It was 15 years ago today that I started the HR Dept North Birmingham, joining just a handful of fellow Licensees of The HR Dept at that time. We had a shared vision of providing local and personal HR services for small businesses, akin to those they would receive if they had been operating within a corporate structure. I had taken a redundancy package from a corporate merger, my children were primary school age and I wanted to know whether HR translated from big company to small company. Well the good news is that it does. Corporates are just a multitude of small business units and wherever there are people employed, there is HR.
15 years on it is good to reflect on my personal and business journey. The children have grown up and are discovering how they fit into the world of work themselves. I am genuinely privileged to work with some truly amazing and inspiring clients. Small business owners are passionate about their product or service and their business is critical to them. Employing staff is often like bringing a new person into the family and this brings its ups and downs. To work with an HR professional can take an enormous burden from them as we help with getting those right people into place and retaining them as the business develops, hopefully over a very long time.
No business is an island, and certainly I have had much support along the way from my fellow Licensees and our Central HR Dept team, various allied business buddies and of course my own wonderful team (Caroline and Stacy – can’t imagine navigating the last year without you both!).
Today there is much optimism in the air. It is spring. Vaccines are rolling out. Businesses have survived having hunkered down during Covid and are working up their post Covid change and growth plans. We know there will be much demand for good quality and tailored HR professionalism as we move forwards. Bring it on!
