Well, 2021… what a year it’s been!
Fabulous, fun and flipping hard work, but we can reflect and give ourselves a huge pat on the back as we move forward into our 16th year in business, but first of all, we are ready for a well-earned break during the festive period – we feel we well and truly deserve it!
So, in a nutshell, we have celebrated 15 very successful and rewarding years in business – we have planted 15 trees to symbolise this milestone and our commitment to the environment.
We have had yet another outstanding food bank collaboration with the Welcome Centre, and we have shown our appreciation to our clients and temporary workers with cupcakes, chocolate cakes and lot of other wonderful goodies for all their support throughout the years – did we tell you how grateful we are to everyone?
We have helped 189 new temporary workers gain employment this year and we have placed 32 people in permanent jobs with both existing and new clients. We have also had 46 temp to perm conversations, so we are delighted for everyone! Well done!
We have also supported many other people with interview support and preparation, we helped clients with market insights, redundancy workshops and much, much more.
We also passed our ISO 9001:2015 external audit and our REC Compliance test – both with flying colours and we have continued to thrive in a very challenging market where candidates are very much at the forefront of everything that we do.
So, what are we looking forward to in 2022?
As always, the business has a very clear vision in terms of what it hopes to achieve, we start our new year with 360 staff appraisals, with planning for the first quarter and then the rest of the year. We also work very closely with our clients too – looking at their objectives for the year – obviously, candidate and client attraction and retention being key factors again.
We are also excited to announce that we have our very first Business Administration Level 3 Apprentice starting with us on 5th January – Ellie Wayper will be joining the team here and we are really looking forward to passing on our knowledge and expertise and really supporting her though her initial 15-month contract. Ellie is a wonderful example of a very bright, enthusiastic, articulate and professional college graduate who is looking to embark upon a career within the recruitment industry.
We feel very privileged to work with a number of Associates and our Governing Body who will also be instrumental in Ellie’s training and development in Social Media, IT training and Employment Law for starters.
We know that 2022 is still going to be a huge challenge as we are all faced with the forces of supply and demand – namely the candidate shortage that we are all talking about, and have done over the past 12 – 18 months. This is something that will continue to be in every conversation we have within the team and with our valued clients to ensure that we are being as proactive as possible to find Talent in the marketplace. We have plenty of wonderful new ideas in place to support this and we look forward to finding more amazing candidates for our clients.
Whilst at the time of going to press it is uncertain what Boris has in store for us in the coming weeks but having worked through the pandemic for the past 2 years, at full throttle and very successfully, we feel sure that despite any further restrictions, we can adapt as we have done since March 2020 and continue to thrive and support our fabulous candidates and clients.
Everything we do is driven by our Mission Statement – “Through our people and quality of service, we aim to become the preferred choice of both clients and candidates – Placing talented people with talented businesses.”
If you would like to hear more about how we can assist you, whether you are a client or a candidate then please don’t hesitate to contact me directly – Kimbarnes@theagency.org.uk or call me on 01274 869100.
I hope you have all had a very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2022… we’ve got this!
Kim
