Ladies and Gentlemen, members and committee, welcome to the National Recruitment Federation Annual General Meeting.
I will outline how we are doing across a number of areas but my key hope in the last year was to have the ERF support the recruitment profession to be seen as a great place to work and an integral part of companies plans to hire the best talent. There is no doubt the profession is going from strength to strength and confidence is high in our sector which is great news.
Finances
As you will hear in the Treasurers report the Federation showed a surplus for the financial year of 2013. This was a significant turnaround on the two loss making years of 2009 and 2010. The ERF has been set up to support the recruitment profession, so it is essential that at all times a close eye is kept on our Finances and I would like to compliment and thank Frank Farrelly for his work as treasurer. Management accounts for the current year 2014 indicate the Federation should show a significant increase in profits and we keep a close eye on the cash flow to ensure we maintain contingencies for anything unforeseen.
Our membership is at 96% of the profession which is one of the highest across the world
Each year at our end of year think tank, we set our objectives and targets for the year ahead and did so again last year. Our key objectives were as follows:
Let me address each objective briefly but firstly I am delighted to say that these objectives are up until December but I believe we have hit 95% of them already
Education
We now have 358 certified members of the ERF course which only came into existence less than 4 years ago and we are close to having this accredited to a FETAC standard.
We also this year committed to running training for more senior members and we ran three courses with excellent feedback from the recruiter population. We are definitely raising the standards for the profession
Events
We have never had more events, while it is only one string to our bow it is one of the most important to the members as they demonstrate with record attendance at our briefings conferences and awards. Our conference and awards was the biggest ever with excellent feedback from both. We also ran a very successful Cork conference in July, our third year to do this in partnership with Cork Chamber. These events received national coverage and we were delighted to welcome the now Tanaiste to our event once again.
We ran 14 events briefings, on everything from sourcing using social media to employment law. We also had a fellows event with a guest speaker Eoin Reddan which was well received and we encourage more members with 10 years of service to become fellows of the profession
We would like to thank all our sponsors as without them we could not run these events but a special thank you to the key sponsors, Contracting plus, Taxback Linkedin.and Arithon. The effort and work that goes into all of these events cannot be underestimated with our Director Geraldine King instrumental in how well they run.
Marketing/ Awareness/ PR
We have been very keen to increase the voice of the profession and we have had coverage again this year in the 3 main national papers with articles every week promoting the profession and the ERF members. More than 40 articles have appeared this year alone. We launched a quarterly ezine to our members and are just ready to launch a pulse survey to get a temperature check on the profession on a regular interval. Our link With Ministers is getting stronger with great work from David Kearney on this supported by Colin Donnery
The ERF website has a facelift and Turlach McAllister has been excellent at driving this with the help of the Digital Skills hub Academy and we are delighted with the output
Policy Lobbying
We made a significant investment of time and resources with the REC to use their expertise to help us with policy and lobbying. We have built on great research and stakeholder interviews to produce the first policy document titled “Ireland works” which will be a great platform to build on to raise the profession’s voice and help us gain more credibility with other profession bodies.
Giving back to our members
We understand how busy the life of a recruiter is but we are also very aware of the challenges of staying up to date with changes of legislation, to that end we are delighted in the last year to have three key additions to the resources page regarding a NERA checklist in case of an audit, a TUPE checklist and one more for release in the next month.
On top of this our Garda vetting process continues to be a strong support unit for our members and Yvonne Collins provides a great service here.
Team
All that I have outlined so far has been driven by the our staff Jackie Gaughan continues to provide excellent support to members and the committee , it is great to see someone grow into a job and Jackie has certainly done that. We wish her well as she takes maternity leave and very much welcome Marie Clare who we are delighted has joined the team.
Our director Geraldine King has had a huge part to play in all the positive outcomes we have had over the past 12 months , her excellence in delivery continues to bring the Federation to a new level and I think she will continue to do so into the future.
I have seen other federations across Europe and the world at first hand and we are the envy of a lot of them for what we achieve for our profession.
The committee continue to do an unbelievable amount of work and are a credit to the profession
I will be stepping down as of today and I am delighted to be leaving the office in very strong hands. I have tried to ensure that the ERF is not just on a safe footing financially and not just a federation for events but that in the past few years we have added education, policy, and more resources than ever to our members. All committee members have accountability and this has led to a very strong output from a very impressive group.
Working on a federation or any committee always has its challenges and I wish the committee the best of luck in dealing with any further challenges and am proud of what we have achieved and no doubt what we will go on to achieve
That concludes my report for 2014 and my term with the Federation.
Many thanks
Peter Cosgrove
President ERF
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