Chamber News 12

Paul Colman – Chief Executive

Paul Colman is the Chief Executive of South Cheshire Chamber of Commerce & Industry. He has 20 plus years of experience representing the local business community, providing businesses with up to date information and helping to facilitate local networking and knowledge sharing activity. He represents the South Cheshire Business Community on many boards and committees including Crewe Town Board, Crewe Town Council, Cheshire East Council and Cheshire & Warrington LEP, and also through the national British Chambers of Commerce accredited network.

Andy Wood

Andy Co-Founded Storage Boost, now Weston Centre Business Hub, back in 2005 having already gained massive knowledge over the years in the construction of self storage facilities. He is not only at the forefront of self storage development; having co-founded, built, operated, developed and sold mulitple award winning selft-storage assets, he brings a wealth of experience to his hometown area of Crewe and Nantwich and continues to make spaces and workspaces that benefit business in the local area.

Andy Butler

Andy Butler is a Director at Legat Owen Commercial Property consultants . He has been a practising Chartered Surveyor from his office in Nantwich for nearly 30 years with particular experience and expertise in the office and retails sectors. Andy lives on the Cheshire /Shropshire border and has 3 daughters.

Su Turner

Su Turner is CEO of Insight to Impact Consulting, which specialises in improving governance in schools, councils, charities and health boards. Su is the creator of the award-winning strategic governance framework - Shaping Governance®, which is making a demonstrable improvement in school and academy governance across the country. She brings extensive experience of governance and a passion for supporting and promoting local businesses to her role as Director at the Chamber.

Camille Renaudon

Camille is a solicitor and Partner at Hibberts LLP Solicitors who specialises in employment law. Hibberts have five offices across Cheshire & Shropshire and can trace its roots as far back as 1799! Having worked in Crewe & Nantwich for the past 15 years, Camille is a passionate supporter of local businesses. She has very recently been appointed as a Board member of The Chamber and applied to do so as she wanted to use the benefits of her professional experience and enthusiasm to support and develop the Chamber, local businesses and those who live and work in South Cheshire. Outside of work her interests include football, boxing, a slow Parkrun most Saturdays but mainly being kept very busy by her young daughter Harriet and Dobby, their sprocker puppy.

David Morris

Working in South Cheshire since 1990 has given David an in-depth understanding of the area. He specializes in providing accountancy advice to businesses, focusing on their financial and tax affairs. Much of his work also involves offering guidance on setting strategies and providing key management information to business owners from large corporates to sole-trader operations. Having built a career in accountancy practice, he is a founding director of Banks Sheridan Accountants, which was set up in 2005, and Banks Sheridan Wealth, which has recently been launched. Both businesses operate from Crewe Business Park. Together these firms provide an all-round finance-related service, which includes: wealth management, accountancy, auditing, tax and business advice and David looks forward to using his experience for the benefit of the Chamber’s members and the local community.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT In the Spotlight with...

Dan Marshall

Absolute Solutions Group

With a career that has taken him from working behind a bar to CEO of the Absolute Solutions Group, Dan Marshall has channelled his ‘people skills’ into finding high calibre staff to join the workforces of industrial, commercial, technical and healthcare companies across the North West.

Absolute Recruitment was founded almost 20 years ago by Dan and his wife Jess.

Now part of the Absolute Solutions Group, it is now one of the seven Group companies - including the newly-launched Absolute Angels providing domiciliary care - covering a wide range of sectors.

Here we meet the long-standing Chamber member behind one of the fastest growing recruitment companies in the country.

Dan and Jessica Marshall and scenes from their travels round the world

A new addition to the Marshall household - Moose, an American Bully pup who is growing fast

Q.Tell us about your background as a couple and why you chose to specialise in recruitment.

We met in 2001, when Jessica was already working in recruitment. I was working in sales for a dairy company and had a second job as a barman in a wine bar in Crewe. Jess used to come into the bar from time to time and we’d chat, but then she started supplying workers to the dairy company and, because part of my remit was looking after the staff in the factory, we got to know each other properly. Within a year, Jess’ Director at the Recruitment company head-hunted me to set up their Wrexham office. A couple of years later, we decided to go it alone and set up Absolute Recruitment.

Q. Absolute Angels was born at the height of the pandemic. How did you get round the challenges of testing and PPE?

It wasn’t so much the testing and the PPE that were barriers to setting the company up - it was more that the pandemic delayed statutory things such as the company’s Care Quality Commission registration (all domiciliary care companies must be registered with and regulated by the CQC). Once everything was in place, we then faced the challenge of attracting staff during lockdown. The whole process was beset by delays, but we finally got things off the ground by June 2021 and are now providing crucial care to service users across Crewe and Nantwich and are already branching out into other areas.

Having worked with a good workwear provider for years previously with the other Group companies, we had a good supply of PPE already set up, but our niece, who heads up the medical and mechanical engineering department at the University of Hull, channelled the department’s skills into manufacturing safety visors for use in medical environments, so we managed to provide hundreds of free masks to our care home clients across Cheshire and Staffordshire.

Q. How have you adapted to the changes, including hybrid working?

Prior to the pandemic, 65% of employers either didn’t offer the option of hybrid working, or only offered it to 10% of the workforce. Over half of workers would reportedly like to retain a mix of working at home and in the office.

When pandemic restrictions were in place, we, like most other companies, needed to facilitate home-working for our internal staff, and this relied on a certain amount of trust that they were still going to get the job done away from the office. Of course, they did a brilliant job, and showed that we could allow a greater degree of flexibility in working patterns. It’s allowed us to offer new hybrid working schemes that are just as effective as 100% office-based working. Combined with technological developments such as Zoom, Teams and app-based telecoms, we can offer the same level of service to our customers and candidates as we always have.