Chamber membership provides access to key information, expert advice and legal protection, enabling you to stay informed, legally compliant and free to focus on what you do best – building your business.
What if your company pension and benefits can support you on your journey to going green? With the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, individuals and businesses are more aware than ever before of the impact their choices make on our planet. Recently Steph Butcher, Director at EBCam Ltd, ran a session via the Chamber on how you could use your company pension and benefits to support your business in being greener. Some of the key items we discussed as part of this session are set out below: Benefits to consider that meet the green agenda: • Electric car scheme • Cycle to work scheme • Carbon Offsetting through payroll • O nline benefits/total reward statements • R ewarding healthy behaviours with vouchers that could be used to plant trees • A ssessing your pension and benefit providers and advisers to see if they are doing their bit?
Considering your pension scheme: Every company that employs people now must have a company pension arrangement due to the Auto-Enrolment rules however have you ever stopped to consider how this is invested and whether this is in fact funding the climate crisis? Recent studies by Cushon found that the average pension pot finances around 23 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year through its investments (this is the equivalent of burning 1,100 coal fires annually or using 940 propane gas cylinders). In addition, their research found that: • 99.5% of employees have no idea how much carbon their pension contributes • 88% want their employer to take action • 62% would engage more with their pension if it was investing in positive change Pension arrangements investing in things such as fossil fuels or greenhouse gas polluters are causing an issue. Reviewing
your pension and its investments are key to ensuring your pension invests in a way that will drive and fund positive change. Please contact sbutcher@ebcam.co.uk should you wish to discuss this further.
Is it time to re-imagine work experience as we traditionally know it? Work experience in its traditional and simplest form is the perfect opportunity to see if employer and job seeker are mutually suited.
and recruiters to think again about work experience and explore different ways of measuring and demonstrating skill sets for all parties.”
While offering the candidate an insight into their chosen career and the chance to enhance their CV, it also gives the employer an opportunity to professionally gauge the capability and suitable of the job seeker.
She added: “The lack of opportunity job seekers have had in recent months to physically enter a workplace, or for employers to see their prospects ‘in action’ in the workplace has been, and continues to be frustrating for those looking to gain employment and to recruit right now.
But as recruitment specialist Judith Broughton explores, have the pandemicled challenges of allowing people into the workplace forced a re-think when it comes to hands on work experience? Judith, who works for Peterboroughbased Anne Corder Recruitment, said: “We are all familiar with the benefits of work experience; offering skills and life lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom. “While many job seekers have enjoyed school, college or university placements with employers over many years, the pandemic has forced candidates, employers 10 connected
“However, there are a number of ways in which job seekers can demonstrate their skills and show off their personality to employers who must also be willing to adapt to new ways.” Candidates can: • Update their CV to demonstrate any lockdown additions to their skillset • Create a LinkedIn profile which adds personality to their credentials • Show they are a team player with evidence of being part of a sports
team, music group, community organisation etc. • Prove they have the ability to take a brief and get the job done, through a volunteering placement for example • Demonstrate self-motivation through learning a new skill or embarking on an external course • Show assertiveness through having held a position of responsibility, perhaps as a student council member or club captain. Judith added: “While employers may not have been able to share office space or hands on working time with candidates, there is now an opportunity to get to know them, consider their worth ethic and gain an insight into their personality through measures like role play exercises, work shadowing, re-introducing psychometric testing or even just asking them to answer the phone - personality and being a great fit may be just as important to the business as ability and capability.”
