Moving to a ‘more-for-more’ business culture
This is the second in a two-part feature from Menzies Mike Ayres examining the importance of a service and experience in the business services sector.
Read part one focusing on quality of service.
In this second part, Mike explores the importance of people to a quality service led approach. Menzies Business Services Sector team believes that you can provide ‘more for more’ and one of the keys to this is an effective people strategy.
People
Sound like a pipe dream? It’s not. Companies like Apple and Meille have been doing it for years. Although these aren’t services firms, the principal holds and by having an excellent people strategy and a quality driven workforce you can stand out from the crowd.
What and why?
A people strategy is how you attract and retain the best staff. Your team is your most valuable asset and by providing a comfortable and practical work place and an attractive rewards scheme your employees remain committed and motivated.
Employee retention surveys are carried out by many companies, large and small, but the results are not always listened to. Typically, staff will want higher wages, but by providing other incentives, your workforce can become more committed and productive. The following are examples of companies who have a focused people strategy.
Goodman Masson
Goodman Masson are a financial recruiter that won the Great Place to Work award in 2015. They have increased their headcount by 68% and their turnover by £6.5 million in one year.
They attribute this entirely to ‘The Experience’, their employment engagement philosophy they rated so highly that it is now trademarked!
Read more about the Goodman Masson experience.
Simply Business
Simply Business were a new entrant to The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to work for in 2016 and went straight in at number 1.
They are an insurance broker based in London that started up in 2005 and now protects over 300,000 businesses and landlords. Bright inviting offices, a casual dress policy, the executive team’s decision to sit in amongst the brand new starters, improving the day to day working conditions and flexible benefits such as gym memberships, dental cover, free cereal and cinema tickets are just some of the reasons their staff choose to stay.
Read more about the Simply Business values.
A happy team is a more productive team?
All businesses are different and not everything will work in every company, but all the companies who have successfully implemented these types of schemes agree – a happy team will do a better job and want to stay in the business to grow with it.
For further information on the above, please contact Mike Ayres at mayres@menzies.co.uk.
Find out more about Menzies Business Services sector services.
Supporting the more for more business services culture
We have written a report on how your business could go about applying these principles to your business and what Menzies can do to help.
The customer mantra ‘we want more for less’ seems to crop up with remarkable regularity when discussing budgets and plans for the year ahead.
In this business services sector white paper, we explore the contribution that small and medium-sized business services firms make to the UK economy and how to achieve growth even in uncertain economic times.
Instead of giving into such cost pressures, however, most forward-looking business services firms realise that the key to growth is convincing customers that they are worth ‘more for more’ – but how should they go about it?
Further reading and Menzies resources
Download the Menzies Business services sector brochure.
More Business services sector insights.