Musings of a Managing Director!

We’re three days into 2020 and upon sitting down with pen and paper to plan our strategy for this year I started reflecting on the last two years. It astounds me how much we’ve achieved in such a short space of time. When you’re in the middle of all the activity, the hubbub and challenges you don’t immediately recognise all the goals and targets we’ve hit as a team at Electrical Safety UK. And for this I’m ever so grateful to be part of such a self-motivated and fantastically eccentric and focussed group of people.

We started the last two years with a challenge on our hands. Order placement was significantly low and so were business development activities. Our name was great in the industry, but our Marketing activities needed completely revamping and a revised fresh approach being taken to build our brand.

We had to do something immediately about our predicament, or we may have seriously been looking at reviewing our options. As a board there were some extremely tough decisions to be made and some that we had managed to avoid for some time.

A refreshed approach was taken to the running of the company. The board worked together to throw ideas onto the table and I quantified and formulated a strategy to implement changes to the organisation, management and operational structures. This was implemented with huge success and the commitment of our entire team.

We revised our Unique Selling Point and tied together all our operational activities to provide our clients with the Holistic Approach to Electrical Safety Management. This included assisting clients with not only the service they had requested, such as an arc flash study, but providing the client with a one-stop shop with complete Electrical Safety Management services. Mitigating risk through follow on work after the study was complete with bespoke Safety rules and operational procedures, engineering works, risk reduction workshops, training and competence routes and providing PPE and software solutions.

Take a look at our Services here.

We completely upturned our brand using the new USP. Focusing marketing in the right places, establishing ESUK as the go to company for Arc Flash consultancy, Electrical Safety Management Procedures and Training and Competency Assessments. Brand new website, new marketing materials…. A new approach.

We completely revamped our reporting procedures internally both financial and target driven. We stopped allowing profit to be the forefront of our reporting and driving our business. We focussed on Cash Flow. For Cash is King! A company can become insolvent but have book profit, as we had begun to discover in the previous years. A company with good cash flow will inherently be profitable. Profit can be manipulated, cash cannot.

Targets were developed for all internal activities. The setting of these targets was driven by our employees, as are most of our business operations and standards. As a manager I like to promote self-motivation in our employees, rather than management barking from above allowing the people doing the work to dictate their own goals and targets, with a little steering from above to meet company strategy.

We hosted the International Arc Flash Conference in Manchester where Associate Director and Vice Chair of IEEE 1584 committee, Mr Jim Phillips P.E spoke to 100 delegates about the changes to IEEE 1584-2018 and how to implement them into Arc Flash Risk Assessments in Europe.

We refocussed our training department to providing what we do best, bespoke competency and training solutions for our clients. Identifying and closing the gap to ensure our clients comply with their legal obligations and individuals are given the best opportunity to succeed in their role.

The company was recognised for 15 years in business and received a highly commended award for our marketing campaigns in the last year. We also saw our Executive Chairman Ted Lowe awarded with a Lifetime Achievement award and a British Empire Medal for his contributions to Electrical Engineering over his 65-year career.

Finally, following all this hard work, we saw our company exceed the ￡1.2 million turnover mark, and a significant profit on the year end following two years of extensive investment. This is looking set to continue as the first quarter of our new financial year has also seen significant turnover, profit and not forgetting that all important cash!

The most important thing we have learnt as a company is to not become complacent in our achievements, which takes me back to the beginning of this blog. One thing we have not been good at this past two years is sitting back and really giving ourselves a big pat on the back, which I hope we can remember to do from time to time whilst we are searching for our next challenge, our next achievement and our next goal.

Finally, there are so many achievements personally too that I’m grateful for in the last two years. I became a Chartered Manager and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. I was involved in navigating a company and its team out of some tough challenges over the years and learning a hell of a lot along the way. I’ve had some amazing mentors and friends guiding me and dealing with my sometimes challenging passion. I’ve formulated a management team and employees that I trust implicitly and wish to see succeed in their own careers and life goals. I ran the Great North Run, something I’d never even dreamed I’d achieve (even whilst doing it ha ha!) to raise money for Anthony Nolan, the bone marrow transplant charity that saved my niece’s life following a diagnosis of leukaemia.

And at the end of 2019 I married my best friend, and my rock through it all. (So, to announce a name change! Rebecca Broadhead!)

I’m so proud of all we have achieved together but of course we wouldn’t of have achieved half of the above, personally or with the company, without the fantastic connections we have made through the Electrical Safety UK, especially in my Local area and the Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber and Women in Business groups.

Thank you to all and here’s to a prosperous, fun and challenge driven 2019!

Want to find out more about Electrical Safety UK? Why don't you visit us here: www.elecsafety.co.uk or drop us an email at [email protected] and request a free of charge visit by one of our Electrical Engineers to review your requirements