IRS recruitment and retention strategy conference
With around 120 other people I attended the IRS recruitment and retention strategy conference in London - but was it any good?
Not really but I don't think the organisers really care about the content as long as they sell enough seats. But were the speakers as good as expected?
Simon Barrow - PiB
First up was Simon Barrow from People in Business. A bit old school and as he clearly supports his young under study who followed directly after to extol the virtues of what Simon does, I will use their organisation (Wagamama) as the comparator for every speaker.
Simon quoted the search phrase 'employer brand management' having 1070 search results on Google yet, there are >1.5m for UK alone and Simon's website turns up on page 3 although his book, courtesy of Amazon, is on page 1. Very much an offline view of brand management with zero effort towards driving interest from the web for their own site.
As a starter (OK side dish really, they don't have starters), I'd say negima yakitori - three skewers of grilled chicken and spring onion. Safe, proven but not very exciting.
Glynn House - Wagamama
After this starter I was looking forward to a really tasty main course. I'd hoped for chilli beef raman or chicken chilli ramen, something to set us on fire. But at best we got raman - thin, wheat egg noodles with nothing else.
Glynn admitted to around 20 years service at (the old) Sainsbury's - it showed! Sorry Glynn, you lost my attention very quickly and only got it back at the clapping stage.
Quite a few people were somewhat bemused at Wagamama being such a great place to work yet the still have 70% labour turnover and well, that's just the way it is. As usual, missing basic site SEO and some real obvious communication channels.
If Glynn is such a marketer/brand manager I would have expected some free lunch vouchers so we could try out the brand first hand and then of course tell everyone all about it!
Jeremy Tipper - Capital Consulting
I think Jeremy had an easier than expected slot after plain old raman - anything would be a great follow on. It did seem like research for the sake of it with no real message - maybe I missed it as I was still trying to wash down the dry raman served up by Glynn.
Yasai itame - stir fired bok choi, onions, peppers, spicy coconut and green chilli soup - didn't blow your head off but still worth it though in case some good messages in there.
Alastair Cartwright - Enhance Media
Definitely chilli chicken raman - exactly what you expect, bit hot for some but if you've had it before, one of the good ones.
Tim Forster - PWC
Knew what to expect from Tim so he didn't disappoint too much. Pretty much a main and desert all in one was what I hoped for.
Chicken katsu curry - quality but not too spicy leaving the palette ready for more. But alas, all we really got was a white coffee.
Good for those who are still way behind but for anyone with the basics in place, PWC haven't really done that much more than anyone else, a bit of a blog, some high ranking podcasts but very much, the food is great we don't bother with deserts. PWC are still missing some real basics such as SEO leaving the door wide open for anyone to steal his thunder - and his prized awards - even if they do just give them away!
Stella Littlewood - Arup
The big event of the day that they had saved until last but mentioned first at the beginning to whet our appetites! Fantastic sounding organisation which made the presentation feel like it was more of a sales pitch rather than anything else.
Takara shochikubai - medium sweet hot sake to toast the virtues of Arup and realise how crap our own organisation really is!
And finally.....
All in all, an average day at best. Next year they should have a conference focused purely around online as that seemed to be the topic of discussion during the breaks. Employer branding, retention, offline advertising - people have seen and done it all before.
Bring on the ebi raisukari. Watch out for Green dogs and hairy feet!
Be warned - it may be slow!
