By Chris Timms
Regional Managing Director
Haines Watts
IT was only a couple of months ago that we celebrated in style our Ten Year regional anniversary. Back in October, we took the entire business, some 120 people now, off-site for the day. We spent the morning working through our core values, the afternoon team building with It’s a Knock Out, and the evening dressed up for a black-tie dinner and awards ceremony – bringing together friends and colleagues past and new to share the vision for our future.
It was a great day from start to finish, and one which made us realise what a year it was – in fact what the last ten years had been.
Many in our business have traditional accountancy roots and that remains a core and growing element of the firm. However, having just recruited our first Internal Creative Designer and also a Head of Technology & Operations, it’s cemented a shift in our marketplace over the last 12 months, and how we’ve subsequently adapted and diversified to support this change.
Much of that shift’s been possible due to the continuous investment and development in our people. It’s a hard balance to bring in specialists at any level and ensure the pace of the business remains at a speed which gives them their ‘buzz’ without comprising client service. We began various projects this year, understanding more of our client’s challenges through insight campaigns, raising the importance of relationship management with many individuals and teams within our business and signing off on new relationship software, so we can start to track and monitor all these results. Why? To put our clients first and up-skill our people to ensure we deliver on our value proposition of helping our client’s reach their ‘Destination with Speed and Certainty’.
It’s early days for these projects, however, they’ll underpin the direction of our strategy for years to come. The business has grown, and we need to grow with it.
We’d like to thank all our clients, not just in the last year, but those who’ve been loyal over the last decade. For those we’re fortunate enough to have started working with this year, we’re already planning how to make their business journey as enjoyable and successful as possible.
Finally, I raised a question recently at one of our national events, ‘what’s more important to any business – culture or profit?’ Is there a right answer to this? Like any decision or direction in life there’s often a balanced view. The answer, what’s the prize? If we continue to put our clients and people first and invest ‘cutely’ in the right areas, the profit will follow.
For more information about Haines Watts visit www.hwca.com