SRG’s formula for success: people

Citation

Waddington, A. (2012), "SRG’s formula for success: people", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2012.37211daa.007

SRG’s formula for success: people

Article Type: HR at work From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 11, Issue 4

Short case studies and research papers that demonstrate best practice in HR

Alexis Waddington HR Business Partner in the Science, Engineering and Technical Division of the Impellam Group.

SRG is an award-winning resourcing company dedicated to the supply of scientific, clinical and engineering professionals across the scientific based industries. Our integrated approach ranges from temporary and permanent recruitment and cutting-edge managed solutions through to our niche CRO, Synergy, contract clinical research and scientific services.

SRG is part of the Science, Engineering & Technical division (SET) of the Impellam Group. We run a network of offices across the UK and Europe, employing over 70 permanent employees across 12 locations and providing solutions to clients ranging from the world’s top five leading pharmaceutical organizations, through to spin out biotech firms.

A new vision and a new people strategy

When Kelly Morton was internally promoted to the role of managing director for SRG in August 2009, she was able to recognize that the business could only ever be as good as the people who work there. She began by clearly redefining SRG as a whole – its goals, vision and values, purpose and formula for success. A great part of the SRG formula for success is its talent. Therefore, together with a new approach to the running of SRG, we also needed a new approach to our people strategy.

Our aim was for our people to believe in the new vision rather than just comply with the changes that we made. To achieve this, we brought together a group of ten people from different areas of the business to form a “Change Agents Group.” The aim of the Change Agents Group was to work through each stage of an employee’s lifecycle (see Figure 1), understanding what we currently had in place, seeking the opinions of the group to understand what worked and what didn’t, and deciding what needed to be improved or adapted to underpin SRG’s formula for success.

Figure 1 The employee lifecycle

The group set to work to look at the profile of an SRG person, working as a team to identify the best recruitment process that would engage with applicants right away.

The Change Agents Group made considerable changes to the recruitment and welcome stages of the employee lifecycle; however, with only one systems trainer for SRG and limited access to group-level learning and development, we were unable to provide training across the entire employee lifecycle. In August 2010, a second trainer was brought in to support SRG and the SET division. At that point, we were able to begin our people development strategy.

First steps

Before establishing a new learning and development process, we knew the basics needed to be right. We worked with the change agents to understand what training had been made available in the past, how beneficial it had been and what they felt was missing.

We soon realized that ten opinions were not representative enough of the whole business. In September 2010, our first employee satisfaction survey was issued across the division. With this valuable feedback, information from our change agents and conversations with senior management about the future direction of SRG, we were able to define our training strategy. The plan was aligned with each role in the business and with the employment lifecycle at SRG.

SRG’s strategy

Due to the ever present focus on cost and efficiency, our vision was to have a blended approach to learning and development, with a mixture of on-the-job learning with a manager and classroom and online training. To ensure people were engaged at all levels in the business, we created a tiered approach that was then broken down into four distinct stages – see Figure 2.

Stage 1: new employee program

This stage takes an employee from day one of their employment to the end of their six month probation period and has different learning requirements each week mapped out within an induction diary. To ensure we capture new starters as soon as they join the business, much of their learning in their first week of employment is completed online and includes modules such as health and safety, an introduction to recruitment, IT skills and a company induction. All employees then attend a core skills course, which takes the training they have completed online to the next level.

Our e-learning system allows us to track an individual’s progress through the program and reinforces the knowledge gained through fun quizzes, interactive activities and award certificates on completion of each. Our bespoke system allows training to be carried out at any time, in any place, at any pace, via its online live status that adapts to suit different needs and lifestyles.

Once employees have completed their first six months they move into their relevant stream depending on their role.

Stage 2: sales, service or admin

The training in stage 2 has been designed around the requirements of each role and consultants’ specific learning paths, depending on skills and experience level. Some six months into our training we identified that, while a standard approach provides consistency, some people were falling through the gaps, where more specific skills that weren’t covered in standard courses were required. We decided to incorporate some flexibility within our scheme to provide bespoke courses where needed. This area is always evolving and we are currently moving into short webinar courses to provide bite-size training opportunities.

Stage 3: academy

SRG identified early on that it was difficult for consultants to progress to manager level and that a clear and structured approach to succession planning was needed. As a result, we launched the Academy, a self-nominated program that selects just ten people each year from across SRG and the other brands within the SET division of Impellam. The scheme is aimed at high performing individuals who want to further their career within SRG or Impellam, providing the platform and support to become a future business leader or business mentor. The scheme is backed by all senior managers within the business who, at the end of the course, mentor the delegates for a further 12 months to help them to achieve their potential.

This course is designed to take our top performers out of their comfort zone, to push them to exceed their potential and to support their growth, as well as the future growth of SRG.

Stage 4: management development

With the successful integration of our four tiered approach in May 2011, we began to focus on our management population. After undergoing a rigorous search, we empowered an external expert to support the discovery of our management competencies. Our focus for 2012 is for all our managers to undergo a competency assessment exercise to identify their strengths and development areas. This will allow us to create a bespoke training plan for each manager to enable them to reach their potential.

Strategy showing signs of success

In September 2011, SRG received awards from the Institute of Recruitment Professions for “Best People Development Business” and “Best Company to work for.” Profitability per head in SRG also rose by 8.5 percent in 2011.

In 2011, our aim was to get the basics right and to offer the right training for employees to be able to fulfill the basic elements of their roles. Feedback from recent satisfaction surveys and our award from the IRP show us that we are moving in the right direction but, as a team, we feel we have barely scratched the surface of what we can provide to support the growth of SRG.

Our focus for 2012 is to raise competency levels even further and ensure every employee has his/her own training plan and career path mapped out within SRG.

About the author

Alexis Waddington is currently responsible for HR, training and internal recruitment for the Science, Engineering and Technical Division of the Impellam Group. She was appointed to the role of HR Business Partner in January 2010, tasked with the development and execution of HR strategy. Her role evolved to cover training and internal recruitment in August 2010 when she was tasked with creating a coordinated program that covered the whole employee lifecycle. She studied Human Resource Management to Masters level and graduated from Bedfordshire University. Alexis Waddington can be contacted at: alexis.waddington@srg.co.uk