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Creative Scale-Up programme returns to boost Greater Manchester creative businesses

Sam Whitear

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26/05/2020

Creative Scale-Up programme returns to boost Greater Manchester creative businesses

CREATIVE industry businesses in Greater Manchester can receive a timely boost to help their recovery from the impacts of COVID-19 with the return of an innovative programme that will help them to scale-up and grow.

With a vibrant community of more than 8,500 creative businesses, generating £1.4 billion of economic growth annually, Greater Manchester boasts one of the country’s leading creative clusters outside of London.

Some businesses that have already benefited from the programme include Engage Hub, Peoples History Museum, Creative Tourist, Buffalo 7, Prospect Games and Beatstream Media.

However, the COVID-19 lockdown has created many challenges for the local industry, meaning there has never been a better time to receive advice and support from the Creative Scale-Up programme, which was launched in January by the Growth Company and Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and fully funded by DCMS.

The programme will be tackling gaps in investment and growth in the Creative sector, while empowering creative businesses to realise their full growth potential, providing the training and tools necessary to take creative businesses to the next level.

It has been adapted to help businesses tackle the current challenges they are facing due to COVID-19 as well enabling them to position themselves as strongly as possible to move into the recovery phase and bounce back into growth.

One local business to have benefitted from this advice during the pandemic is Mustard Media, Europe’s leading festivals and events accelerator. Rob Masterson, Managing Director, explained: “It’s been fantastic having a senior advisor available to update us individually and help us navigate the coronavirus crisis which has unfortunately had an adverse impact on the live music and festival industry.

“It’s been great having the comprehensive training modules with a range of tools needed to scale up. The breadth of the modules and the fact they’ve been available as webinars has been really helpful to educate the team and has allowed us to be flexible with attending during an uncertain period.

“We’re very much looking forward to applying the sales and marketing and IP knowledge to future innovation projects as we seek to steer the business at this time. We’ve had some very productive discussions with the department for international trade too, helping introduce us to new connections in the US. We hope to build upon these as we seek to expand the business once we get back into growth mode.”

Sam Whitear, Creative Scale-Up Programme Project Manager, said: “The creative industries in Greater Manchester have thrived in recent years, but there is no doubt that COVID-19 has seen a lot of projects come to a halt and left these businesses facing all-new and unexpected challenges.

“We launched Creative Scale-Up in January as a programme to help enable businesses to strengthen and sharpen up their skills, review their strategies and benefit from peer-to-peer learning, and all of these are even more important right now.

“All businesses will be needing to focus on their current challenges, but also planning for the growth they are aiming for when the world of work has returned to normality again.

“Creative Scale-Up adds further scale and depth to the services we are offering for the creative sector, including the relaunched Greater Connected programme, and crucially it supports Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s Build Back Better programme aimed at helping the region come back stronger after COVID-19.”

In line with the Government’s social distancing policies, all modules of the Creative Scale-Up programme will now be delivered virtually.

Businesses in the creative industries in Greater Manchester can still sign up for the few remaining places by 12 June atbusinessgrowthhub.com/creative-scale-up-programme.

Equilibrium Financial Planning bolsters COVID-19 charitable donations with grant to Seashell Trust

CSR

Sam Whitear

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22/05/2020

0

Equilibrium Financial Planning bolsters COVID-19 charitable donations with grant to Seashell Trust

Manchester-based Seashell Trust has secured a £500 grant from Equilibrium Financial Planning, as the Cheshire-based financial planning company embarks on the next round of its Community Support Scheme donations.
Seashell Trust provides education and year-round residential care for children and young people aged 2-25, who have profound learning disabilities and sensory impairments. All its children and young people have a degree of brain damage, resulting in profound, multiple and complex disabilities. This includes combinations of visual and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, down’s syndrome, autism, drug-resistant epilepsy, diabetes and digestive disorders requiring tube feeding.
The charity aims to provide a creative, happy and secure environment for children and young people with the expertise of its specialist teachers, care staff, onsite therapy team, assistive technologists, swimming teachers and sports coaches.
The donation from Equilibrium will go towards equipment to ensure that children can shower safely following their swimming lessons with the Seashell Trust.
Wendy Bray, fundraising manager at the Seashell Trust, said: “Seashell Trust is so grateful to Equilibrium for their incredibly generous donation of £500. The money raised will be used for hydro equipment that will enable more children and young people with very complex disabilities to access our swimming pool. Our aspirations for young people include ensuring they have access to the same opportunities as others, including sport and recreational learning. Seashell Trust has pioneered inclusive sport for those with and without disabilities and exercise also make an important contribution to our students’ mental health and well-being. Thank you so much from everyone at Seashell.”
Many of Seashell Trust’s students have very limited mobility and require specialist facilities with shower trollies and shower chairs so that they can be showered with safety and dignity. The grant will be used to invest in a new shower trolley to ensure that these children and young people can be showered safely.
The move comes as Equilibrium recently donated over £30,000 to local charities, foodbanks and voluntary organisations, to ensure they were supported through the COVID-19 crisis.
The company’s founder, Colin Lawson, spoke about the wealth management firm’s unique approach at the time, saying: “In the wake of COVID-19, the plight of charities has really come to our attention. Food banks are struggling with having less volunteers and no produce as people panic buy. The general public is also making fewer donations than normal, as people are having to face pay cuts or redundancies and have less cash to spare. […]
“Everything that we do at Equilibrium is centred around making people’s lives better, and so as the world has been thrown into turmoil, we feel there’s no better time to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into that.”
Equilibrium’s Community Support Scheme was set up in 2015 to award grants ranging from £100 to £500 to community organisations and charities in Cheshire East, Greater Manchester and Chester and District.
With this latest handful of grants, the wealth management company has awarded over £24,000 in funds to community groups. The scheme forms a part of the company’s wider charitable strategy, anchored by The Equilibrium Foundation – which has a current donation goal of £1m.
Grant applications from the Greater Manchester area can be submitted at https://www.eqllp.co.uk/the-foundation/greater-manchester-community-support-scheme/
For more information about Equilibrium’s charity initiatives or the specialist wealth management service it offers, visit: www.equilibrium.co.uk or follow @EquilibriumFP on Twitter.

SOCIAL CHAIN announces major acquisition as it shakes off COVID-19

Sam Whitear

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22/05/2020

0

SOCIAL CHAIN announces major acquisition as it shakes off COVID-19

THE SOCIAL CHAIN AG (WKN: A1YC99) is on the verge of its largest acquisition in the young company’s history as it prepares to take a 51 percent majority stake in A4D Inc. The Southern Californian specialist for digital performance marketing increases the global capabilities of SOCIAL CHAIN and is expected to further accelerate the growth of the social media pioneer in the U.S. The closing of the transaction between the parties is scheduled for the end of May.

SOCIAL CHAIN is already successfully operating its U.S. business from New York, with customers including Uber and Twitch, and is committed to its goal of generating at least 50 percent of its revenues in the U.S. market by 2022. Today, around half of the 80 million followers of SOCIAL CHAIN’s owned social media channels reside in the U.S.

A4D, the user acquisition focused advertising network, was founded in 2004 by Jason Akatiff, an expert in digital performance marketing who will remain on board as CEO. With well over 12 million acquisitions of new users for over 3000 clients, A4D has proven to generate high quality users. A4D employs 40 people and has an annual turnover of more than $35 million.

SOCIAL CHAIN has recently announced its first turnover and profit forecast for 2020 since the merger of Lumaland AG and The Social Chain Group AG the previous year. Based on the current business performance, the Management Board expects a pro-forma consolidated turnover of approximately $220 million and a positive EBITDA of $9 million. This forecast continues to position SOCIAL CHAIN as one of the pioneers in the social media publishing, social marketing and social commerce industry.

On the acquisition of A4D, Steven Bartlett, CEO and Co-founder of SOCIAL CHAIN, said: “Our fastest growing international market over recent years has been the U.S. In 2019 we saw our revenue increase by over 150% in the U.S. We see it as possibly the world’s most important advertising market and plan to expand aggressively in that region over the coming years. This is the just one of many steps in strengthening our global marketing services proposition in a substantial way.”

Addressing the company’s strategy during COVID-19, Bartlett added: “The COVID-19 crisis has been the truest test of nimbleness and resilience for companies and their leaders – and Social Chain has proven that its new-age, end-to-end and diversified model of owning social media audiences, owning the marketing capabilities and owning the products, is a model capable of weathering even the most torrential storms. The crisis did impact our marketing services business but we implemented quick and significant cost-saving measures in order to limit the impact of the disruption and safeguard our team. We are now forecasting strong growth for Q3 and Q4.”

Wanja S. Oberhof, co-CEO of SOCIAL CHAIN, said: “We are currently in advanced negotiations to finalise further acquisitions and I am confident that we will be able to acquire additional revenue in the region of $105 million at favourable conditions this year. This would enable us to increase pro-forma consolidated revenues of SOCIAL CHAIN AG to over $300 million as early as 2020 and create a strong basis for further growth in 2021”.

Jason Akatiff, CEO and Founder of A4D, said: “I look forward to working together with SOCIAL CHAIN. With its integrated understanding of social, technology, creativity and brand management, the A4D team has found a new, inspiring and global home.”

Manchester creative & digital agencies join forces to raise £17,000 for local causes supporting Covid19

Creative
CSR

Sam Whitear

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21/05/2020

0

Manchester creative & digital agencies join forces to raise £17,000 for local causes supporting Covid19

Over 40 creative, marketing and digital agencies from Manchester and the North West have teamed up to raise an incredible £17,000 for two Greater Manchester charities that are supporting vulnerable people during the Covid19 crisis.

The agencies smashed their original target by taking part in a marathon relay, running a full race between each business on Thursday 7th May, completing a total of 1101 miles between them.

People from the region have supported the cause by donating the notable amount of money that will be split between Forever Manchester, and Manchester Foundation Trust Charity.

Five thousand pounds has been donated to the NHS Trust, and the money has been used to buy 50 tablets. The tablets will be distributed to hospitals in the city which are part of the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust – the largest NHS hospitals trust in the country. Manchester Foundation Trust Charity received the tablets last week, and they will be used by patients to connect with loved ones who they are unable to see during this difficult time.

Forever Manchester has been presented with the rest of the donated funds, which will be used to help the city’s most vulnerable during the Covid19 outbreak with food banks, mental health initiatives and check-ins for older people or anyone who needs a helping hand.

Elizabeth Coulson, Senior Development Manager at Manchester Foundation Trust Charity, said: “We’re incredibly grateful to everyone at the Agency Leaders Network. It is testament to all the network members that these wonderful donations were possible. We want them to know that the tablets have been very gratefully received by our patients.”

Jean Mills, Head of Business Development at Forever Manchester, commented: “Forever Manchester was really impressed by the response to the Agency Leaders Network idea of running a relay marathon. It’s fantastic that so many people wanted to take up the challenge, have some fun, and support Forever Manchester at a time when we are inundated with requests for funding from community projects who are going out of their way to help those who are struggling in different ways as a result of coronavirus. We’d like to say a massive thanks to everyone involved.”

The initiative was spearheaded by Oli Hopkinson, joint founder of digital marketing agency, Bind, and supported by the Agency Leaders Network. The initiative initially set out to raise £10,000 in total; £5,000 via Just Giving, with The Hoppy Trust matching the amount with a further £5,000 donation. The total now hugely exceeds the target!

Oli commented: “This kind of social impact is not something I can say I have been a part of before, and I feel honoured and privileged to have been involved. The people of Manchester are very special, and when the going gets tough we unite and strive to make a difference. The businesses involved in this initiative put aside the fact they compete with each other on a daily basis, and came together with a common goal. The support has been amazing. This is the place.:

Steve Thompson, Founder of the Agency Leaders Network and MD of Forward Role, the North’s largest Marketing & Digital recruiter, commented: ““Handing over the tablets to the Manchester NHS Trust was incredible. Some of the stories we heard around the isolation from loved ones that all patients have had to face because of covid really brought to life just how uplifting these devices are going to be for patients across the North West. The region’s marketers have done themselves proud!!”
People can still donate to the cause via the Just Giving page:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/agency-leaders-network

Ends

TEACHERS’ RESPONSE TO CORONAVIRUS SPARKS GRATITUDE FROM PARENTS IN MANCHESTER

Education

Sam Whitear

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20/05/2020

0

TEACHERS’ RESPONSE TO CORONAVIRUS SPARKS GRATITUDE FROM PARENTS IN MANCHESTER

A new survey with parents of primary and secondary school age children, released today and commissioned by the Get Into Teaching campaign in support of national Thank A Teacher Day, reveals the scale of newfound appreciation for teachers up and down the country.

Eight in 10 (80%) parents in Manchester who responded to the survey agree that over the course of the coronavirus restrictions they have developed a greater appreciation for the job teachers do, and nearly three quarters (74%) agree teachers nationwide have gone “above and beyond” over this period.

Based on their experience supporting home education, almost all parents in Manchester agreed that being a teacher requires a lot of patience (93%), and keeping young people engaged in learning takes a lot of creativity (92%).

The Thank A Teacher campaign, run by The Teaching Awards Trust, is calling on children and their families to join forces today to thank the teachers and school staff who go above and beyond and profoundly impact their lives.

Andy Gibson, a Maths teacher at Chorlton High School in Manchester said: “It really is humbling to hear that so many parents are feeling so appreciative of our efforts. Being a teacher always allows you to make a real difference in the world, but I’ve felt a heightened sense of purpose during these extraordinary circumstances.

“School leaders, teachers and staff have pulled together in hugely challenging circumstances to keep schools open for those who need it the most and find innovative and creative ways to support our pupils. For example, at Chorlton High School, we have created a virtual learning community through Microsoft Teams. Every subject has created interactive learning resources to support our students’ progress in the best way we can. Our social media presence has erupted in a magnificent array of activities, experiences and opportunities to help broaden our students’ minds outside of the prescribed curriculum.

“I’ve been touched by the heart-felt messages of support and “thank yous” from pupils, parents and the wider community – it’s created stronger bonds between us all and has helped keep me motivated over the last few weeks.”

Some of the biggest challenges parents in Manchester identify when supporting their child with home learning include:

52% find it hard to keep their child engaged in the work they are doing;
47% find it hard to keep their child motivated to complete work set;
31% find it hard to help their child with work they don’t understand; and
24% find it hard to come up with creative ways to make subjects interesting.

Almost nine in 10 (89%) parents surveyed in Manchester are grateful to the teachers who positively influence their child, day in day out. Children themselves also seem appreciative, as three quarters (75%) of parents say their child is missing their schoolteacher and being in lessons while schools are closed to the majority of pupils.

Steve Munby, Chair of the Teaching Awards Trust, said: “We have always known the incredible lengths that teachers and other school staff go to for their students, and these results show how much parents have grown to appreciate this work.
“This annual campaign is our opportunity to thank the incredible teachers, lecturers and other staff who keep our schools running, who inspire wonder on a daily basis, and who do everything in their power to give our young people the best possible education, whatever the circumstances.”

Minister for School Standards Nick Gibb said: “Teachers, head teachers and support staff have shown outstanding professionalism and commitment during these challenging times.
“They are doing an incredible job in finding innovative ways to continue young people’s education at home, be it through online lessons, set work or motivating phone calls with pupils.
“Now as we prepare for more young people returning to school, and as the country takes careful steps towards recovery, teachers and support staff are playing a vital role in ensuring children continue their education in these unprecedented times.”

Using the hashtags #HowWillYouSayThankYou and #ThankATeacher, pupils and their families are being asked to come up with their own creative messages of thanks to celebrate their teachers and wider school staff, for example by singing songs, reading poems and recording video clips.
An inspirational teacher makes all the difference. Find out how to share your appreciation for a teacher you know by visiting: thankateacher.co.uk

THE INSIGHTS PEOPLE INNOVATION PROVIDES CLIENTS WITH COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE & A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE

Blog

Sam Whitear

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20/05/2020

0

THE INSIGHTS PEOPLE INNOVATION PROVIDES CLIENTS WITH COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE & A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE

The Insights People, the global leader in kids’, parents and family market intelligence, announced major feature upgrades for their award-winning data portal and the company celebrates successful start to 2020 as demand and usage of platforms soars to record levels.

The portal is updating with more than 3,000,000 data points every week by surveying more than 3,000 children from 9 countries every week, or more than 150,000 a year, providing dynamic and comprehensive insight into the attitudes, behaviour, and consumption of children.

Using current design patterns, the real-time portal was written in a modern, industry-standard PHP Framework called Laravel. The platform utilises custom-built, modular Vue.js components for interactive elements, enabling The Insights People team to rapidly develop new features.

The new exciting developments to its real-time award-winning portal which provides users with enhanced ability to view, filter, interrogate and analyse the data to their own specific requirements. The developments which include Global View, Side by Side Analysis, Search, and the ability to build a snapshot of a brand’s audience, have received universal praise from users across the industry.

Glynn Hayward, Creative Director Complete Control comments,
“We find The Insights People portal really useful and the new developments are superb. This combined with the ability to speak to their expert team when we need support. And we also love how agile they are constantly updating the survey based on their knowledge and client feedback, meaning, for example, we can see how a new TV show is performing from its launch.”

The recent updates represent the start of an extensive period of innovation for the Manchester-based business, whose development team has significantly grown to a ten-strong team headed by CTO Dan Lucas and Chief Data & Information Officer Richard Craig, with the team in final beta testing of a predictive tool to predict future performance and trends, starting with the success of new films.

Dan Lucas, Chief Technical Officer The Insights People comments,
“The portal is unique because it was designed from the ground up to gain real-time data with game-changing insights of the future, taking into account simplicity, friendly interface, and usability – something that traditional market intelligence companies lack. Today our portal has over 240,000,000 datapoints from 200,000+ surveys taken and the team is now focussed on building a series of intuitive tools based on our experience and client feedback to put unique insights to them into the hands of every client. “

Since the new features were added to the portal, The Insights People usage has risen significantly with more than 650 active users using the portal multiple times a week.

BIG Partnership a recipe for success for Italy’s premier pasta brand

Creative

Sam Whitear

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20/05/2020

0

Leading marketing and communications agency BIG Partnership has been appointed by premium pasta brand Le Stagioni d’Italia to support its launch into the UK market.

BIG will work alongside the Italian brand and its distribution partner Worldwide Food Associates (WWFA), to raise awareness of its range of pasta and rice products, as part of an integrated communications strategy.

Originally due to launch in the UK later this year, Le Stagioni d’Italia brought forward its UK entry to support demand for dried pasta products during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The consumer campaign, which will include media relations and organic and paid social media content, launched this month (May).

Now available in selected Sainsbury’s and Asda stores, Le Stagioni d’Italia products are made from 100 per cent Italian wheat, offering customers a choice of high-quality and sustainable products with full traceability from one of Italy’s top agricultural companies, Bonifiche Ferraresi.

The appointment follows a series of new consumer campaign wins with WWFA over the last 12 months, including Australian-based food developer Flavour Makers and its popular Street Kitchen and Passage Food brands.

Bryan Garvie, director at BIG Partnership, said: “Everyone loves pasta and our consumer and social teams are massive foodies, so we’re really excited to have the chance to work with Le Stagioni d’Italia.

“It’s an amazing product with a great story, so we had a great time pulling together our campaign ideas to help to establish the brand in the UK. And working with a premium pasta brand is all the excuse we needed to eat great food and open a bottle of nice wine to go with it.”.

The Le Stagioni d’Italia range of pasta includes traditional penne rigate, spaghetti, fusilli and rigatoni all available in 500g recyclable paper bags.

Customers can also buy the finest Italian Arborio and Carnaroli rice for risotto, as well as Le Stagioni’s signature Senatore Cappelli pasta range, which is made a with the ancient Senatore Cappelli wheat, only produced in small regions of Italy.

Alongside the products available in Asda and Sainsbury’s, shoppers can also find a range of additional Le Stagioni products on Amazon, including its wheat pasta range and Olio Evo – a unique extra virgin olive oil from the olive groves of the Bonifiche Ferraresi estate.

Lorenzo Fontana, Export Manager at Bonifiche Ferraresi – Le Stagioni d’Italia: “BIG Partnership’s experience in the food and drink sector was evident in the proposal that they presented to us, covering a comprehensive and creative strategy to support our UK launch. Our entry into the UK market has come earlier than expected but we hope that with the help of the BIG team, our British customers will fall in love with our pasta.”

BIG Partnership employs 120 people across PR, marketing, digital, design and events with offices in Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Supermarkets and retailers set to gain £500 million in refunds but Rating experts slam VOA for “wasting public funds” in pursuing seven year long case.

Hospitality

Sam Whitear

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20/05/2020

0

Supermarkets and retailers set to gain £500 million in refunds but Rating experts slam VOA for “wasting public funds” in pursuing seven year long case.

The Supreme Court has today handed down judgement and found in favour for major supermarkets* in the long running £500 million dispute concerning business rates and ATM machines. The decision has been welcomed by experts at Colliers International, the global real estate advisers and branded a “win for common sense”.

John Webber, head of business rates at Colliers, said, “This is a massive relief, not only for the supermarkets involved, but also for the consumers who need access to these machines. Many would have suffered if the judgement went the other way and retailers ripped the ATMs out of their stores, to save extra rates bills, denying many in the local community free access to cash.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld the judgement of November 2018 in the Court of Appeal that ruled that ATMs located both inside and outside of stores should NOT be assessed for additional business rates on top of the normal store rates costs retailers are already facing.

Although the Court of Appeal refused the VOA permission to appeal against its decision, in May 2019, the Supreme Court overruled and allowed the VOA this right of appeal, a decision branded as a costly “nightmare” by Colliers at the time

This new Supreme Court decision has however finally knocked on the head the Government’s VOA (Valuation Office Agency) claim that all ATMs both inside and outside stores such be additionally assessed.

In terms of financials the decision is massive with Colliers estimating around £500 million has been at stake. Each ATM site would have attracted an average rates liability of around £4000. The refunds to the supermarkets should be in the region of £496 million.

This decision comes as a massive relief to the big retailers, particularly since the VOA must lift the stay on all of the appeals that have snarled up the system since the duration of the case. Colliers estimated that there are approximately 40,000 cases in the system concerned with ATM business rates issue.

John added: “This is overall a great result and we are delighted the courts saw sense. There was a real fear that if the VOA had been successful, not only would it have led to the ripping out of ATM machines but it would also have opened up the floodgates to assess up to 400,000 vending operations which would have been calamitous for both retailers and those operators.

“Of course, the tragedy over all of this is the total waste of taxpayers’ money in pursuing this unnecessary and unfair claim. The local authorities are unlikely to have accrued for this cost and at the end of the day it is ‘Joe Public’ who will suffer. Let’s hope the zealots at the VOA get back in the box and get on with dealing with the outstanding appeals instead of trying to take a swipe at the retail sector and the community at large.”

ENDS

*Sainsburys Supermarket Ltd, Sainsbury’s Bank Plc, Cardtronics Europe Limited, Tesco Stores Ltd, Co-Operative Group Limited v Chris Sykes and Others (Valuation Officers)

**This decision had overturned the ruling of the Upper Tribunal in January 2017 that made a distinction between ATMs inside a building and out and said that the sites of ATMs located within premises should not be assessed for business rates, but those ATM sites outside a shop or store should.

Current rate bills already paid by the large supermarkets

Supermarket	No. hereditaments/properties	Annual Rates Liability (Bill) 19/20 Estimate
Tesco	2800	£675 million
Sainsburys	1374 retail + 253 non-retail	£496 million
Asda	642 stores	£422million
Morrisons	498 stores	£274 million

BrightHR invests £1 million in a cutting-edge new tool to help businesses get back to work

Sam Whitear

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20/05/2020

0

BrightHR invests £1 million in a cutting-edge new tool to help businesses get back to work

BrightHR, the international HR software and employment law advice service, has made a £1 million investment in a cutting-edge new tool, the Back to Work Navigator, and financed a national advertising campaign to raise awareness of it.

The firm which was founded in 2015 and funded by award winning serial entrepreneur, Peter Done, has worked with channel agency We Are Boutique on the multi-channel campaign.

The campaign will educate business owners on how BrightHR can help them get their business back on its feet again, and it will appear on both linear Sky TV as well as Sky’s AdSmart.

The Back to Work Navigator gives employers one central hub to manage all their back to work processes, so they can reopen their business as quickly as possible. The tool lets employers change furlough statuses in seconds, set up staggered shift times, and send an in-app notification to employees telling them when the business will reopen.

As well as this, the tool comes with a complete content library of essential guidance. It covers managing health & safety, carrying out COVID-19 risk assessments, annual leave planning and restructuring processes. The library is filled with expertly-written guides, factsheets, templates, posters and checklists for business owners to read, download and share with their staff.

Alan Price, CEO at BrightHR, said:

“With the UK government announcing its plans to ease the lockdown earlier this week, businesses need to start preparing now to reopen. It’s important to note that this does not mean that everything suddenly returns to normal. There are health and safety guidelines to think about, rotas and staggered shift times to plan out, and furloughed paperwork to complete. And that’s where the BrightHR Back to Work Navigator can help.

“BrightHR is committed to supporting new and existing clients through this challenging time, and our significant investment of £1 million in the Back to Work Navigator tool and national advertising campaign shows this. Our new piece of software compliments BrightHR’s already established suite of tools, such as the Furlough Navigator and Shift and Rota Planner, and it will transform the way business owners manage their staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Simon Bollon, Managing Director of We Are Boutique, said:

“It’s been great to work with such a dynamic business that has the interests of small businesses at its heart. We responded to BrightHR’s brief with a multi-channel campaign that went live within weeks. It’s targeted specifically to raise awareness of the help and advice that’s available to business owners during these challenging times.”

People Matters HR celebrates two new collaborations

Business support

Sam Whitear

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19/05/2020

0

People Matters HR celebrates two new collaborations

People Matters HR have announced the launch of two new services through partnerships with two leading training providers.

The collaborations will enhance the Bury-based businesses’ award winning offering, to give even more practical help for businesses – which will help them to flourish and develop during the Coronavirus crisis – and beyond.

People Matters HR have added to their services:
IMPROVE online learning, which provides a wide range of online learning courses designed for SME businesses across a wide range of subject areas with over 40 courses currently available, and another 50 on their way. Businesses will find this invaluable in the current climate, particularly as furloughed staff are still allowed to do training courses.
WeThrive, an employee engagement tool, which assesses an organisation by which going beyond the traditional employee engagement survey. It’s cutting-edge software is designed to delve into the employees subconscious to uncover factors which are often hidden but lie at the root of common workplace issues. This enables line managers to take control of employee engagement with easy to read coaching plans, supporting resources and post survey action tracking.

Niel Cope, Managing Director of People Matters HR said:
“As part of our pledge to help our clients manage and develop their people, we are delighted to announce that we are partnering with IMPROVE and We Thrive to enhance our offering with a range of fantastic online resources.
“There’s no dispute that the way we work has changed dramatically over recent months. Through these partnerships we’re able to help our customers keep connected to their employees and keep their training up to date – even when people are social distancing.

Award-winning People Matters HR are one of the North West’s leading consultancies offering a fresh new approach to managing HR in the SME market. The company was founded in 2011 by Niel Cope, to provide businesses across the region with a bespoke, Director-level outsourced HR solution at a fraction of the cost, allowing customers to create strong leaders, engaged teams and a better ROI. The impressive client list includes: UAP Limited, Eventura, Rowe Hankins Ltd, Z-arts, WRPS and ASL.

The new services will complement the businesses Breathe’s accredited HR Partner Programme, which is designed for consultants looking to support their small to medium sized clients with HR software and streamline internal processes.

Steve Walker, CEO and founder of IMPROVE online learning platform said:

“Niel and his team at People Matters HR are great partners to IMPROVE online learning. Their innovation as an outsourced HR provider in adding online training to their portfolio and drive to take our unique microlearning platform to their customers makes them an excellent partner to work with”

Andrew Heath, CEO of WeThrive said:

“We are really excited to partner with PMHR – Niel and his team are ideal partners for us – they absolutely put people front and centre of everything they do. In the first few weeks of partnering we won two new clients both of whom have found the combination of WeThrive’s insights and Niel’s guidance and expertise transformational.”

Niel Cope, concluded:
“At People Matters HR, it’s our mission to transform our client’s businesses through award-winning consultancy services that increases their profits through combining outstanding innovative thinking with fantastic value. These new collaborations are a perfect example of this.”

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