How good is your CSR policy…REALLY?

It was a truly enlightening APSCo meeting last week with the main theme being around CSR in it’s many forms.  CSR is often treated as a cynical add-on by organisations but the speakers really highlighted the commercial, moral and social benefits of proactively “doing” CSR in our individual organisations. What was really great was the feeling you got that every little counts however you did it , and that it didn’t matter if you tried something and it didn’t work out; you could always try something else.

Jacquelyn Collins from Slaughter and May was refreshingly frank about how their policy had evolved and changed as they had experimented and sought to find how different people internally could be involved, whilst Natasha Honan from the Heart of the City Programme showed us the huge range of initiatives that organisations had discovered they could get involved with; some you would never think of.

Finally we heard from APSCo’s own preferred charity Childline where Annette and Derek gave us the shocking fact that because of a lack of resources they are unable to take all the calls from children that come in. This fact alone should inspire us as APSCo members to go that further step in order to support Childline.

It was an inspiring meeting and judging by the conversation over drinks afterwards, many of us were moved to action!

Here at Lander Associates we are dedicated to our CSR policy and have been fund-raising for Childline for a number of years. The whole team get involved and we are always looking for new ways to contribute more, watch this space!

Posted by Julian Evans - Julian, an acknowledged recruitment industry training expert in both the UK and Europe,  recently joined the award winning team at Lander Associates. With over 20 years experience and an award winning head of learning and development, he is currently completing his masters in management learning and leadership.

Take a look at what we’ve been up to

 

It’s been a busy few weeks for the team at Lander, with the many things we have been up to including the Raising the Bar event in Oxford.Started last year by two ex-candidates of the Apprentice, Raising the Bar is an opportunity for businesses to meet, talk and improve business performance. After two of our trainers attended last year’s event, this year organiser Jen Celerier offered Lander a speaking slot – so we decided to go for it and take the whole team along to learn from the other delegates and get some new ideas from outside of the recruitment sector.

Head to Head Interview with Ann Swain Part 2

Hello again,

Hopefully we have ‘turned a corner’ economically, even though there are still many tough challenges yet to come. Planning our way out of a recession is just as hard as going through one, but along with the challenges come many opportunities, so exciting times ahead.

Lots has been happening at Lander Associates, not least a really thought provoking Leadership Symposium to discuss leadership challenges for 2010 which we hosted this week, with 16 top business leaders and leadership practitioners (See the pictures on our Facebook page). We will be publishing a white paper soon but in the meantime top line issues identified were innovation, change and engagement, so make sure they are high on the agenda in your boardrooms right now.

Gilly and I are preparing a presentation on these hot topics for the up coming Raising the Bar Conference later in the month (19^th November).

This month saw the arrival of our 2^nd expert in residence. (See article) We are delighted to welcome Chris Matchan, who has already brought his vast expertise to a number of our successful projects , has joined us as autumn winter guest executive coach/trainer. Chris will work on key leadership issues with senior managers alongside the existing leadership development team.

Much more on leadership challenges and ideas to meet them, to come on our blog.

Our International division is planning an exciting project which involves Alan taking headhunting skills to East Africa, an experience we’ll learn lots from I’m sure.

In the meantime, here is the ‘not to be missed’, much anticipated Part 2 of the Ann Swain Head to Head interview. Ann talks about her relationship with the REC, her views on the outlook for recruitment and gives some insight into what the future holds for Ann Swain.

We look forward to your comments

Be seeing you soon

Fiona Lander

Welcome

I would like to personally welcome you to the new Lander Associates blog. To get the ball rolling we thought we would start with our first head to head interview video clip. We are producing a series of up close and personal interviews with top personalities in the recruitment sector. This first one with Ann Swain is a great way to start! I am a novice using our new Flip, so apologies for some of the camera angles and trembling hand! 

 This interview was 12 very interesting minutes (thanks Ann!) but because everybody is short of time (‘Impatience is a virtue!’) we have split this into 2 parts. Part 1 has a serious side and then an interesting insight into the person behind the face. Part 2 will follow next week – that will be the one that gets all the hits!!

 

Future blogs will be a mixture of video clips and articles, also practical tips and guides. As well as contributions from the Lander team, we will share other interesting material that we come across during our research.

 I really do hope you find this useful; you can follow us on twitter, subscribe or visit our interactive website at www.landerassociates.co.uk.

We look forward to your comments.

 Be seeing you soon