Achieving goals: bringing your marketing plans to life
Any activity to develop your business in the outside world must be matched by initiatives inside the organisation if all the potential benefit is to be realised.
Internal communication: the one about the left hand and the right hand
The most successful businesses are those whose employees have a fundamental understanding of where the business is going and how it’s going to get there. More importantly, they understand their role in the process.
Helping your employees to understand what’s happening and why, keeping them up to date with initiatives, new products or services, or just providing information about their benefits or training programmes can be challenging, especially if you operate across a number of sites.
We can introduce communication initiatives that will ensure that key messages critical to the performance of your business are understood and acted upon, generating clear and effective messages and choosing the right channel to distribute them, from intranet to training programme.
Bearing in mind the need for two-way comminucation, we can provide opportunities for staff to share their experiences with customers and influence business direction. We will then put in place a means to measure whether or not your staff understand the communications they receive how they would prefer to access information in the future.
Team management and development: maximise potential, as individuals and as a team
We have experience of managing large, complex teams in FTSE 100 companies, and are adept at getting the most out of those teams, as well as understanding the dynamics of small, close-knit teams.
By taking a holistic approach to how your teams are structured, how they work with other teams and how they could potentially operate more efficiently and effectively, we will deliver real benefits to your business. We can put in place training programmes and recommend succession planning so that your business is not vulnerable, should key team members leave the company. This will also harness and direct individuals’ ambitions by planning career development and highlighting opportunities.
We can provide a structure for managing performance, rewarding those who perform well through bonus schemes and profit sharing and supporting those who are struggling with certain aspects of their work. And we have the experience to advise on the close management of team members who are not performing to expectations and where disciplinary procedures loom.
Organisation and operations: the detail and processes that make it all happen. Or not.
Many businesses grow organically and suddenly find that they are not performing as efficiently or effectively as they can. They lack structure, process and are under-performing, but are simply too busy to tackle the underlying problems and identify solutions.
We will undertake an audit of your business and recommend areas to greatly improve efficiency and in turn, make the business more effective. By challenging why you do things the way that you do and offering alternative use of resources, such as out-sourcing, that would maximise your business resources, we can help you improve operating procedures so that everything works smoothly and efficiently, whilst wastage is reduced.
Focused on your business objectives, we can identify areas where activities are being duplicated, and where some are falling between the cracks. And the first step in this process is to ask for views from staff about where they think your business is weakest and how they think it can be improved.
Recruitment: getting the best people into your team
Finding the right staff for your business can be a time-consuming and costly process. Keeping those people can be even more of a challenge.
We will consider the role you need filled, identify key attributes and write job specifications. To support your recruitment process, we can identify techniques that will improve the screening process so that you only spend time interviewing individuals that could make a difference to your business. Or we can do some of the interviewing for you.
We can recommend how to identify the key attributes your interviewees need, including selection techniques, from tests to imaginative tasks, based on experience not theory. Then we can identify benefits that would give your business appeal as an employer and a good reputation amongst workers.
Customer service, satisfaction and complaints: keeping everybody happy, all of the time
How often does the critical difference between competitors come down to customer service? What does ‘good service’ actually mean in your business? And how on earth is it to be achieved, with all staff, all of the time?
We can identify initiatives to increase service levels in areas which customers really value, improve customer satisfaction, reduce complaints and increase customer loyalty. It is possible to turn customer service from a chore to a rewarding experience for all involved, giving customers even better service than they expect.
We know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of heated, often abusive customer ‘feedback’ and can help with training, service procedures and tips. We can help set up processes to actively gather feedback from all customers, satisfied and otherwise, to help develop your brand, products and services as well as providing team management information.
Reviewing objectives, assessing progress: are we there yet?
Plans, initiatives, programmes and projects are part and parcel of running a business, but all too often that’s where it stops. Little is known if these activities have been a success or not and even less is known as to whether or not it has made a positive difference to your business.
We will set up rigorous measurement processes that will enable you to see how your activity, whatever it may be, is progressing. If there are issues that need addressing to keep things on track, we will point them out and provide recommendations to resolve them.
We will develop a realistic and meaningful review process, tailored to your business, taking in feedback from key team members and customers, as necessary. At the end of any activity we will distil the learning into a management summary that identifies the key points, and next steps.