How can our recruiters understand the anxiety and uncertainty that our candidates feel when moving from one casual job to another? Or how about the surge of nervousness that our candidates feel when interviewing for a permanent role? How can we, as a recruitment agency, encourage empathy for what every person our recruiters speak to over the phone feels each day?

We chose to adopt the ethos of Make People Matter because I firmly believe in the positive change that each and every single one of us can make in the world if everyone simply treats people how they want to be treated. For the people we place in casual roles, it means knowing that we’re never casual about our casual staff. Our casual staff can depend on us to offer them support in the roles where we’ve placed them – be it a simple follow-up phone call to assist with a query or to help with finding the next suitable role once a job has ended. For the people we place in permanent roles, it means building meaningful relationships and understanding the personal drivers and career goals of each individual we speak to. This in turn means that when our permanent staff are placed in a company, they’re going to have the right skills and be the right cultural fit for that organisation. For our recruiters, Making People Matter means being willing to listen to and engage with our casual and permanent workforce with a friendly and helpful attitude. But Making People Matter also extends to our leadership team and branch managers, who live our values and set a good example for our people to follow.

One exercise to truly act on the meaning of Make People Matter was our Walk A Mile project. This project reflects one of our core values – the relationships (people) come first. And the goal of it was to remind our recruiters that every application we receive represents a person, with a family, with responsibilities, with obligations and expectations.

Every day we have an opportunity to make a difference, a positive one, not just to one person, but to their family, their life, and their happiness. And if we can all do our jobs with this mindset, we have enormous potential for creating positive change in our workplace, in the industry and most of all, in people’s lives.

In the rush for efficiency, we never lose sight of the one simple truth: companies are only as good as the people who start the machines, work on the roads, dig the holes, deliver the goods or run the offices. This is why we started this business nearly 20 years ago and it drives all we do today. At Zoom Recruitment, we Make People Matter.