BUSINESSNEWS
HEWETT RECRUITMENT ‘ROCKING’ APPROACH TO STRATEGIC PLANNING The start of the financial year is when most businesses set goals for the year ahead and review performance over the previous 12 months. However, sometimes this annual exercise, whilst useful to set out intentions, can be quickly forgotten as other priorities appear and we move on. Directors Jake Mountford, Gordon Hazelton and Simeon Chapman
HAZELTON MOUNTFORD FOCUS ON SUCCESS Latest Chamber Patron Member Hazelton Mountford Ltd are an excellent example of local entrepreneurial success. Hazelton Mountford are Chartered Insurance brokers, specialising in business insurance. Their story began in 2008 when Group Managing Director Gordon Hazelton started the business with just himself and one assistant in a small two room first floor office in Droitwich. The vision was to provide business clients with the expertise of the large corporate insurance brokers with the personal service and value for money offered by smaller independent businesses.
A few years ago, as a business, Hewett Recruitment went through the process of redefining their vision, values and strategy using Traction by Gino Wickman as a loose structure. They didn’t buy-in wholeheartedly to every element of EOS or the “Entrepreneurial Operating System” as Wickman calls it, but what they have continued to use years on is the idea of ‘Quarterly Rocks’. These ‘Rocks’, otherwise known as Strategic Priorities, are concrete attainable goals, set and reviewed every quarter, with the objective of maintaining momentum towards the longer-terms vision. At Hewett Recruitment, they actually do quarterly ‘rock reviews’ as part of quarterly company meetings – which keeps Hewett accountable to their employees and keeps communication wide open.
Laura Hewett, Owner and Director of Hewett Recruitment
The idea is that from the company level quarterly rocks, every individual in the business has their own rock(s) that they are responsible for, so everyone is very clear on their contribution to what the business is trying to achieve. This simple idea of quarterly rocks is a great way to formalise regular communication with teams and to empower employees – ensuring everyone really understands the importance of their role in the bigger picture. As we know, communication and empowerment are essential to employee engagement, which will not only improve productivity, but staff retention too! www.hewett-recruitment.co.uk
PLANNING FOR A SUCCESSFUL WEBSITE
A few months later Jake Mountford joined Gordon and together they have driven the company forward with Hazelton Mountford now a insurance brokers controling in excess of £10m premium income. “The clients range from local tradesmen, SMEs to large multi-national companies’ says Gordon, ‘no matter who they are, each will be looked after and receive personal service and expertise. Our core values remain the same.” The company have built strong reserves over the years, have weathered the last two years, and continued to grow. Gordon concludes: “We are now looking forward to the next phase of success by recruiting new people and looking to grow our client base by working with those clients who would like to be looked after by a locally owned business with the expertise that can only be provided by one of only 5% of insurance brokers in the UK to be awarded Chartered Status.” hazeltonmountford.co.uk
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When you’re selling a product and associated service to other businesses, a website that makes it easy for potential customers to find the information they need and get a feel for the way you work is essential. Achieving that takes a LOT of planning before design begins! The planning stages for their new website involved considerations like the customer journey, what information is critical and what extra should be available for the curious, how to
make navigation intuitive and how to communicate our USP. Planning the structure first made it easy to direct the photo and video shoot to convey the personality of the business as they already knew exactly what shots were needed (and repainting the wall in the office to match the brand colours made ALL the difference). Time will tell but the team are pleased with the result - the planning was definitely worthwhile! www.claritysolutions.co.uk
March/April 2022
