Best Startup
We’re an HR company who support businesses grow with creative, simple, people-focused solutions. Our values fall into a snappy 6 C’s which we apply to everything we do with our clients: Creativity: using our experience to think strategically about problems and innovative solutions.
Commercial: focus on the long-term growth and profit of our clients. Cutting through the noise: we have a no BS policy and believe in honest dialogue.
Clear impact: We take the quality of our work personally, if it doesn’t add value, we don’t do it.
Collaborative: working so closely with our clients that we become part of the team and Committed: our passion comes from how much we care, about people, about the work we do and the businesses we work with.
Tell us about yourself?
Myself and my business partner, Lisa, have worked in HR for over 25 years. We’re old hands in the people business and have worked with some incredible industries which have given us the tools of our trade.
For me I started working for a well known retailer when I was 16 and got some time in the then ‘personnel’ department, which got under my skin. Working in an environment that changes and challenges every day was what I wanted to do and it still surprises me today.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Back yourself and hire ahead of the curve. It saves sleepless nights, burning out and it always pays to take a well educated and backed risk.
What problem does your business solve?
We show businesses what working in partnership with their people can achieve.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Years of working for large corporates and realising that I’d stopped putting people first. I’d had enough and wanted to get back to putting people front and centre and helping scale and build successful companies with and around them.
In large there is too much fluff that surrounds HR, our approach is different, we’re direct talkers and we wanted to work with likeminded company Founders to make a real difference at the start of a business and help them scale with great people foundations.
What is your magic sauce?
I think we have a unique essence in our team. Fundamentally we are powered by people not by process. It’s not that we don’t believe in process, it has its place, but we’re talent focused and believe that when a company puts their people first, it changes the focus of the business.
We have a directness and pragmatism that you don’t always see in our field which means we operate a little differently to most HR consultancies, we integrate ourselves into our client businesses and operate as part of the team so that we can deliver our recommendations.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Good question. For us it’s about continuing to grow our footprint in the industries we’re passionate about within the games, bio-tech and technology industries and continue to develop innovative and creative people solutions within our own wheelhouse.
We don’t have ambitions of being a 50 strong HR company, for us above everything else it’s about the quality of our team and the solutions we provide for our clients.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
5 years into our journey there have been a lot of challenges. We course correct all the time, with a close eye on the market and our client needs. What we didn’t anticipate was how nearly every client solution needs to be a bespoke one.
There are absolutely some commonalities, but to do truly great work which moves the needle on the people front for our clients 75% of what we do is bespoke to each client.
That takes thinking and focused time for all of our team, not something we anticipated when we started to hire into the team and has changed how we resource our client accounts. I think our biggest challenge has been our ability to back and trust ourselves, I’m talking about myself and my business partner Lisa here.
There have been points in the growth of the company where we have held back or delayed key decisions, there is no one else to tell you what to do or how to run your business. Fundamentally you have to take the risks and jump, a few hard lessons later and we’re now doing this.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We are looking to continue to grow our footprint in the games, bio-tech and technology SME industries, if you’re looking for HR or people solutions we’d love to hear from you at ask@e-volvehr.co.uk
