PRESS RELEASES

Chugging Along Through Uncharted Waters – The Ampersand Mid-May 2020

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 

As you know by now, we typically send our monthly Ampersand, well, monthly.  For 11 years and 137 issues, we’ve worked very hard to deliver a thoughtful piece of content to your inbox on the 1^st of each month. There is nothing typical about the times we are in, so we thought we’d send you into the long weekend with a little mid-month content.

 

All things considered, we are doing great over here on the Good Ship, PCo. We are in the relationship business and those relationships, which are more important than ever, run deep. Over and above the obvious goals of staying healthy and adhering to the directives of those in charge, we have two primary objectives in our business over the coming months.  First, ensure each month has at least $1 more revenue than expense. Second, stay visible and relevant in the eyes of our clients and community.

 

On the first point, like the old golf adage, ‘they don’t ask how, they ask how many’, the drive for profitability is a teeter totter of expenses and revenues. So long as the former remains lower than the latter, all will be good. Mission accomplished in March, April, May and almost certainly June.  Lots of time still to tackle July, August and beyond but thanks to so many amazing Calgary businesses adhering to the #BuyLocal imperative (except an ironic few…you know who you are) combined with our long-ensconced small ball philosophy (something we wrote about exactly one year ago), we’re chugging along, albeit on a journey of indeterminate length, armed only with what we hurriedly packed before heading out to sea.

 

On the second point, we continue to remain front and centre with our clients, candidates and community through daily phone calls, virtual beers, and unscheduled chats; leading webinars (more on that below); our now bi-monthly Ampersand and other blog posts (like this one by our own Erin Dand); serving on volunteer Boards; helping our friends and neighbours in ways seen and unseen.

 

All of which leads to this. I recently sat down for an interview with Jeff Bradshaw, President and CEO of V Strategies Inc., to chat about recruiting and retaining talent in the midst of Calgary’s double whammy COVID 19 crisis and oil patch assault.  Jeff originally suggested the interview would last about eight minutes, or as I used to call that in my lawyering days, a .2.  Fully 35 minutes later, Jeff and I had covered a wide range of topics that we thought you might find interesting.

 

Rather than compel you to endure the entire thing, we’ve broken it into bite size snippets that you can scroll through at your leisure:

 

Buy Local / We’re In It Together 

 

 

The Top 1% is Always the Top 1% 

 

There Will Be a Premium on Talent Again!

 

How Transparent is Too Transparent?

 

Now You’re Just Messing With Me 

 

Tapping Into Your Goodwill Reservoirs 

 

A couple other quick reminders before you go enjoy your Long Weekend.  As referenced above, my partner, Ranju Shergill, and I, will be hosting a Webinar for the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday May 19^th at 11 a.m. on the topic of  recruiting and onboarding in a virtual world.  If you’re interested in participating, the registration link is here.

 

Also, just a reminder that our COVID 19 client and candidate offerings and resources can be found here. This includes assisting with outplacement, interim solutions and even secondments of our all-star recruiters to your team to assist with any hiring you may have ongoing but don’t have either the manpower or the budget to execute on your own.  Drop us a line at info@pekarskyco.com to learn more.

 

Finally, and most importantly, we want to send you and yours our heartfelt good wishes for a restful and safe long weekend.  We’ve been through the ringer these past several weeks, especially those of us in Alberta watching as our provincial cousins and federal party leaders kick us while we’re down.  That’s okay. We have each other. No doubt, you’ve all had plenty of Quality Family Time of late, but hey, you can’t have too much of a good thing, now can you?! Don’t answer that.