Northern Employment Services

Background

Set up by Joan Pooley and Stephanie Duckworth who - having previously worked together for a leading national recruitment agency - decided they wanted to run their own recruitment business.  Together with two other former colleagues they established Northern Employment Services in Rochdale in 1993. They wanted to run an agency supplying both temporary and permanent staff and that had a really strong quality ethos.  Northern Employment Services quickly established itself as a significant player in the recruitment market. Specifically:

• The company reached a turnover of £1 million pa in only a few short years
• Northern Employment Services started to win major contracts in direct competition with the major national recruitment agencies securing such prestigious clients as Littlewoods and Cooperative Retail Services
• The business was converted into a limited liability company when one of the founders decided to sell her shareholding
• The business grew to the point where turnover reached £6 million pa – even though it still only operated from one site

The downturn in the UK economy in 2008 hit the recruitment sector particularly badly. Inevitably it impacted on Northern Employment Services with several major clients no longer sourcing large numbers of additional, temporary staff. Revenue therefore fell sharply and in late 2008 Joan and Stephanie were forced to rationalise the business.

Support     

In spite of the decline in revenue, Joan and Stephanie signed up for the High Growth Programme in December 2008 in order to help them develop a new direction for the business. They received ten days of specialist high growth coaching and mentoring support from a coach with particular expertise in the marketing of professional services. Coaching support began in January 2009. Working with their coach, Joan and Stephanie:

• Developed a vision of the company in 2012 and associated roadmap. This highlighted the changes they needed to make to the structure of the business, to their revenue streams and to the client base in order to build back up to a £6 million pa turnover and to create a more sustainable high growth business.
• Identified a number of new adjacent opportunities for the business and immediately began to develop new revenue streams from such opportunities. In particular they secured a contract to deliver the government’s Job Search programme to support redundant senior executives and professionals
• Changed the way in which they marketed the business and began to raise the company’s profile across the North West by participating in a number of business networking events.
• Improved their cash flow forecasting and hence their relationship with their bank.
• Changed how they managed and motivated their staff. In particular they revamped the bonus scheme, held regular one to one meetings with each employee and weekly communication meetings with all staff.
• Introduced enhanced visual management systems, such as KPI scoreboards, into the business both to better monitor progress and to motivate staff.
• Identified how their own roles needed to change in order to drive the business forward

Outcomes    

• Joan and Stephanie now driving the business forward, developing new markets and winning new clients.
• Invested in improved systems and IT to speed up some key processes
• Started to win some sizeable new accounts
• On course to hit turnover of £3 million pa in 2010 – an increase of over 30% on 2009; likewise to achieve a net operating profit of just over £300k, a 258% improvement on 2009