Employee salaries and the process of giving pay raises remains a secret and few are privy to the closely guarded process, sadly it remains archaic even in the modern day age. Disconnect between compensation and performance is one of the biggest contributors of employee angst and subsequent employee disengagement.

Due to lack of transparency, most of the employees fail to understand the compensation program and generally have a perception that it is inconsistent and unfair.Disengaged employees may have reduced productivity and increased chances of attrition...

Sometimes the only thing worse than having an HR department is not having one.

When LRN Corp., which helps companies develop ethics and compliance programs, restructured a few years ago, the 250-employee business abolished most job titles and department names. It also did away with its human-resources department, which had dealt with recruiting and compensation issues, among other things.

Minister Breaks New Ground In Nigeria...

With temperatures in Abuja hovering around 38 degrees and with virtually no rain since last October, actually cutting a “sod” on a bone dry plot of land was always going to be a tall order. Nonetheless, on 26 February, FCO Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds MP and British High Commissioner, Andrew Pocock persevered with their shovels to break the ground for the new British High Commission Building in Nigeria.

The Managing Director of the construction company Bouyges (who have built two other British Embassies in Africa, and the Home Office building in Marsham St, London), hosted the ceremony. As well as witnessing this brave display of digging, invited guests, including a representative from Presiden..

More employers are allowing social media in the workplace. If your organisation does not have a social media policy we suggest you raise the topic swiftly.

It is a relatively new phenomenon that is constantly changing so companies need guidelines to govern the use of all social media. ??A social media policy may include all or any of the following sections: 

1.Control of Social media use??, 2.Monitoring the private vs. public??, 3.Ownership of data, 4.Recruitment?? , 5.Discipline & Dismissal?? , 6.Legal Proceedings

Minister for Africa arrives in Nigeria today for visit to Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, where he’ll join the centenary celebrations.

Mark Simmonds will visit Nigeria this week, his second visit as Minister for Africa. He will join President Goodluck Jonathan and other dignitaries to celebrate 100 years of the creation of Nigeria as a nation.

At the centenary event Minister Simmonds will deliver a keynote speech in which he will address the potential for Africa and Nigeria’s future. “African choices in a new Nigerian century” will be the first of four speeches on the UK’s relationship with Africa that Mark Simmonds plans over the next few months.

His four day programme will also include a visit to Lagos, where he will meet Governor Fashola, and h..

The leader of Nigeria’s main Islamist militant group threatened to attack oil refineries and schools in the West African nation’s mainly Christian south.

“You will in the coming days see your refineries you’re boasting about bombed,” Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, said in the local Hausa language, addressing residents of the oil-rich Niger River delta in a video released to reporters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. “Our refinery is Allah.”

Boko Haram fighters will extend their attacks beyond Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the three northeastern states where President Goodluck Jonathan declared emergency rule last year to combat the insurgents, Sh..

Creating a video resume

A video resume is a great modern way to showcase your skills and enhance your traditional CV especially if you aspire to build a career in a creative profession. It is an opportunity to demonstrate that you are a professional candidate with good verbal communication skills.

So, what do you need to consider when making a video resume?

1.Is it appropriate?

Only make a video if it is relevant-you would not want to make a generic video and send it out to employers without mentioning the specifics of the vacant position and industry.

2.Never read out your resume

Mob mentality is a term used to refer to unique behavioral characteristics that emerge when people are in large groups. It is often used in a negative sense, because the term “mob” typically conjures up an image of an aggressive, chaotic group of people. It became a very popular term associated with football.

In the workplace this has been translated to gang mentality which is also known as: mobbing, bullying and harassment to name a few of the more common terms. 

This is a very serious issue for all organizations as they need to proactively avoid developing a bullying culture; statistics show one in four people have been bullied in the workplace. The humiliating acts vary from verbal or physical abuse and public humiliation.

Workplace harassment is much deeper than unpleasantness and aggression - it can have consequ..

Please note that there is a risk of spoilers in this blog entry but no key storylines within the movie ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ will be given away.

Are you a good boss? No really? Think about it.

Do you expect your employees or those you manage to act like you or to be their own person? Is it your way or the highway? Do you encourage behaviour that is wrong just to get the job done and meet KPIs?

If you answered yes to any of these question then you may be exhibiting the narcissistic tendencies which were comically shown in the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ movie. You may be thinking, oh, but it is just a movie. This is not the case, it is based on a true story which means it actually happened and there really are people like Jordan Belfort, Donnie Azoff and Mark Hanna (to name a few from the movie)..

For us this is simple; research has proven that watching a video can lead to learning faster and retaining more information than just reading books and articles.

Remember our post titled 'How to prepare for a presentation' https://www.recruit-drive.com/blogs/blog_detail/how-to-prepare-for-a-presentation

To reiterate the majority of our brain is devoted to processing visual information therefore we learn much faster from pictures than words. However when the two are combined it is a lot more effective; this is known as the Picture Superiority Effect, which states that we remember 65% of what we have learnt three days after, provided it is both a picture and a word shown together compared to 10% for just a word alone.

Why use video training?

Simpl..

Who is to blame? And does it actually matter?

The definition of blame is to 'feel or declare that (someone or something) is responsible for a fault or wrong'. And the definition of a scapegoat is 'One that is made to bear the blame of others'. The problem with blame game in the workplace is it permits individuals, teams and companies (yes, if it is part of their culture) to be stagnant.

Picture this... A group of four junior eager sales executives have just landed their first pitch after joining the company out of university with a top organisation with 5,000 + head count. They showed great initiative by using their contacts to get their foot in the door. So they go out to meet with the company executives and give it all that they have got and leave feeling like they did a gre..

Back to work tomorrow after the holiday break. Have you got the January blues?

The festive period has passed and with many returning to work for January 2014 feeling the post-holiday gloom. Remember you are not alone; everybody gets the back-to-work blues. You just need to read this and get motivated again.

Below are 10 ways to beat the January blues and have a great start to 2014.

1. Make a resolution or set yourself some goals-This is a great way to keep you motivated til you get back into the swing of things


2. Exercise more often-If you keep your body fit your mind will equally be fit after that post work out buzz


3. Watch what you eat and drink- Certain foods have the vitamins and minerals to give you more energy


4. Sleeping hours- Try and get 7-8 hours sleep to make ..
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(Reuters) - A public relations executive for the prominent New York-based Internet media company IAC lost her job on Saturday after she posted a message joking about AIDS in Africa and race on her Twitter account, sparking an online furor.

"Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" J..

Unemployment, independent of any other factor, threatens to derail the economic promise that Africa deserves. It's a time bomb with no geographical boundaries: Economists expect Africa to create 54 million new jobs by 2020, but 122 million Africans will enter the labor force during that time frame. Adding to this shortfall are tens of millions currently unemployed or underemployed, making the human and economic consequences nearly too large to imagine.

Thus, even with the strong economic growth we have seen over the past decade, job ..

Happy New Year from all of us at Recruit-drive!

We wish you a wonderful new year filled with abundance, joy, and precious moments. May 2014 be your best year yet!

Are you following us on Twitter? Like us one Facebook too. Each week we will be posting titles by RD and others to promote your career advancement and personal development this year.

Also be on the lookout for our sales and prize giveaways throughout 2014! Good Luck.

Brought to you by professionals - for professionals.

The Recruit-Drive January sale is here: 50% off jobseeker ability tests and 50% off employer job advert packages!?

Sign up now and start the year as you mean to go on..

Coaching uses one-to-one conversations and guided questioning to unlock an employees inner potential. Coaching targets high performance and improvement at work and usually focuses on specific skills and goals. Although it may also have an impact on an individual personally in carrying out their day-to-day activities in key identified areas such as social interaction and confidence. In turn it helps managers deal with change and find solutions to business problems through conversations. It’s an effective way of creating a high performance culture in an organisation.?? 

The characteristics of coaching can be any or several of the following:

• It is essentially a non-directive form of development.


• It focuses on improving performance and developing individuals&rsq..
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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- African countries have experienced incredible economic growth over the past several years, and this so-called Africa rising phenomenon has spawned an optimistic new narrative, supplanting outdated ideas about a continent plagued by poverty and riven by ongoing conflicts. The World Bank projects that GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa will hit 4.9 percent this year, rise to 5.3 percent in 2014 and ascend to 5.5 percent in 2015.  

But a new report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development poses a compelling question: What good is economic growth if it only benefits a fraction of the population? UNCTAD's "Least Developed Countries Report 2013" finds that although African economies are recording impressive GDP exp..

Participants at the first symposium on job creation currently holding in Casablanca, Morocco have called on governments on the continent to develop employment policies and boost growth.

The symposium which brought together distinguished national and international panelists from 25 employers’ organizations for days, urged decision-makers to engage in direct and lasting dialogue with different economic and social stakeholders to promote public-private partnership, tailor legislation to suit economies as well as the changing world of work and invest in sectors with future potentials.

Nigeria’s employment generation scheme has received a big boost after the government announced it was receiving from the World Bank a $200 million grant.Confirming the grant on Thursday, Gombe State Governor, Mr. Ibrahim Dankwambo, told journalists the grant was meant to support current schemes to boost the employment generation among young people.

Dankwanbo said the grant is also meant t..