Commonwealth Summit in Samoa
[Politics] The Labour Government
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crodonilson
He/Him
LamieRobertson
Not awoke
I’ve a short memory
I’ve just sat through a presentation from a company in South Africa on how to grow my business again without any of the hassle and the cost of doing it in the UK with the new Employment Rights Bill. Have to say it was very compelling.
We have traditionally hired young people with no real qualifications and given them a chance to really make something of their lives in an industry where you can make a lot of money with hard work and dedication, without needing to go to Uni etc. A large proportion of these Gen-Zers that we gave a chance to in the last few years were utter entitled dickheads who were completely ill-equipped to cope in the real world in a competitive industry. They’d grown up in incredibly sheltered worlds with a ‘medal for everyone’ environment and if the job didn’t work out then (due to the property ladder being so hard to get on in the UK) it didn’t really matter because they were still living with their parents anyway and could just blame somebody else (usually me) for their failures. They absolutely could not handle working in a competitive market where if you don’t swim, you sink very quickly.
I have to admit that the thought of hiring people who are more experienced and are a few years older and come with the life experience that growing up somewhere like South Africa brings, who have dependants relying on them and who absolutely need their job to succeed for less than a third of the cost of an entitled Brighton Gen-Zer is incredibly attractive.
I wonder if the Government have considered how in some industries these workers they are trying to protect are just going to be substituted by workers in foreign countries instead? It is going to have the opposite effect that they were aiming for in some industries.
We have traditionally hired young people with no real qualifications and given them a chance to really make something of their lives in an industry where you can make a lot of money with hard work and dedication, without needing to go to Uni etc. A large proportion of these Gen-Zers that we gave a chance to in the last few years were utter entitled dickheads who were completely ill-equipped to cope in the real world in a competitive industry. They’d grown up in incredibly sheltered worlds with a ‘medal for everyone’ environment and if the job didn’t work out then (due to the property ladder being so hard to get on in the UK) it didn’t really matter because they were still living with their parents anyway and could just blame somebody else (usually me) for their failures. They absolutely could not handle working in a competitive market where if you don’t swim, you sink very quickly.
I have to admit that the thought of hiring people who are more experienced and are a few years older and come with the life experience that growing up somewhere like South Africa brings, who have dependants relying on them and who absolutely need their job to succeed for less than a third of the cost of an entitled Brighton Gen-Zer is incredibly attractive.
I wonder if the Government have considered how in some industries these workers they are trying to protect are just going to be substituted by workers in foreign countries instead? It is going to have the opposite effect that they were aiming for in some industries.
Isn’t Western Samoa the place where the biggest, fattest man in the village is seen as the most attractive and the most powerful? I’ve thought about moving there many times.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,772
I haven't been in business for 15 years but even back then, you could offshore functions to countries that had very little or no worker's rights and they were consequently a whole lot cheaper per hour to employ. Obviously nobody in their right mind would use that as a reason to move functions abroad especially not as an answer to addressing weaknesses in their recruitment process
Having said that, about 20 years ago a lot did and crashed and burned
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Weststander
Well-known member
I haven't been in business for 15 years but even back then, you could offshore functions to countries that had very little or no worker's rights and they were consequently a whole lot cheaper per hour to employ. Obviously nobody in their right mind would use that as the basic reason for to functions abroad instead of addressing weaknesses in their recruitment process
Having said that, about 20 years ago a lot did and crashed and burned
In fairness to @Commander there’ve been significant societal changes, affecting the quality or drive of newbies. I saw it in my last role in a firm, from circa 2000 many candidates and new recruits couldn’t string written sentences together, poor spelling, a new higher level of sickies always on Mondays and Fridays, and angling desks/monitors to be able to be on Facebook on and off all day. Often these kids had degrees, but third class from memory. The lockdowns have also changed things, it is interesting. Forever we just went to work from age 16, 18 or 21, 5 days a week and assumed it was for a working life. But in the background in those early working years, a means to an end eg social life. That’s now kind of broken. Not just here, in 2023 we has interesting chats with French hoteliers and others who said young adults had decided they weren’t going to do work wise what generations before them had done. R4 and LBC even recently have had pieces about this theme.
Obviously lots of hardworking, bright, ambitious kids too. But fewer in number?
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,772
I'm sure you know the Socrates quote from over 2,000 years ago,
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers
and I'm afraid I'm with him, it's the same as always. Since I retired, I spend the vast majority of my time volunteering with 17-25 year olds.
And with all respect I think your post is complete and utter bollocks
Sorry
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So even if the cost was the same, I would still rather hire somebody in South Africa than somebody in Brighton. Young people that want / need to work and who are desperate to learn and better themselves and who are resilient and driven compared to entitled kids who think they know best and go to pieces at the first sign of adversity.I haven't been in business for 15 years but even back then, you could offshore functions to countries that had very little or no worker's rights and they were consequently a whole lot cheaper per hour to employ. Obviously nobody in their right mind would use that as a reason to move functions abroad especially not as an answer to addressing weaknesses in their recruitment process
Having said that, about 20 years ago a lot did and crashed and burned
I have seen it in Brighton over and over and over again. They aren’t all like it, and we have found some diamonds (two recruited from NSC in fact) but the sad fact is that the majority were exactly as I describe. It really is a no-brainer in what I do. And that is a real shame, because it definitely wasn’t like that when I was in my 20’s and looking for an opportunity to get ahead in life.
Weststander
Well-known member
What’s that got to do with employers facing real issues?
Young adults/youth often speak of it themselves, not prepared to do what all other generations have done, dedicating themselves to an employer.
Something has definitely changed. As an example, when I was in my 20s we’d get hammered in the pub on a week night and then struggle through work the next day. Wouldn’t dream of calling in sick hungover, because you’d get so much shit from the people you were out with if you did. You’d just get through it the next day.
This lot not only call in sick for it, but frame it as ‘mental health challenges’ or something as the excuse. We had one girl who consistently had Mondays and Tuesdays off to ‘focus on meditation and deep breathing’ for her anxiety. She failed to mention she was putting 3 grams of ketamine up her nose every Saturday and Sunday. Hardly surprising she had to sit in a dark room on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Another guy took two days off ‘because he was tired’. At 20 years old. Another complained to me that it was unfair that the Directors could go for a long lunch on a Friday and that if they were allowed to do that, then everybody else should be. Another told me that he wasn’t going to hit his OTE earnings for the year because he was miles off his target, so wanted to know what I was going to do to make up the shortfall.
Honestly, I could bore people for hours with stories of being an employee of young people in central Brighton. No more though, I’m off-shoring all this shit until I retire.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,772
To be fair, I remember you getting that job on NSC and was really pleased and when you came back to NSC to recruit more people with no academic background it was truly superb.
But if you're now moving functions offshore because it's cheaper where people don't have employment rights then I think we'll agree to disagree going forward.
Weststander
Well-known member
Another huge negative from Brexit. Ending a stream of hard working, hungry to succeed Europeans from say the south and east of Europe.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,772
Don't apologise, it's what a lot of people who've have struggled with everyone else, stumbled across a lucky break and then made a couple of quid do
So since getting that job (10 years ago now!!) I started my own company doing the same thing (with the guy I recruited from NSC) in 2017. I have consistently hired and fired since then and the quality of employees has just been one way traffic. The wrong way.
But your last bit, the bit about people without employment rights in other countries- this is the thing, if you hire in a country without employment rights and treat these people like you would an employee in the UK, it completely changes their life. They haven’t had access to this kind of opportunity before, and are extremely grateful and loyal to employers who are so much better to them than a local company would be. I cannot tell you how much more pleasant that is (and how much less stress) than spending double or triple the amount on a UK employee that spends their life moaning about how awful you are to them!
Sirnormangall
Well-known member
- Sep 21, 2017
- 3,180
I think the rumours about this have been circulating (Private Eye etc) for some time, so I don’t think the Union are quite at the front of the queue - but well done Sharon Graham for getting it investigated after others seemed less keen.
Don't apologise, it's what a lot of people who've have struggled with everyone else, stumbled across a lucky break and then made a couple of quid do
If by ‘stumbled across a lucky break’ you mean working in an industry for 17 years building up a skill, a reputation and a network, making contacts and expanding knowledge and experience, then finding the right investor and being brave enough to take the plunge and walk away from a well paid job with a young family, spending 2 years working 12 hour days trying to get a start-up off the ground whilst consistently flirting with bankruptcy, before finally turning a corner and then 12 months later being hit with a once in a generation pandemic that would have finished us off had it not been for the furlough scheme, then after scraping through that managing to put two years of growth together enabling us to aggressively hire 30-40 young people over the next two years, most of who were utterly incapable despite the hours and hours of training and development we put into them, before the whole thing falling apart again in 2023 due to investors pulling their money out of US Biotech, meaning having to make 20 people redundant in a day and then systematically cutting 2-3 people a month for the whole of last year, leaving us days from bankruptcy again at the start of 2024, before the market finally rallying and us scraping through all of this year with red numbers until eventually things seem to have stabilised just enough for us to finally start to think about growing again, and being nervous about going down the same route as before, then yes, it was an incredibly lucky break.
I mean, I’m not sure I’ve ever been offended on NSC before, but that was pretty bloody close.
Am all for workers rights but glad I no longer employ. Employed dozens of youngsters over years by taking them on very low wages for an initial 3 months and then made a decision whether we felt they had the qualities and hunger needed. I would estimate because of good judgement at initial interview stage most had decent career. When we were very busy I would expect people to work very long hours and grab a sandwich for lunch and of course in appreciation of this would be happy on request for people to leave early.
Maybe it’s a symptom of the nature of your work and/or the recruitment process? You said yourself you recruit people with no real qualifications….if people can’t be arsed to get educated I’d suggest they probably won’t be arsed with work either. One thing qualifications or college does is demonstrate an ability to apply oneself.
That aside, what you’re describing is a classic low cost center situation. SA is seemingly currently very popular and for many reasons: time zone, level of education and English language and accent being the thrust of this. The one issue with the LCCs I have experience of (mainly Southern Asia) in my sector is the turn over; anyone who is good will start asking for more money and/or leave. Many see it as a gateway to riches elsewhere and often abroad; the good and the ambitious will achieve this by their very nature. Over time you’re left with very average people and higher staffing costs. An industry friend wrote a paper on this and estimated 2 years. This is my sector ; maybe yours is different.
There are successes though, some companies haven’t so much out sourced, but set up offices and operations with all the associated layers of management and diversity of positions which engenders work mobility and goes someway to mitigate the aforementioned issues.
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Yep. But this model will be dead with this new bill. Hence why I am giving up with employing people in the UK. And I am speaking as somebody who voted for Sir Kier. And to be honest would still do again in the same situation.