Long generating a substantial income from his own version of a ‘tiger economy’, the UK’s eccentric Lord Bath is the unlikeliest source of inspiration for hard-pressed port industry executives.
But consider how, faced with growing bills to sustain his country seat at Longleat, the Earl sought an alternative source of income, and the concept of the UK safari park was born.
Although there’s no suggestion that quaysides ought to be awash with big game, thinking differently is nevertheless advocated by leading recruitment business executives, who see the current economic downturn as an opportunity for the port industry to get more from the employees they already have, and even to find new people.
The current economic downturn is an opportunity for port operators to find themselves a bit of breathing space, according to Steve Cameron, principal at Cameron Maritime Resources. “Instead of wondering how they will cope, they now have a chance to do some proper planning. It’s an opportunity to look at how you can become more efficient; examine how your processes work, and get them to work better,” he says.
Phil Parry, chairman of Spinnaker Recruitment, believes letting people go can be a mistake. He advocates that instead of seeing employment cost as balance sheet blackspot, employers ought to look at the skills individuals have. Viewing them as an asset could present an opportunity to escape the silo mentality and move those skills to another area of the business, where they can be gainfully employed. In that context, do you still feel you’re able to let them go?
Mr Parry’s company does a lot of consultancy with Human Resources departments. “They say things are slower, but they won’t be making the mistake of letting people go. They recognise that would leave them open to finding they were short of skills going into an upturn, and that’s not somewhere they want to be, so retention is important. They’re not hiring like crazy, you understand, but if good people come along they may make offers.”
But if the worst comes to the worst, and you find yourself with no alternative than to let some employees go, you ought to redouble your efforts to make sure you’re able to hang on to the ones you want to keep. “Staff kept on may well see reduced employment numbers as a sign of instability, and take it as their cue to ‘jump ship’,” he says.
To avoid that happening, he advocates the right reward and recognition packages. “But rewarding people isn’t always about cash,” he said. “It can be as simple as offering a proper career path or a proper appraisal,” he said, suggesting it would be a shame to have a valuable employee leave the business and say ‘I didn’t know what you had to offer me in the future’ when they were on the way out of the door. A good HR department, suggests Mr Parry, would be looking at ways to prevent that happening by making sure the right conversations were taking place.
Demands of port customers are fast turnarounds and just-in-time service. “If they can’t be provided with that day in, day out, then users may well look elsewhere to where it can be found, which can make life difficult for terminal operators.”
Quite apart from putting existing employees to work on enhancing business efficiencies for when the upturn eventually comes, potential employers need to keep an eye on the recruitment radar, says Mr Cameron.
“Ports have been under huge pressure to get the right sort of people, and this is an opportunity for them to even out,” he says.
Believing the downturn presents an ideal opportunity to import the right skills into a business, Mr Cameron advises acting quickly. “Highly-skilled redundant people are only going to be there for a short time,” he says. “After a couple of sweeps of the recruitment radar they’ll be lost to other sectors. You can’t just go to the shelf and blow the dust off a highly-skilled person when you need one, you must get them when you can.
“It’s important to keep the right people with the right skills in the industry. People with transferable skills will move to other sectors, and when they do that they’ll be lost to the port industry for ever,” adds Mr Cameron. “Keeping them in it involves working with the right recruitment specialist.”