Notes of a Lazy Existentialist

A selection of blogs written for Swindon Roller Derby: The Future is Red and Black Injuries in Roller Derby Part 1 Injuries in Roller Derby Part 2

How to get ahead in a competitive Marketplace #1 – Preparing for battle We have now been in a period of falling unemployment and increasing company growth for a couple of years. Even with economic uncertainty on the horizon, the job market has held relatively well at the back end of 2016 with unemployment falling from 8.9% last January to 7.3% in January 2017. However, that is not to say that a stronger economy doesn’t create a new set of challenges for companies. With more people in employment, more companies look to recruit and a drop in net migration it has meant filling those specialist roles becomes increasingly more challenging. This is especially the case in those critical areas where skill gaps already exist, such as IT, Engineering and Healthcare. More recently, instability caused by unpredicted political events (Brexit, Trump’s election in the USA, a hung parliament in the UK) have cast their shadow over the future of the UK economy. While the economy has held re...

I left University in 2006, shortly afterwards the UK slid in to financial meltdown. Companies were struggling, unemployment was rife and even the large and iconic brands, like Woolworths, were disappearing. I was lucky enough to actually get a job during these dark times and started working for a procurement outsourcing company.   At the time, Procurement was suffering from an image crisis. It was a reactive process, often marginalised within companies. It was seen as a function that either dictated to teams what they could or couldn’t do or were seen as responsible for large scale redundancies - all in the name of scrimping some savings year-on-year. Then the economic downturn occurred and the winds changed. As companies all over the UK were not only forced to make savings, they were more importantly trying to continue to improve but with less money to do it. Forward thinking procurement teams and companies, such as the one I worked for saw these tough economic times as a...