Now that the sale of our house is well under way and the exchange rate against the euro is on the up, my mind turned again this weekend to trying to make a move to France. We already have a holiday home there and so have experienced buying a house in France before. Bit by bit, my french has got better but always we seemed stumped by how to make a living there without me having to cross the channel every week to keep up my consultancy work here.
Of course we have toyed with the idea of running a gite business but at the same time we want to minimise our mortgage commitments. Also, I am not sure that the location of our current holiday home would make for a popular gite.
So this week I am going to search high and low for some alternative options that might give us some potential to earn a reasonable income whilst living mortgage free in France.
For those of you that have some ideas of what I might do, drop me an email. Je vous en prie.
Monday, 22 June 2009
Thursday, 4 June 2009
The Benefits of External HR Support
So today I was reminded of why my clients like having external HR support when they need it. As I know only to well from my days in house, it often gets emotionally draining when dealing with redudancies, disciplinaries and grievances from your own employees. It's not that they can't be dealt with internally, but it really helps having an external expert holding the client's hand throught the process.
Today I was dealing with a particularly difficult redundancy appeal. The client has some really strong feelings about the issues and often confused performance issues with the redundancy issues that we were focusing on. In addition, when we met the employee they were very down and dejected. It was as if they had given up on the whole process.
The client told me that I contributed in a very critical way to the process and ensuring a successful outcome. Firstly, because the employee wasn't one of mine I could be offer an opinion that was free of emotional baggage. Secondly, I had helped the client see the issues more clearly and make a rational decision about how we should handle the issues and respond to the points raised on appeal. Finally, I came up with a neat (relatively cost neutral) way of offering some more support to the employee to get them ready for the job market without putting the client in a position where he felt that he was admitting he was getting it wrong (and he wasn't!).
It's great to get feedback from clients. It's even better when they remind you of the value that you bring to their businesses. I get a real buzz from days like today.
Today I was dealing with a particularly difficult redundancy appeal. The client has some really strong feelings about the issues and often confused performance issues with the redundancy issues that we were focusing on. In addition, when we met the employee they were very down and dejected. It was as if they had given up on the whole process.
The client told me that I contributed in a very critical way to the process and ensuring a successful outcome. Firstly, because the employee wasn't one of mine I could be offer an opinion that was free of emotional baggage. Secondly, I had helped the client see the issues more clearly and make a rational decision about how we should handle the issues and respond to the points raised on appeal. Finally, I came up with a neat (relatively cost neutral) way of offering some more support to the employee to get them ready for the job market without putting the client in a position where he felt that he was admitting he was getting it wrong (and he wasn't!).
It's great to get feedback from clients. It's even better when they remind you of the value that you bring to their businesses. I get a real buzz from days like today.
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