Impact

Addressing the scarcity mindset

The scarcity mindset is real, and one solo founder feared turning down any work including low-value work. I helped them identify each fear and test it against the available data. We then assessed how much time they were spending on low-value work, reviewed their pricing strategy, and considered which higher-value opportunities they might be missing out on.

Within months, they adapted their approach in several ways such as practicing how to turn down low-value work with existing clients, increasing their fixed fee prices, and analysing the profitability of each of their client services. This resulted in the founder becoming more confident in taking on fewer clients but higher-value work.

Setting boundaries

A founder was struggling to set boundaries with a client who consistently contacted them with heavy work deliverables whilst on holiday. This led to feelings of resentment and frustration. I helped the founder focus on pro-actively managing client expectations for future holiday leave.

I recommended that they create a planned communication cadence i.e. diarise sending out 2-week, 1-week and 3-day reminders to the client. I then advised the founder to craft a clear email to explain dates of holiday leave and return, whether they would respond to emails during that time and if there was anyone else to cover.

This approach resulted in a change in client behaviour (no queries) during future holiday leave allowing the founder to recharge properly so that they could continue to deliver quality work. Small change, big difference.

Balancing recruitment mandates with paid client work

Hiring managers were juggling recruitment mandates with their actual paid client work unsuccessfully. I looked at how recruitment activity was managed, what was happening (patterns, gaps and behaviour) and how we could improve. Before building out a process, I thought about the problem from two perspectives:

1. Recruiter interactionI created a go-to recruitment pack for recruiters including FAQs about for example, the business and what it does, its values and, ideal candidate behaviours. The pack also shared testimonials from both our clients and employees along with details around our compensation structure. This rapidly reduced direct queries to internal hiring managers from recruiters and set the foundation for consistency in messaging.

2. Candidate experienceIn parallel, I also developed an easy-to-follow onboarding process for candidates which encouraged new hires to share their feedback on the process so that we could focus on continuous improvement. This meant that those running the onboarding process could do so with clear direction, rather than guesswork.

Evaluating candidates

As part of the recruitment evaluation criteria, one senior hiring manager recommended that interviewers ask candidates whether they played a team sport. They believed that this was a good way to assess candidates’ ability to work within a team.

While awkward, I challenged this proposed approach as it wasn’t in keeping with the advertised business values around diversity and inclusion. Different candidates will always have different outside interests. Initially, the hiring manager maintained their position. I was curious and asked whether they had played any team sports to understand their experience. Interestingly, they hadn’t, choosing instead to observe.

In the end, I suggested that the focus should be on an individual’s competency and capability to do the work and that a mix of skills and behaviours would likely lead to stronger teams. They dropped the idea, but the conversation did open up further discussion about alternative evaluation criteria.

Reviewing candidate CVs efficiently

Hiring managers complained that too much time was being eaten away with candidate CV reviews. This was because candidates and recruiters share CVs in different formats and these were being sent through as and when recruiters were receiving them directly from candidates during the week. It made it difficult for hiring managers and decision makers to compare candidates efficiently.

I approached the issue in two ways.

First, when working with one recruiter, I noticed that they had adopted a candidate profile form pulling out key data from a candidate’s CV. This led to speedier scanning of candidate data and so I went on to ask all recruiters to follow a similar approach for easier, more consistent evaluation.

Second, I implemented a batch CV review process – asking recruiters to send in CVs at certain intervals and then arranging for hiring managers to review together as a group to make a final decision. This simple change drastically reduced the time it took to review and respond to applications. Previously, each hiring manager took up to an hour a week separately, reviewing CVs. Working as a group, they now spent 20–25 minutes a week, reducing the time by 50%.

Making procurement and vendor selection decisions

Procurement decision making can be hit and miss particularly when you need to implement anything from an HR tracking system to regulatory compliance training. The temptation is typically to go for the cheapest option for a short-term play and sometimes that is appropriate. Other times, my approach is to focus on best value for money for the medium term and asking the question: ‘what am I buying?’.

I do this by understanding the actual business requirements from appropriate stakeholders and then creating evaluation criteria to assess multiple vendors. This can include reviewing public testimonials, whether there is flexibility on price and asking ‘what if’ scenario questions. This helps you to avoid costly mistakes and reduces potential setbacks.

Increasing market visibility to attract clients and prospective employees

A small company made market visibility a priority and wanted to find ways to stand out by applying for a BCorp certification. BCorp is a certification for businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. It is a highly rigorous process.

I took this on as a project, working through the in-depth application, speaking with internal colleagues and legal advisers who had gone through the process. A technical piece of the process meant amending specific clauses of the company’s Articles of Association to achieve a successful BCorp certification. Ultimately, I had the patience to deal with the seemingly boring technical detail. The company became BCorp certified resulting in a positive uptick in the number of client and candidate queries.

Managing high risk conversations with confidence and empathy

Tensions rose when an employee went on long term paid sickness absence and it impacted client delivery and wider team morale. At the time, there was no formalised sickness policy, and the performance manager and founder were equally hesitant to have a conversation in case they ‘got it wrong’.

It was important for me to start by meeting with the individual and focusing on objectively understanding what happened and what steps they had taken, such as whether they had noted down symptoms and triggers, sought medical advice. There are always different sides to every situation and wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything.

I then asked them to work together with me to create a plan to address the absence and reset expectations. We agreed that they would take the practical step of communicating absence earlier to help others resource adequately. After the meeting, I shared the agreed plan and detailed notes with the individual.

The outcome of that conversation revealed an underlying issue which was that the individual was not enjoying the role. They later exited the business but without the initial conversation, their inaction would have increased the cost of low productivity and reputational risk of them leaving unhappy.

Addressing employee behaviour with common sense

An employee breached their performance manager’s request to keep personal news confidential. The performance manager discovered the breach through other team members, and this caused significant anger along with team distraction.

I spoke with the employee because I was curious to understand why they felt their actions were appropriate. They apologised to begin with but then went on to justify what they had done saying that it wasn’t a big issue.

It was confusing to follow their logic and eventually, I decided to ask them directly how they define confidentiality, what it means to them and how they would feel if team members shared confidential information about them. The employee reflected on this and I explained the consequences of repeating their behaviour. The conversation ended with an apology to the performance manager which stabilised team dynamics and reignited focus.

Building habits around continuous feedback

Co-founders observed that employees frequently avoided either asking for or giving real-time feedback in the workplace – from commenting on client work to managing individual team interactions. This had multiple negative impacts ranging from poor work quality, and a lack of team collaboration. They wanted to actively address this behaviour and to normalise feedback so that it linked directly back to their company’s cultural values around improvement and quality.

I led the project and working with an external consultant, we designed an immersive and interactive training session framing it around feedback for growth. Part of the challenge was selecting common work situations and showing how feedback could be utilised using some different frameworks. Using AI, I created role playing scripts and hired actors to role-play those situations for employees.

Each role play ended with a question: ‘What would you do in that situation?’ with employees openly discussing their different approaches. The session covered topics such as micromanagement, managing interruption from a dominant personality, addressing inappropriate comments and dealing with challenging clients.

All employees of the company attended the training and over time, feedback behaviour amongst employees improved. Post-training we also incorporated questions around continuous feedback within our candidate interview process as well as highlighting the expectation within our onboarding process for new hires.

Capturing and sharing organisational knowledge

An important part of operations is about tackling the boring, behind the scenes and not so sexy stuff. The founders were keen to make sure from the outset that organisational knowledge does not live in the minds or computers of certain employees. If knowledge isn’t written down or isn’t accessible, then everything stalls and annoyance grows.

In one of my previous roles, I put in the time to develop quick ‘How to Guides’ (printed and digital) across several topics and then using some of those documents as templates, trained staff to get into the habit of developing their own and testing them out on other team members to sense check. The added and unforeseen benefit: it formed part of their on-going professional development around written communication and logical thinking.

I also managed knowledge sharing sessions asking employees to speak on client related topics or run lessons learned sessions at the end of client engagements. This linked back to the company’s focus on service improvement and quality control so that similar mistakes could be avoided on future engagement projects.

Being compliant ready when attracting global talent

Attracting global talent to leverage different skills and capabilities was instrumental to meet client work needs at a startup. It was at the heart of their people strategy. During their first week of operation, I was asked to own this project – to research and apply for their first ever UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) sponsorship licence. This was unfamiliar territory for me.

After researching and reviewing a 200-page guidance document and related resources, refining the application, I received approval for an A-rated Skilled Worker sponsorship licence within just 5 weeks of submission. This saved the business over £12K in legal fees and enabled them to progress quickly with their recruitment ambitions. It mattered as the budget was tight and funds needed to be prioritised for other areas of the business.

Drawing from my legal background and research capabilities along with significant amounts of patience helped the business achieve their desired outcome.