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Boosting performance through strategic people planning at StockdaleMartin
Strategic people planning and HR support from People Puzzles has helped this Luton-based pharmaceutical marketing company go from strength to strength.
Even a successful business with a great product offering and a healthy market in which to grow needs help to support that growth. If you don’t have the right people in the right place in your team, it will always be impossible for your business to fulfil its true potential and maintain stability throughout a rapid growth journey. And doing that while maintaining a great culture and making it a place that people want to work creates even more challenge.
This was the conundrum facing Tracy Stockdale and Ed Martin, owners of StockdaleMartin. Having met while working together at a world-leading healthcare company, the pair had gone on to launch their own business. For the last 20 years, they have been providing marketing services for pharmaceutical and dental brands, including products such as Nicotinel and Sensodyne.
Despite its ongoing success, the business had reached a point where it needed to change the way it operated in order to continue growing. The owners approached People Puzzles to help them solve the problems.
When People Director Catherine Wood started working with StockdaleMartin in October 2020, the business had 14 employees but was finding it difficult to scale up in its current structure. There were key development opportunities identified for the senior leadership teams, and a great deal of further potential to be unlocked by enhancing the business culture, helping everyone to feel empowered to deliver their absolute best and pull together with aligned performance.
Strategic planning
Recognising the need for a consistent, structured approach to leadership within the business, Catherine introduced the team to the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) model, which helps small but growing business focus on six key components to create a forward-looking, ambitious business plan. One of those six components – people – is what Catherine helped to build into the business plan, with a ‘right people, right seats’ approach to support all of the other key components of the EOS.
Strengthening the senior team
An important part of the new people plan was bringing additional skills and experience into Ed and Tracy’s senior team. Catherine provided support in recruiting a new SLT member to support the team and complement the skills already in place.
Improved performance and culture
It was identified that there was scope to further enhance the company’s culture, helping people to feel more informed and empowered, which would in turn drive a greater sense of personal and team accountability in achieving goals and make it an even better place to work. Catherine addressed this initially by instigating a performance improvement plan, under which employees were given clear expectations and support for development. Catherine also introduced appraisal planning which tied individuals’ performance to the success of the business, improving productivity and team motivation.
“The leaders have had to have the challenging conversations that all businesses need at some point -but now they have a highly motivated team,” explains Catherine. While these interventions helped drive commercial performance, of even greater importance to the leadership team was focusing on culture and values to help make StockdaleMartin a great place to work, where people feel informed and empowered to make a difference.
‘A trusted advisor’
“Catherine has made a real difference in a very short space of time,’ adds Tracy. “She’s sorted out our people issues, aligned the leadership team within the business and come up with a 12- to 18-month work plan to get us compliant. It’s been great to have such a reliable resource and trusted advisor that the team now feel they can go to.”
Catherine is delighted with the progress that the business has made over the past two years. “Coming to meetings at StockdaleMartin is one of the highlights of my week and Ed and Tracy always leave me smiling. It is an exciting business, making a huge difference to the lives of millions with their products,” she says.
If your business has reached that point in its growth journey where it would benefit from some expert guidance on structure and performance, we would love to explore with you how our national team of senior People Directors can support you. For a free 30-minute consultation with an HR Director local to you, please contact us on 0345 646 5201, or email [email protected] and we will call you back.
