The Caraires Consultancy

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A review of Caraires 2019 – the year of the Pig!

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With 2019 being such a successful, exciting year for the Caraires family, we thought we would take the time to share with you some of our personal highlights!

We kicked of the year with the birth of our infamous mascot – Corky the Caraires pig! Here at Caraires we see ourselves as a family, this is reflected in our family values, which also reflect the characteristics of a Pig – kind-hearted, positive and loyal. The colour red is our branding and is an intense colour symbolising passion and determination, traits in which we pride ourselves on. Taking our inspiration from a piggy-bank, pigs are regarded as bringing wealth and affluence to people. As your recruitment partner this is also what we aim to do through finding you the perfect job match and offering a competitive salary. Believe us when we say 2019 certainly was the year of the pig!

We then began the first of many seasonal celebrations with Valentine’s day! We sent all of our employees a valentine’s card, with one lucky winner also receiving a meal for two at Café vin cinq. In addition to this, Corky had a busy February visiting local nurseries alongside Sharon and Matt to inspire art activities and talk to the children about what they wanted to be when they grew up. We also ran a well-being week for our client’s and their teams. This included massages, health advice and nutrition packs delivered to their offices.

We then move onto March where some of the Caraires family alongside clients, had a lovely time visiting Anya Court Care home to share memories with residents and support their daily activities. In March we also ran a Family fun day in the town centre which included a treasure hunt, face painting and balloons!

For Easter we managed to raise over 900 Easter eggs with the support of our clients as part of our annual collection for HCPT. These eggs were then shipped over to Lourdes for disadvantaged children.

Then we move onto one of our most exciting projects of the year – “Caraires does Dragon Den”. This was where five of our clients listened to pitches from seven local, young entrepreneurs. The lucky winner, 17-year-old Daniel from Southam, won a £500 cash prize for his personalised Tyre-writing business “Ludicrous”.

June saw our Wimbledon-themed event “Serving-up Recognition wins”, hosted by multi-award winning speaker and author Debra Corey and featuring some delicious Afternoon tea, as well as the launch of a summer recognition scheme. Not only that but during the summer months the Caraires Family welcomed the newest addition to the family – Molly our Marketing and Communications Apprentice. We also purchased our new premises on Lawford Road which will be open in February next year!

Moving into the Autumn months, we hosted a “Brainteaser Brunch” where four client teams went head-to-head with our local market information quiz. This included rounds such as diversity, salaries, benefits and Brexit alongside some local Trivia. Then to finish off October we all got into the Halloween spirit, with Molly the witch and Corky visiting local businesses delivering “trick or treat bags”.

To finish of the year, we adopted over 280 mini Christmas trees which we watered and pruned as part of our eco-friendlier approach to our client and candidate gifts.

Ways to diversify your workforce

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Companies are always striving to challenge and improve their workplace diversity. It takes focus, time, and investment – but there are ways to approach it that make the task much easier and better.

Businesses can massively benefit from creating a varied workplace, from output to innovation. Here are five ways you can do this in your company:

Create a decision-making team

A Forbes study conducted over two years and with over 600 businesses found that those with inclusive teams make better business decisions 87% of the time. This being said, creating a decision-making team to hire people not only helps boost inclusion in the company, but also increases your chances of diversifying your company in a less-forced way, steadily and with the help of employees. The same Forbes study found that these teams outperform individual decision-makers 66% of the time. Forming boards and teams throughout the business is a great way of integrating employees and encouraging discussions and better work relations.

Educate employees and managers

It’s imperative to make sure that managers understand the importance of creating a diverse workplace through their hiring and management of the employees. They are the primary point of contact between the C-Suite and workers; managers are the first people to go to when talking about developing a more diverse workforce.

Assessments of facilities need to take place, as well as ways to celebrate a varied work structure for employees. According to Josh Bersin research, a leading industry analyser, inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be classed as innovative and a leader in their field. This starts with management.

Build diversity-friendly workforce policies

The best way to diversify your workforce is to make people feel comfortable and happy working for you. A good way to do this is to allow employees to take work off for religious holidays that may not be associated with the company as standard, as well as have some flexibility with hours so that employees feel like they are welcome in what is being promoted as a culturally diverse company.

Mentorship programs

Mentoring is a great way of ensuring that everyone in the company has the opportunity to advance in the business. Employees with high potential should be offered mentors who will guide them in learning key skills and elevating them through the company. This way you can take on a larger range of workers from a diverse background and develop the top prospects, hopefully creating more diverse departments at every level of the company.

Ask employees for referrals

A great way to get on new talent from different backgrounds, races or age is to ask for referrals from employees. Tell the employees that you are looking for an individual who has a set of skills and are willing and ready to pick up more. Including them in the process expands your recruitment net and can help find those hidden talents that help to diversify your workforce.

(Credit to Executive Grapevine Daily)

Three strategies to accelerate your career

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Never before has self-development and personal training been more crucial than it is today.

In an age where job-hopping is no longer frowned upon, as employees take on new roles and join new companies to find the one that suits them best, employers have slowly begun to stop investing in developing individual workers who may leave before a return on learning is realised.

Therefore, adopting strategies yourself that can accelerate your career can provide employees with the best possible option to get ahead and achieve more.

This is something Jason Wingard, a contributor to Forbes, has put emphasis on in a recent article for the publication. He wrote: “For ambitious employees, self-development is an effective way, and, in some cases the only way, to hasten progress along the career ladder.”

He went on to reveal his top three strategies to help employees assume control of their development and accelerate their career:

Put strategy first

With statistics stating that one-third of employees report that their bosses don’t assist with career development, Wingard believes that the onus should fall on to workers to be proactive and work towards a strategy to improve their own skill-set. They should prioritise ways in which they can gain more experience, attain marketable skills and build a group of supporters.

One way to enhance this is to find a mentor. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a senior leader and could be a co-worker or a junior colleague. As long as the mentor has teachable skills that can accelerate your career, mentor-ship can make a huge difference to the future of your role at work.

Be your own ‘Chief Marketing Officer’

Wingard advised that today’s workers must become their own ‘Chief Marketing Officer’ and therefore should be analysing, refining and improving the way that they appear in the job market. One of the quickest ways he suggested is to embrace education to improve oneself.

These could be in the form of free webinars that inform users of the latest techniques within business, or you could choose to invest some more and take on an online course or attend weekend workshops to expand your skill-set.

Get feedback

While feedback can be both positive and negative, it is all constructive and can help to grow your career. Therefore, it’s essential you regularly ask for feedback. Wingard noted that discovering strengths and weaknesses in soft skills is the first step all employees should take when trying to accelerate their career, and the best way to do that is by asking for feedback.

Ensure you regularly reach out to your peers and line manager to see what you could improve on, while also finding out what  you’re excelling at to provide yourself with a benchmark. This will ultimately steer you in the right direction and provide structure to your career goals.

(Credit to Executive Grapevine Daily)

Ignore this TERRIBLE career advice

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There is a common phrase most friends, family members and colleagues have offered those embarking on their career.

In order to help you secure your job and position yourself for bigger and better things, the majority of people have been told to ‘make yourself indispensable’; however, it seems that this piece of career advice could be one of the worst ways in which someone can advance themselves in their career.

According to Quartz Executive Coach May Busch, she shares that when you are successful in one role, most people can’t imagine you doing anything else and won’t want you to do anything else. With your manager relying on you and your ability to get the job done, selling yourself as ‘indispensable’ can put you at risk of being pigeonholed.

So how can you perform to a high standard without getting caught up in the indispensable trap? The key, according to Busch, is to be indispensable for what you can become and not what you currently do. She goes on to share four ways to do that:

Help others see you in a different light

It’s important that you showcase your abilities and that there is more to you than one dimension. Therefore, if colleagues or managers only see you as carrying out ‘behind the scenes’ duties, invite them to a meeting where they can see you truly performing. Plus, it is also worth embracing and taking on new challenges so people can see your potential.

See yourself in a different light

“The longer you stick in the comfort zone of the role where you’re indispensable, the harder it will be to envision yourself doing something else,” Busch writes. Instead, challenge yourself to see yourself in a different light and look for new opportunities where you can develop and learn new capabilities.

Prepare for the next level

To get ahead, the best way to prepare is by investing in yourself and your own personal development. Think about the skills and experiences you want to explore and take time out to actively pursue them. Network and talk with others to find out what it takes and the things they wished they’d done to prepare themselves and as such what can prepare you for the next step in your career.

Make yourself move-able

Building a wealth of talent behind you is a sure-fire way to get senior members of staff to feel comfortable moving you to the next level of your role that you aspire to achieve. “If you can create your own back-fill, managers won’t feel as anxious promoting you,” Busch concluded.

(Credit to Executive Grapevine Daily)