People Puzzles help you complete the people picture.
Over the past two months we’ve introduced you to the world of People Puzzles. Most of you reading this will be involved in business in some shape or form but, as we explained at the start, you may all be different, but there’s a common denominator.
People.
You will either have employed them or you work with them.
Of course, you will all have similarities no matter what the size of your firm or what you do. You want to be successful and you want to make profits. Hopefully you want to do a good job too.
The only snag is that the desire for success and to make money can mean that you overlook how you look after your staff…how you retain them…how you attract the right people. You’ve probably got business plan; you’ll probably have predictions for growth and outlined your ambitions. There’s likely to be a marketing and operating plan. You may be thinking about future acquisitions.
But, do you have a people plan?
That’s where People Puzzles can help.
So, you make the decision to contact People Puzzles to help with your HR…but what happens next? What can you expect to see as a return for your investment?
We thought we’d speak to two North East firms who’ve used People Puzzles and find out what happens and, more importantly, what sort of results have they seen.
We’ve been in touch with Amy Fisher, MD of Doby Verrolec in Stanley (they’re the UK’s largest manufacturer of Ductwork Jointing Systems and Ductwork Components) and we also spoke to Jeremy Royle, MD of Your NRG (the 6th largest distributor of liquid fuels to households and commercial businesses across the UK mainland).
Let’s start with Amy Fisher, the Managing Director at Doby Verrolec: “The real benefit of People Puzzles is that your business and industry sector needs are matched with one of the People Puzzles Directors. This means you work closely with one local and very knowledgeable person who can quickly understand the people needs of the business.
I have been able to build a productive relationship with Pauline Garnett, who is our Portfolio People Director. I came into this role last year with an agenda for growth and opportunity for improvements, and our people strategy was one of those. We have been working together across a range of issues which has included an in-depth review of our current employee engagement, an opportunity to do a complete overhaul of our contracts and policies, advice and support to deal with some outstanding employee issues that needed to be resolved. We are also currently embarking on a series of leadership masterclasses designed to bring our vision and values to life across the entire operation. Pauline is also supporting our line managers by delivering training that will enable them to manage all aspects of our employee lifecycle, giving them more confidence, autonomy and capability.
People Puzzles has enabled us to work with Pauline on an as and when needed basis, providing fractional support to us. It gives us the ability to have a People Director to help us with developing and delivering our strategy, and to call on for experience and knowledge at times when we need it. The added advantage is that when we do not require help there is no cost incurred.”
Let’s now hear from Jeremy Royle at Your NRG
“Having been through a period of rapid growth, we took the opportunity to carry out an HR health check with a view to further developing our ‘people strategy’ to run alongside our five year growth plan. However, we needed some help and direction, and it was at this juncture that we came across ‘People Puzzles’. Their team of individual time-served HR directors, most of them from sizeable firms across a range of sectors, were able to support us with their vast experience and knowledge. After completing exploratory HR health checks with our own operational board members we were able to ascertain our current position in relation to Business Strategy, Leadership, Culture, Talent, Structure and People Process.
With this information, our Regional People Puzzles Director Jim Lister conducted an in depth and searching ‘discovery session’ with me to find out who Your NRG were, what we do and then what wanted from our business going forward. This led on to some intuitive ‘matchmaking’ and our introduction to our new Portfolio People Director, Pauline Garnett.
After sanity checking our processes and structure Pauline’s hands-on approach helped us to build on the work that we had already undertaken and develop our ‘people strategy’, enabling a robust ‘cradle to grave’ people methodology to meet the current needs and future growth of the business.”
So, there you go…two North East firms who brought in People Puzzles to sort out their HR issues and, as you can see from the comments made by Amy and Jeremy, to say that they’ve made a difference is an understatement.
But it doesn’t end there. People Puzzles will continue to help those two firms run smoothly. People Puzzles don’t just go in…sort any problems…provide guidance…and then just leave you to it. In the future they may be there one day a week or one day a month…to help you get on with the job of running your firm while knowing that your HR is in good hands.