Les bonnes résolutions sont une coutume de la civilisation occidentale qui consiste, à l’occasion du passage à la nouvelle année le 1er janvier, à prendre un ou plusieurs engagements envers soi-même pour améliorer son comportement, une habitude ou son mode de vie durant l’année à venir.

Le site officiel du gouvernement américain propose même une liste des bonnes résolutions les plus populaires dans le cas où vous n’auriez pas d’inspiration…

Arrêter de fumer, perdre du poids, prendre du temps pour soi, apprendre une nouvelle langue, changer de travail… Vous venez sans doute de prendre vous aussi vos bonnes résolutions…

Mais comment parvenir à les concrétiser ?

Restez humble et réaliste
Ne multipliez pas les objectifs car c’est la meilleure manière de ne rien changer du tout au final.
Fixez-vous un but précis, imaginez comment le mettre en pratique et préparez-vous mentalement à tous les efforts que cela implique.

Admettez les difficultés
Il y a des objectifs plus ou moins difficiles à atteindre ou à maintenir. Parmi ceux-là: trouver un nouveau travail qui vous plaise et où vous êtes reconnu.

Soyez entreprenant
Etablissez un plan d’action concret, en y allant étape par étape: plutôt que de dire cette année, je trouverai un nouvel emploi, dites je vais écrire au minimum trois lettres de candidature par mois et réanimer mon réseau social.

Faites le point régulièrement
Il est bon de faire régulièrement un état des lieux par rapport aux difficultés rencontrées: quelles sont ses forces et ses faiblesses. Au besoin, n’hésitez pas à redéfinir vos objectifs.

Et si vous n’y arrivez pas
En cas d’échec, n’en faites pas une défaite personnelle. Tentez plutôt de trouver pourquoi vous n’avez pas réussi. Ce n’est sans doute que partie remise. De toute manière, rappelez-vous que seule résolution sur dix est encore d’actualité douze mois plus tard, selon une étude du professeur Richard Wiseman.

Testez votre probabilité de réussite en remplissant son questionnaire.

La clé du succès semble résider dans des objectifs réalistes qui nous tiennent à cœur, une évolution progressive et la communication de nos souhaits auprès de ceux qui nous entourent.

According to interim and placement agencies, temporary work contracts have declined drastically. Many companies have been greatly reducing their headcount of temporary workers. In difficult times, the contracts of temporary workers are often not renewed, allowing companies to cut personnel without firing regular employees.

Companies have long used temporary workers as a buffer to be able to better weather the waves of financial fortune.

Currently, with plummeting orders and a recessionist economy, temp agencies are reporting a drop of nearly 30% in temporary work contracts. The index is calculated based on the number of hours the agencies are billing.

Decidedly, this is very bad news for companies such as Adecco, the world leader in temporary work, whose sales figures fell by a third in 2008.

The reductions in temporary staff began already in the middle of 2008. Companies such as Rolex have substantially cut temporary workers.

But in January the slowdown was particularly steep, some commentators say as much as 35%. The index of fixed placements decreased by roughly 25% over the same period.
Analysts see no sign of recovery for now. Temporary work is always the most vulnerable in a deteriorating economy.

The sectors most strongly affected by the decline in temporary work are mainly industry, and the exporters like the luxury watch manufacturers. Watch making is very strongly affected among the least qualified personnel, though highly qualified watch makers remain in demand.

Despite the sharp drop in temporary employment, the overall situation remains relatively positive. In Switzerland the global unemployment rate rose to 3.4% in February, while in the EU the average is 8.5% . And there remain thousands of job vacancies. Even UBS has nearly 300 open job offers on their website.

Besides cutting their temporary work force, companies are also turning to outsourcing to lower costs. Some enterprises are outsourcing their HR or parts of their IT.

Until recently, it was very difficult to find work after one’s mid-forties and nearly impossible to find work if one came onto the job market past the age of 50. Those who lost their jobs in their late forties or early fifties were often relegated to several years unemployment compensation and then public assistance.

Times have changed, the demography of Switzerland is moving up the age ladder and there are more and more job opportunities for seniors.

Jean-Claude Biver, the Director of Hublot is one of the big champions of hiring seniors – 12% of his company’s workforce is over 65. The arguments for hiring older workers are clear: they bring with them decades of experience. Sociologists and economists tend to agree.

The traditional reasons in Switzerland for the reluctance to hire seniors were related to the high costs in social charges that companies must pay and concerns about seniors being not flexible enough.

These concerns have been swept away in the new demographic reality of scarce qualifications, increasing life-spans, and aging populations. According to demographic projections, the EU population of working age professionals will decline 18% between 2000 and 2050, and the number of people over 65 will rise 60% at the same time. The aging of populations is a problem affecting all of the Occident.

Governments across the developed world have to find ways to maintain their economies and counter the penury of qualified labor and the skill in the marketplace.

The most successful and entrepreneurial companies in Switzerland are now trying to integrate all age groups. Managing a workforce composed of all age groups and job descriptions is a major challenge. For example, when an older worker is retiring, one needs to have already hired a young worker 8 or 9 months previously to permit a knowledge transfer. This is more difficult than it may seem as often retiring workers are not particularly inclined toward training colleagues and young colleagues are not always persuaded of usefulness of information and knowledge from an ‘out of date’ elder.

While the trend is in the process of changing, it is still the case – according to the Federal Office of Statistics – that for those over 50, the unemployment rate skyrockets. It is legal in Switzerland to stipulate an age range for job vacancy or job description. The tendency however, is turning strongly in the favor of seniors as labor shortages accentuate. Economists and government statisticians see a peak in the scarcity of qualified professionals on the job market occurring in 2015.

Executive recruitment has been marked especially by the internet and the growing economy in Switzerland. Companies in Switzerland though in a strong economy, remain wary of a downturn around the corner as a result of the problems in international credit markets and therefore executive recruiters see a strong rise in very competent candidates and reduction in mandates from multinationals for recruitment.

Nonetheless, because the Swiss economy remains strong, sectors such as luxury industries and watchmaking, as well as high-tech industries, continue to exert strong pressure on recruiters for top qualified specialists and executives.

Many executive recruiters in Switzerland, in addition to their core business of finding top candidates for their enterprise clients, also engage in coaching of in-place executives and teams. The market for coaching is growing rapidly in Switzerland.

Of course, the biggest revolution in executive recruitment has been the internet, which has completely changed the recruitment market in the space of fewer than 10 years. Previously, recruting an executive was a thoroughly confidential matter, operating by private networking. Now thousands of potential candidates for a position are a mouseclick away: the central difficulty of recruiters has shifted from hunting to selection. The internet, at the same time it has solved the problem of putting candidates and recruiters in contact, has created the new problem of how to evaluate and select in an efficient manner.

In addition, the ubiquity of internet in the employment process has rendered the candidate who sends in application by post a suspicious anomaly, a candidate who prima facie appears to have no clue as to the manner in which modern work is done.

In the french speaking part of Switzerland the economy has become particulary dynamic, evolving from an array of largely small and medium sized companies to a large park of multinationals, european corporate headquarters, and start-up technology companies.