Executive Recruitment: Flexible Working

Flexible working patterns are being adopted by more and more companies, who have realised that one of the keys to keeping good staff is to work with them rather than against them. Executive recruitment companies are interviewing more candidates who are interested in the hours and flexibility of the employment, as well as the job itself and the financial package available.

There are a number of reasons for the desire to have more control over our working lives. Whether we are caring for children, looking after elderly relatives, have personal health issues, or simply want more leisure time, we are getting to a position where employers are willing to negotiate working terms in order to retain or employ the best candidates.

Depending on the level at which you enter the company, and on the company’s culture, your hours can vary. Most companies still work the traditional 9-5 core business hours, but many run flexi-time systems, where the core hours are 10-2, for example, and employees work the balance of their weekly hours flexibly around that core time. This means that some people could choose to come into work at 7am, but leave at 3pm in order to collect children from school, or attend a hospital appointment. This sort of flexi-working is widely practised, because it is fairly easy to monitor.

Executive recruitment consultants are finding that many executives would like to ability or opportunity to work from home for part of the week. This allows them to be available for calls, emails or faxes from the office, whilst eliminating travel time and allowing them the freedom to go to the gym in the morning or follow other pursuits. Arguments for this type of flexible working include the fact that executives who are trusted to plan their working day so that the work gets done will be more motivated and contribute more to the business.  Culture change can take a long time though, and those large, long-established businesses may have more difficulty encompassing these wishes than new, cutting edge corporations.

An executive recruitment company will have encountered a wide range of flexible working issues with previous clients and will be well placed to advise you on how to approach the issue with your executive staff. At Burns Carlton, we’ll be happy to help, so call or email us for more information today. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Jobseekers/LookingForWork/DG_10030134

Compensation Solicitor: Accidents at Work

No matter where you work, your employer has a duty to ensure that your workplace is safe and meets all the current health and safety legislation. If you work in an industrial setting, with machinery or chemical scrubbers, there will be additional trainings, warnings and guidelines to make sure that you know how to operate the machines safely and carry out your tasks without risk to yourself.

Accidents at work can occur for a wide range of reasons, and your employer is legally required to have liability insurance. In nearly all cases of employee accidents at work, including when machinery or equipment has been borrowed from a third party, the employer is responsible and needs to show that they have made every reasonable attempt to comply with legislation and to communicate with employees.

Your company should have an accident book, where your accident should be recorded as soon as it occurs. If your company does not have an accident book, you should ask for the incident to be recorded separately by your manager, the personnel manager or another senior member of staff. You may be asked to sign the record of the event, in which case you need to read it through to make sure that it describes the accident properly. If you decide to consult a compensation solicitor later on, the accident record will be a key piece of evidence.

Your solicitor will also want to know about any witnesses to the accident, and whether any similar events have occurred at your workplace in the recent past. Further investigation may be needed into whether you were given appropriate training, or whether you had asked for guidelines or explanations and were not given any. In addition, if your accident was due to slipping or falling, your compensation solicitor will look into whether there was adequate warning of possible danger and whether your employer was meeting their duty of care.

Accidents at work are commonplace and many do not result in compensation claims, let alone a compensation award. There are cases, however, where the employer is clearly negligent and where damages can be awarded. Your compensation solicitor can advise you on whether you have a case.

CCTV Systems in Kent: How CCTV Works

You may think that there’s nothing more to a CCTV system than a couple of cameras, a monitor and a video recorder, but even the most basic of systems requires detailed planning before installation can take place.

At Nightforce Security, we will always visit your site and discuss your needs in detail before we recommend a system to you. The type and complexity of the system is dictated by the reasons you want to install it in the first place, what you are hoping to achieve and the budget you have available. We will be able to show you different types of cameras, lenses, switches, monitors and recorders so that, with our advice, you can decide on the best system for you.

As you will know, CCTV stands for Closed Circuit Television. This means that the images that are captured by the cameras are fed on a closed circuit directly to your monitor or recoding equipment. Unlike broadcast television, no-one else can pick up a signal from your system and see the pictures you are recording. Although CCTV is mainly used for crime prevention and detection purposes, its applications are extremely varied and systems are used for research and entertainment purposes as well.

The cameras are usually the starting point for your system; how many you need and where you want them to be positioned. The majority of CCTV cameras come without lenses, so you will also need to choose a lens that is appropriate to your needs. Basic systems cannot adjust the angle of shot or focus, so you must be sure that you choose your lens carefully.

Line-powered cameras are connected directly to the monitor by a coaxial cable. If you have more than one camera, they can all be connected to the monitor, switching between pictures at regular intervals. The length of the interval can be adjusted by the operator, or a switch can be fitted to allow the operator to switch between cameras whenever necessary. A video recorder can be added to the system so that the pictures can be recorded and logged on a daily basis.

If you find that fixed cameras are not giving you enough coverage or flexibility, then you should consider scannable or pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) cameras. These allow the cameras to move according to a programmed time, or to be remotely controlled by the operator.

For news on CCTV abroad see http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/37e67eaa1be0434898cf6b272d13ae7d/AS--China-CCTV-Building/

Virtual Hosting – “Data is Not Electricity”

Centralisation has changed IT for users everywhere. This came from computer scientists, John McCarthy’s early theory back in 1960s.  He believed that computation would eventually be dynamically organised as a public utility. Virtual hosting takes this concept and administrates the pooling and sharing of servers, centralising the main source of energy output though standby power is still useful where electricity is needed. 

Virtual hosting as It is Today

Cloud computing is starting to revolutionise the way that businesses, individuals and public organisations use IT – and because IT is everywhere, virtual hosting really does apply to everybody. But as yet, the concept is still pretty fresh, and the uptake on virtualised services is not exactly ‘viral’. This could be a slow but steady revolution, but virtual hosting does have the potential to replace conventional IT setups altogether.  Or does it?

Virtual Hosting – Where Will the Idea Go?

As revolutionary as cloud hosting is, some could have taken the idea a little too far, according to James Urquhart, writer for CNET. 

“Some have taken electricity as an analogy to cloud adoption to an extreme, and declared that there will be a massive and sudden shift from corporate data centers to entirely external cloud computing environments - public cloud utilities, if you will. They are wrong, and the reason why they are wrong can be captured in a single simple statement: Data is not electricity,” wrote James Urquhart, August 2009

The Future of Virtual Hosting

Although virtual hosting is offering everyone a cost-effective, energy efficient and more productive solution for applying information technology, there are limits – and those who dream that we will all be sharing public servers could be very wrong. Nobody knows what the future holds, and perhaps some technological genius will make it possible to consume the cloud from external virtual hosting with verifiable security, control, service levels and compliance. (These are the views of James Urquhart – for more information, visit CNET)

Whatever the case may be, shouldn’t we have open minds about the future of virtual hosting?  Just twenty years ago, we didn’t know what the World Wide Web was. And similarly, we all survived without Google – who would have dreamed it up? Other than Larry Page and Sergey Brin, of course!

Today, virtual hosting can change the way that you consume computing – whether you need platforms and applications for personal or business use, it can save you money and valuable time.  For now, this is working for all of us.  We’ll cross the more complicated bridge when we get to it – and we’ll leave it to the tech geeks to build that bridge.

A Fab New Kitchen Look Can Be Yours by Revamping your Kitchen Doors

If your budget doesn’t stretch to a completely new kitchen, why not refresh your kitchen with some stylish new kitchen doors? To find out more visit http://kitchen.paulgarvin.net/

It’s a fact of life that fashions change in all areas of our lives and that includes our kitchens. But rather than go to the expense of re-fitting your kitchen just because it’s looking a little past its sell-by date, why not simply replace the doors of the units to refresh it?

Many cabinets will last you and your kitchen a lifetime, so it seems a waste to get rid of them if they are still solid and functioning correctly. By purchasing a new set of stylish kitchen doors and fitting then to the cabinets yourself, you can save money and still have the kitchen of your dreams and our tips can help you do just that!

Look for a quality finish

These days, kitchen doors come in a variety of finishes that will offer you a world of colour and style. Wood finishes are a classic favourite when choosing kitchen doors. However if you want to have a modern yet elegant look go for the contemporary style of a high gloss finish kitchen door, available in bright colours from lime greens to vibrant reds. If you want cleanliness and organization in the kitchen, you can choose the white finish for a clean and minimalistic look.

Take advantage of the latest contemporary kitchen door designs

Door designs are the carvings or other design features that are featured on the particular door for decoration purposes. Most manufacturers offer a stylish range of design options to suit every colour palette and personal taste.  Picking a stylish and fashionable look for your kitchen doors can make a big difference, refreshing your old units and bringing your kitchen back to life. However, more traditional looks in kitchen doors are also available.

Accessories

The final finishing touch to any set of well fitted kitchen doors are the handles.  They come in a huge range of designs to suit modern and traditional kitchen designs.  You can use the slim, stainless steel handles to achieve a modern design or those too detailed and curvy handles for more of the classic style.  If you want to target a minimalist kitchen cabinet door replacement design.