Letter from Staffwell CEO Teri Lindeberg
Sour Lemons Summer & September :(,
Sweet Lemonade Q4 :)
Dear Friends,
What a year 2015 has been for STAFFWELL! I last wrote you at the end of Q1 where I happily reported on our starting the year with great results. I am even happier to report now that we did even better in Q2. April and May (especially) were so good that we more than made up for the slower June that followed. Q3 has been much slower than we would have liked on the recruitment side, while our outsourced accounting business has been nice and stable. Time will tell, but we are forecasting a strong Q4 in recruitment, based in part by the significant increase in the number of new vacancies brought in daily, since the beginning of September.
To offer a little more perspective on the year so far in recruitment, our placement numbers are down 40%. This is due to a market slow down in hiring –especially January, and June thru September. Our revenue numbers in recruitment are down even more. This is due to less placements being made and a near 50% drop in the value of the Ruble this year. Its been challenging for us, but we are working our hardest to succeed.
Recruitment is a tough industry to survive in during a severe market recession like the one we are in. STAFFWELL’s Recruitment business is surviving due to good decision making in the areas of accounting (better controlling of our expenses, restructuring our company, and locating better service providers), recruitment (replacing a complacent employee with new high potential performing candidate, and hiring new key staff to develop new business areas/sectors),motivating and development of our own team (master classes, internal trainings, teambuilding activities, and employee engagement), and client service (customer experience focus, added value services, pricing solutions and higher levels of focus on needs and results).
Our STAFFWELL Outsourced Accounting business is going well and we have a really happy client base –it helps saving our clients a lot of money and getting them out of trouble with the tax and labor authorities! A lot of our work in this division involves correcting financial reports and general bookkeeping, returning money overpaid to authorities to client accounts, minimizing their fines from prior business and accounting mistakes they made, providing audit control, recording all HR documents and developing proper company policies and formalized compensation schemes, preparing clients for tax and labor inspections, training our clients on Russian accounting to help them better understand it, restructuring companies to make them more profitable, and general payroll services. We are enjoying developing this business, and we are doing it really well.
We are redesigning our current website at the moment and during this time the links to our job listings and send CV area on our site are not working. However the contact emails on our website are operational and anyone wishing to send us their CV should do so at CV@staffwell.com. Once received, they get forwarded to our recruitment team and input into our database. Due to the amount of CVs we receive we can only respond to those who are a close match to our client vacancy requirements.
Job seekers requiring formal assistance with their search in the areas of career counseling, CV and interview skills review, job search strategy planning and implementation, and placement services, can contact us atCompany@staffwell.com for more information on these services and fees.
A few years ago I published my first business book, Making Perfect, which explains in quick simple details ‘what employees want from their employers’, and how I used that information myself to transform Staffwell into one of Russia’s best companies (by formal award). If you need some ideas and motivation right now in dealing with your employees, reading Making Perfect will definitely give you them. A great read for employees too –to better understand management expectations of staff, especially during a market recession.
If you have not yet read my book, you are welcome to come and pick up a copy from our office. I have beautiful hard cover copies in English and Russian. They are now on sale for 300 ru each or 2 for 400 ru …and I would be thrilled to hear any feedback from you after you have finished it. To arrange a book pick up at our office, please contact Alena Topova at atopova@staffwell.com.
Last month it was announced in Kommersant, that I have again been nominated as one of Russia’s Top Managers. It is such a great honor for Staffwell and me, and I am very thankful for the consideration. Russia is a truly wonderful and inspiring country and business environment, and I really love what I do, whom I work with, and whom I have met and know here.
We are planning to be up for the year, and Q4’s results will play a big part in that. We are optimistic based on the growing number of new recruitment vacancies we are bringing in every day right now, other active vacancies that are now at/or nearing job offer stage, and the increasing number of companies requesting proposals for our accounting services. Our activity levels are high and we are focused on service and results for our clients.
Best wishes for success to everyone out there, and thank you for supporting STAFFWELL and being our friends. If we can help you with your recruiting or accounting needs, please let us know. You can reach us at Company@staffwell.com.
Kindest regards,
Teri
