a new relationship, unless you jump in and give it a try, you have no idea what is going to happen.  It could be the date you always laugh about with your friends or where you meet the love of your life.

Right, less of the talk of romance and more about why you are reading this post.

I'm Anice McNamee and I'm the Marketing Executive for LMR Recruitment and Training.  Our website is getting a facelift and we are undergoing a re-brand so, while that is happening I thought we could start talking to you about who LMR are and what we can do for you and your business.

That’s not all this blog will be about.  I also want to share interesting stuff about running a business, new laws, offer new ideas about how to get the most from your staff and even how you can enjoy your job more. We have some very experienced members of staff with us who will be able to offer great insights into recruitment, training and lots of other business related info.  Hopefully you will find enough interesting things to read here to keep you popping back.

I’ll end this first post with a little information about LMR.

We are a recruitment and training company specialising in the industrial sector, that’s drivers, warehouse workers, welders etc.  We deal with sourcing temporary staff, short and long term and can help with permanent positions when you just can’t find the right person to fill that job. We have been offering this service in the North East and Midlands for nearly 20 years.

Our training department hasn't been around quite as long. The division was started in 2010.  We offer lots of different sorts of training, work based NVQs, apprenticeships, traineeships and other specialised training that clients have asked us to offer their staff. You just need to ask, we can usually help you out in some way.

We are not a large company and that means we can offer every client we work with a truly bespoke service.  We’re all about offering value, great service and allowing you time to see that you can trust us to do a good job.

Thank you for sticking with me for this first post and I promise there will be no more talk of relationships, it will be all business from now on!

Anice