INTERVIEW: SOFTCAT
One-to-one Softcat, winner of Best Workplace – Large Category, has grown its turnover from £50 million to £600 million in the past decade. CEO Martin Hellawell tells Tom O’Byrne, CEO of Great Place to Work® UK, how it has achieved such rapid growth
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HIS BUSINESS WAS SET UP MORE THAN 20 years ago with one clear goal in mind – to create an organisation where people enjoyed coming to work and felt engaged. The founder of Softcat, Peter Kelly, was determined to set up a workplace that broke away from the feel of the more run-of-the mill, soulless and anonymous corporates. His aim was to establish a happy and vibrant working community and this is the culture that still pervades Softcat. The impact of such a legacy means that our people focus is not regarded as a specific HR responsibility, it’s everyone’s responsibility and is driven at from all angles. The outcome is a positive attitude among staff that produces great customer service and increases profitability. It has led to us winning ‘Most Trusted Leadership’ in the Large category and we are now a Laureate, so it is definitely working. How do I define engagement? For me it is how positively connected employees are to the company and what it stands for. It’s the most critical issue for our IT-reselling business. We don’t have any intellectual property, we haven’t invented any products and we don’t make any, so the attitude of our employees and quality and enthusiasm of the customer service we offer is how we differentiate ourselves – it is the cornerstone of our success. Our formula is simple: we recruit the right staff in the first place, train and develop them continuously and ensure they are engaged so they offer a fantastic service to customers, who are then encouraged to buy more.
Communication is the biggest element in creating that engagement. We communicate regularly using a number of platforms including, for example, weekly meetings and email. Nobody has an office here to encourage visibility and we aim to be as transparent as possible. We always look for new ideas from staff, through formal and informal mechanisms, and are always seeking feedback and opportunities to listen to them, so they feel they have a stake in the direction of the company. I devote an entire week of my time to go through, and respond to, findings from our annual employee satisfaction survey, the results of which, including the critical comments about me, are shared with everyone in the company. I work closely with HR and it’s very important that I do. High trust and engagement run through the DNA of this company but so we don’t compromise on that, and for us to grow as an organisation, we have to make sure we attract the right talent at the outset. The HR team is pivotal to this. They know precisely what we are looking for in terms of attitude, potential and ambition, despite the fact that we tend to recruit people at an early stage of their career so they have no track record to speak of. HR is also the eyes and ears of the organisation – getting out and about and working hard to keep staff motivated and passionate about what they do. Ultimately, though, it’s not just down to my relationship with HR that means there is an emphasis on people at Softcat. It is ingrained here, it’s set in stone and that foundation can’t be broken up easily.
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23/03/2016 08:31