#Firmday Manchester Roundtables: Your Thoughts

First of all, we hope all delegates had a great time at #Firmday Manchester… What a day it was!

Secondly, we were so impressed by the outcomes of the roundtables that we decided to create a blog recapping them for you.

We know what it’s like, the brainwaves you have at events like ours can soon dissipate when back in the reality of your daily role. Hopefully this recap will solidify those ideas for you!

Topic 1: What retention initiatives have you launched for your TA team?

• Educational pieces – increased value- needs to be advertised and accessible
• Lateral development 
• Internal mobility
• Skills Gaps assessed and promoting development
• Off-site team building events
• Apprenticeship levy – upskilling
• Salary and Reward
• Clear objectives set against the job description individuals are hired against
• Flexible working options
• Workload analysis to avoid burnout
• Recruiter capability within the team 
• Development opportunities – identify flight risks, secondment opportunities, career frameworks. 
• Recognising that attrition is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing
• Communication – Establishing which of your team members are happy (and which aren’t), plans and development opportunities to promote transparency.
• Engaging with each other as people not just centred on deliverables 

Topic 2: How are you ensuring your team stays engaged and motivated? 

• Additional projects
• Removing communication boundaries – putting sourcers in a communication line with C-suite to increase feelings of value.
• Personalised incentives
• Surveys – quarterly ‘pulse checks’.
• Giving ownership of team direction. 
• Ownership of the role – give recruiters access to HMs
• Clear Team roadmap providing transparency on changes to tech stack. 

Topic 3: How are you managing hybrid working arrangements?

• Ensuring teams are self-driven and managed appropriately
• Balancing the needs of the business is key. Hybrid was the USP, then changes in business needs removed this as an option at the cost of retaining staff
• Giving the right support to employees through any transition
• Peer-to-peer learning
• Personal touch… Which can’t be replaced by virtual platforms!
• Managing flexibility fairly – not just around childcare etc. 
• Ensure the understanding of hybrid across the business. Clear expectations and guidelines. 
• Culture and value – promote the benefits of working in the office again versus just working from home, giving people a reason to want to come back to the office. 
• Understand changes in communication style. Leaders need to understand their team’s communication style for it to work better on a fully remote basis.
• Implementing company culture even in a remote environment.
• Look at talent pools from different areas with the ability to work remotely. 
• Networking/training positives of being in the office… ‘rework’.

Topic 4: How are you managing peaks and troughs of activity within your team?

• Agency to in-house project and relationship management
• Pre-planning events calendars and project deadlines, increasing transparency to give teams an understanding of what to expect. 
• Prioritise, plan and review, evolve and adapt, enabling leaders to work through that change
• Understand the markets – work on people development, promote personal development
• Freezes on non-critical roles
• Secondments 
• Contingent workers
• Seek guidance from others in the company – operational excellent team, specialist team looking at continuous improvement. 

Are you ready to do it all again in London? Book your place here.