At a time when businesses were facing the reality of cutting back to stay afloat or downsizing, Business Link West Midlands called on all businesses across the region to invest in training and development for their senior employees.

To some that may have seemed an impossible aspiration. But with the downturn reducing order books and profitability, BLWM encouraged businesses to actually invest in their people to help them maintain their market shares. So 12 months on, was that the right advice and what impact has the programme had? Business Link WM talks to one of its companies who 12 months ago took that advice to find out what impact the programme’s had on its business.  

Birmingham based Contract Fire Systems is a great success story. The business run by brothers Steve and Gary Quirk started as a small SME specialising in fire and security systems and next year celebrates its 25th year of trading. To understand how successful the company has become from starting out as a small SME turning over a few thousand pounds a year you just need to look at their business target for this year – to turn over 25 million pounds in their 25th year. They currently employ just under 250 staff and are one of the few businesses recruiting staff – making the point that these days businesses are largely either in decline or are growing which Contract Fire Systems is.

Their success lies in having strong family values, knowing their product and marketplace inside out and making the right kind of inward investment to keep them growing and expanding at the right time.  Business Link WM has been on hand throughout this process to advise Steve and Gary on these key development stages of their business.

Steve and Gary came to understand the opportunities for their business and realised they would only be able to take advantage of them with the highest calibre of staff and with an IT system capable of supporting their rapid growth. The first of these they tackled by recruiting a top class management team and they showed an unusual characteristic by letting their managers do their job and manage.

The company embarked on the Leadership and Management programme run by Business Link WM 12 months ago and during the six day consultation period with a specialist adviser they brought together the management team to agree what the critical factors were for their business, they defined departments within the business and for the first time, they set KPIs.  Steve explains “We’re a big service based company and we wanted to understand if we were delivering the right service at the right time to our clients.

“After agreeing our KPIs we met fortnightly as a management team to check our progress against them and then introduced something we think is quite revolutionary - the’ KPI Walk’.  Each department’s KPIs are shown on a plasma screen in the corridor entering their department and KPIs are tracked as being green – on target or red if they aren’t being met in some way. Every Monday morning at 9 am, the management team walk to each department and discuss their KPIs and how they’re doing against targets. It shows that our KPIs are at the core of our business operation and it motivates the individual departments as they don’t want to be the ones showing red in any areas and if they are, they usually have solutions to put it right when we come round to discuss performance. The programme has been invaluable for us and as a leadership team we can clearly see how we are driving the business forward.”

The second key area of supporting their business growth came when funding from Business Link West Midlands enabled them to work with an IT consultant to upgrade their IT system, which they are currently in the process of implementing to support their current growth and meet their aspirations for their 25th year of trading.

The Leadership and Management Programme enables companies to up-skill themselves and develop tailored training for individual managers:

• Six days specialist support, five of which are 50% subsidised and one day fully funded by Business Link
• Tailored training for managers, 40% subsidised
• Delivered to senior management teams within their own workplace
• Provides measurable performance indicators
• Aimed at senior management teams in organisations with between 50 and 400 employees.
• Available to all sectors except for public sector and not-for-profit organisations.

For more information on our Leadership and Management programme call 0845 113 1234 or visit www.businesslinkwm.co.uk