Sincerely caring for its clients

Founder of North Wales-based Yours Sincerely Lynne Fattah and operations director Evette Groom spoke with Ben Jones about recruiting success by the sea

Dynamic duo (main picture): (l-r) Evette Groom and Lynne Fattah

Dynamic duo (main picture): (l-r) Evette Groom and Lynne Fattah

Yours Sincerely is living proof that a business can thrive in the most unlikely of conditions.

Prestatyn, which once enjoyed a golden age as one of Britain’s enduring charming seaside resorts, could now be on the map for an entirely different reason: it is home to a shining example of a small recruitment business beating the big boys on its own terms.

Yours Sincerely, winner of the Best Client Care Award at the Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2009, supported by Thomas International, is that success story. From humble beginnings, the office, accountancy and industrial specialist is taking on its bigger opponents over the border in nearby Cheshire and Greater Manchester, and often coming out on top.

It is very much the ‘baby’ of Lynne Fattah, owner and founder, assisted by operations director, Evette Groom. Fattah came into recruitment after being frustrated in her efforts to find staff while working as a PA in the 1980s and early 1990s for, among others, Redrow Homes boss Steve Morgan.

“I thought, ‘I can do that better’,” she says. “So in 1995, I spent some time ringing around client companies and asked if they would use temps. They said they hadn’t really considered it. That type of staffing business didn’t exist in this area.”

And thus, from a small room in her St Asaph home, Yours Sincerely was born. Fattah started trading in May 1995, armed with only £400 and a computer, and two years later she and her team of three found themselves in an office proper in the city.

In 2002, the company moved to Prestatyn, into an office that was clearly once a home. Somehow, the homely feeling suits the company’s outlook. Local knowledge was, and remains, the key to the success of the business. As Groom points out: “The nationals tried to [source staff] from Chester, but you don’t have the local knowledge if you’re based in Chester.”

Their understanding of the local market continues to give Yours Sincerely the edge over its rivals. Two of Yours Sincerely’s clients say the agency’s local knowledge is key to a successful business relationship.

“They seem to know the client’s profile really well,” explains Caroline Winstone, North Wales child and adolescent services commissioner with North Wales NHS.

“They assess the client very thoroughly and they understand that it is important to find a personality which matches the rest of the team.”

Maun Hughes, HR officer at St Asaph-based aerospace manufacturers Qioptiq, agrees. “They are a local agency, with local candidates, who are always spoken to before interview, so it’s not a shock to them.

“They are always quick to respond but they don’t send just anyone, they always send good CVs.”

Yours Sincerely has had to overcome various obstacles in its quest to be one of the UK’s best, not least certain cultural differences.

The main differences are rooted not in that wellknown rivalry between the English and the Welsh, claims Groom, but in the differences between urban and rural life.

“I think it’s harder to recruit here,” asserts Groom, who joined in 2000 with four years of working for Reed on her CV. “When you work in a city,
the candidates have a level of flexibility over the commute. I was surprised by people here saying ‘I live locally but I don’t want to travel more than 10 minutes to get to work’.”

It is Yours Sincerely’s attention to its clients that enables it to be well respected in the area. The company looks to match personalities as well as skills, and aims to bring an honest approach to its work.

“We try to work very much in partnership with clients,” says Groom. “We want to add value and we don’t believe in just filling jobs.”

It is this ethos that helped Yours Sincerely to snare the Best Client Care accolade at the Recruiter Awards.

“I was over the moon just to be shortlisted,” Fattah reveals. “This has got to be the best thing of all the things we have won.”

Gareth Osborne, who came on board as a nonexecutive director in 2006, picked up the award on behalf of the company.

Both Groom and Fattah are effusive in their praise of Osborne since he joined the ranks. Fattah says: “He has set good governance for us, given us more structure and strategic planning for this business.” Groom concurs, adding: “I’ve learnt a lot from Gareth.”

Fattah has known Osborne — a passionate Welshman himself — for some time. He was managing director of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) during the time Fattah was REC director for Wales, a position she secured in her usual forthright manner back in early 2005.

“They’d sent an email out inviting people to be regional directors and I thought, ‘I can’t do that’, but then I thought again. So I approached areth at an REC meeting in Birmingham and just said ‘What about Wales?’”

And so began her tenure. During her time in the role, she was instrumental in bringing about the recognition of the REC’s Quality Mark among Welsh local education authorities (LEAs), which sets a minimum standard for LEAs and agencies to reach when recruiting supply teachers, as well as helping to formulate a ‘Welcome to Wales’ pack for migrant workers coming to the country.

She also endeavoured to bring agencies in the north and south of the country closer together to share ideas, but was largely frustrated in these efforts.

“The reason I resigned from that position was twofold,” Fattah explains. “It was hard to get people to come to events that I was holding, and after 18 months [doing the job], I needed to focus on my business.” She admits, however, that she will still “bang a drum” when necessary, and has lobbied the Welsh Assembly over the issue of public sector procurement, something she still feels strongly about.

“Supply chain management on a neutral vendor basis is completely wrong, in my opinion,” assists Fattah. “Nobody benefits — agencies, clients or the candidates.”

Fattah takes issue with a particular neutral vendor situation that has existed in among Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham county councils since late last year, but started to affect Yours Sincerely in February this year.

Fattah claims the neutral vendor framework has driven margins as low as 13%, meaning a poorer service for everyone.

Instead, she would like to see agencies being given the opportunity to bid for each council’s work separately, to keep margins competitive and allow agencies such as Yours Sincerely to do their job more effectively.

The net result of frameworks such as the one operating in North Wales has meant Yours Sincerely has turned its focus towards more private sector work. However, public sector arrangements of this type, particularly in the current economic climate, do provide a revenue stream for Yours Sincerely. As Fattah explains: “I’ve got my business to consider.”

Yet the recession has not hit Yours Sincerely too hard so far. One redundancy has had to be made and turnover for the last financial year, was £1.5m. She declines to reveal net profit, saying only: “We have invested a lot of money back into the business.” So what does the future hold for Yours Sincerely? Fattah is hoping to move into other sectors “by the end of the year”, although she stays tight-lipped about precisely which ones she is looking at. Furthermore, she has “not ruled out” more offices, adding: “I would like to see a greater multiple-branch business.”

Is she not concerned about losing the high standards of service that have helped to establish Yours Sincerely? “We have to make sure that those controls are there to keep that, we can’t just grow for the sake of growing.

“We are a small business but we don’t have a small mindset.” Whatever happens, Yours Sincerely’s status as an example of all that is good about recruitment seems assured. Fattah is justifiably proud of what her business has achieved over a relatively short space of time, from humble beginnings.

“We were definitely pioneers for the recruitment industry here,” she says. “We’ve made people up their game and we love competition!”

One can sense Fattah’s enthusiasm to continue what she has so ably started. There is much more to come from her company, it would seem. As she says: “I think there’s a lot more growth in us yet.”

THE YOURS SINCERELY BRAND
Yours Sincerely is a company that places great stock in its brand. Its logo, a blue smiley face on a white background, dominates the company literature and paraphernalia, with mugs, coasters, T-shirts, pens and coasters all adorned with it.

It has also won praise from the wider marketing world. ‘Brand guru’ Bill Wolf has called it a “trustworthy and memorable image with huge potential”. And he added that it was “fresh, current and good-natured”. “We want our logo to be seen as a mark of our quality,” adds Fattah.

 

PROFILE: LYNNE FATTAH
Born:
Leytonstone, London
Home: Prestatyn
Achievements: Shortlisted for Welsh Woman of the Year in 2001 (where she lost out to Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson) and 2008. Her business has achieved ISO 9001, REC Audited and Investors in People Status, as well as the Best Client Care accolade in the 2009 Recruiter Awards for Excellence.
Interests: Hill-walking, cycling and charitable work. She has completed the Three Peaks — ascents of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon — in under 23 hours, and in 2001 she cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats for charity.
Company CSR work: Yours Sincerely has consistently raised money for charity. Most recently, the firm hosted the Big Wig Ball to raise funds for the wig and headwear facility at North Wales Cancer Centre. The event raised £2,800, £700 of which was contributed by Barclays Bank.

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