This week two internal administration employees were retrenched from one of our clients companies and we offered one of them employment. This person has specific knowledge and skills that could benefit our business and we would gladly employ them. They would still need quite a bit of training, but kind of know the basics so it would not be starting from scratch and we would be helping someone at least keep their job.
The intentions were there to help someone and what happened next kind of shocked me and why we will not be employing them. When given the offer of employment this lady asked for a 25% increase on her current salary and via the grapevine from someone else we heard that she was going to try and play us. Her words were "they need me and they are going to pay" which we are obviously not going to be doing and the offer of employment has now been retracted.
The truth is she would have benefitted us, but we were doing what we thought was the right thing to do by offering her employment and it was not a must have position that needed to be filled. We would have been going out of our way to make a plan to fit her into our budget and by asking for an extra 25% kind of killed the opportunity of helping her.
This is not the first time we have encountered this type of thought process and you have to wonder what these people are smoking. Obviously we are all thinking differently here and not on the same page and as far as I am concerned now it is good riddance and good luck finding another job because we know there are none.
Official unemployment rates are around 34% with the unofficial rates estimated at well over 50% and maybe as high as 60%.
One just has to glance at the news to see how many companies are having redundancies and when you see the likes of Nestle cutting staff you know things are bad. Most companies today are looking at cutting staff due to business having to cut back on spending which is a direct result of the economy.
Our small business is actually in a good position as we are slowly expanding with the emphasize on "slow" as this has to be sustainable in order for this to work. Knowing the figures like I do and knowing what needs to happen next to achieve the next milestone is important and doing this by eliminating any risks.
What we will be doing over the next few months is finding the right person to fill this position we have already earmarked. We will not be advertising the position as that opens you up to so many other issues and knowing how many people are unemployed we will be inundated with CV's. Finding the right person even though there are millions unemployed will not be easy as I know the standard of employees out there and once you hire them you are stuck with a bigger problem of trying to get rid of them.
I expect this lady to come crawling back over the next couple of weeks and the answer will be a definitive NO even if she kept her pay the same. When you have a small team you need team players and back stabbing chat will always come to light. The answer may be in front of us by moving one of the guys off the warehouse floor and seeing if he is capable of filling the role. This for me would be ideal as rewarding staff through internal promotions does not happen as much as it did in the past. My wives uncle back in the day started out as a sweeper packer in SPAR to eventually become the CEO of SPAR International which would be impossible to achieve today.
