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Interview with Matt Southall, Managing Director of Acorn
Q: You were last interviewed in early 2005. How has the business developed since then?
A: Where do we start . . . . since we last spoke Acorn has been through its most successful period yet; culminating in perhaps our most significant development to date with the agreement of our partnership with European recruitment giant, Synergie, to whom we sold 70% of the business to in December. This has proved to be a tremendous fillip for the business, providing access to finance to grow Acorn hugely over the next couple of years, and plans to achieve revenues of over £100m per annum by the end of 2007. All the staff at Acorn are hugely excited about the prospects our new partnership brings, and the relationship with our French counterparts is excellent.
Of course, this deal was brokered off the back of our best ever year; with 2004 / 05 turnover of just under £40m and pre-tax profit of £1.3m – a 15% increase on the previous year. This year we are targeting minimum revenues of £45m, but we are also in the throes of some very interesting acquisition activity, which may very well result in the business achieving much more.
The last year or so has also seen growth regionally, with new branches opened in Wrexham, Runcorn and Blackwood; the Wrexham branch in particular becoming one of our most successful branches within the very short time it has been opened. Indeed, our Runcorn branch was a natural spin-out from the Wrexham branch; something we progressed with much earlier than planned, and we are now in the process of launching a further branch in Preston, which again builds on the continuing progress we have made in the area.
In terms of the work we do in specialist areas we have developed a new Division in Rail & Civils, which has included the opening of new office in Edinburgh as well as the purchase of a small, but important business in this industry, giving Acorn the necessary accreditations and contacts to grow our activity very quickly.
We have also acquired Link, a specialist forensic nursing agency based in South Wales, which has been bolted on to our existing Nursing & Healthcare Division and has already helped transform the speed of development of our services and performance in that area.
Though we mustn’t forget some very fundamental developments during this time; developments that underpin the retention of existing business, and that give us and our clients and candidates increasing confidence in the Acorn offering. We have developed a sophisticated customer satisfaction measurement system as part of our wider marketing development activity, and during this time have experienced tremendous levels of customer satisfaction from both clients and candidates alike. Our services have been fine-tuned in accordance with the feedback we receive ensuring that the level of retention and affinity expressed by all our stakeholders remains one of Acorn’s important USPs – after all, Acorn’s success is ultimately built on our reputation.
Internally, we have also worked hard to ensure that we keep good staff and that Acorn people feel valued and have the opportunity to grow within the organisation. On this note we are especially delighted that last week it was confirmed we had successfully retained our Investors in People accreditation, following the re-assessment process that has become far more rigorous in recent times.
Through other marketing development activity we have seen the massive increase in our ability to attract candidates, the people we place into work opportunities, of which there are some 2,500 we place daily. Employers across the UK have been experiencing recruitment difficulties over the last four or five years, and I’m glad to say on behalf of our clients, at Acorn we have been bucking this trend, with our success in attracting people growing by 46% last year compared to the previous year – something we know other agencies are struggling with.
I should also mention that last year Acorn became the first company in Wales to become a Corporate Patron of the NSPCC; something we are immensely proud of, and to which we have pledged to raise £100,000 to help children throughout Wales.
Q: What changes have you seen in the recruitment industry, and how are you responding to those changes?
A: I have already mentioned the national issue of shortages in good quality candidates. The competitive advantage we strive for is to always have a greater and better-skilled number of candidates ‘on our books’, our core product if you like, which we have achieved. For example, in January this year we attracted 88% more people to register with Acorn as looking for a new job than during the same period the previous year. This is a massive increase, totaling some 500 more people in just one month, and a credit to the standing Acorn has created for itself in such a crowded industry.
Looking at the age profile, the 35 – 44 yrs group has remained relatively unchanged since 2003, but the 16 – 34 years has increased from 63% to 74% which is encouraging as we see this age bracket as a fast-growing market, and these figures suggest that our strategy to attract more ‘commercial’ job-seekers are working.
Strategically, Acorn has had to adapt its portfolio – from starting out in the early 90s as mainly an industrial temp recruiter, we are now a sophisticated and diverse recruitment and training provider covering a wide range of specialisms. Our increase in more professional, commercial and higher level permanent recruitment activity for example, helps demonstrate the impact of our deliberate efforts to off-set the decrease in manufacturing and other industrial activity that has affected Wales over recent times.
In our business, we are of course directly reliant on the success, or otherwise, of industries and sectors, and therefore at all times we have to remain agile enough to plan for and respond to changes in the business landscape. Indeed, it’s partly down to the tremendous versatility we demonstrate that has helped develop our work in the public sector, for which we have been independently ranked as the ninth best performer of all 14,000 or so agencies across the UK.
Across the public sector we have also seen the rapid rise in use of on-line master vendor systems, which requires the preferred recruiter to manage a successive tier of other suppliers whilst ensuring that the contact points in the client organisation can request and appoint people more swiftly on-line as well receive meaningful real-time management information. We have therefore invested in the development of bespoke software to respond to this need.
We have also had to respond to the upsurge in use of the web by people looking to find work. Acorn’s on-line developments have become more and more integral to the speed and effectiveness of our services, which has seen the launch of a new website, bespoke promotional activity to drive more traffic to the site, and the increase in the number of related websites and internet job boards that Acorn partners with. All aspects in these developments are vital, and as such we are seeing the attraction to more and more clients of greater use of a company like Acorn, as they don’t have the facility or the time to best maximise the benefits, both in terms of finding the best people and also in saving costs, in dealing with up to 600 websites to find people or to promote their vacancies.
Q: In this issue we are concentrating on education, training and skills. What is Acorn currently doing in relation to learning and development to meet the needs of both employers and individuals?
A: Acorn is a leading provider of training, learning and development solutions with up to 2,500 individuals receiving training from Acorn each month. We design, deliver and evaluate a comprehensive range of training and development solutions to service both business and individual needs.
Our service is a complete individualised training, learning and development package for our clients and for individuals; from producing a training and learning needs analysis to building a bespoke programme of mixed-level courses, delivered in the work place to satisfy the development needs of all employees, managers and leaders. Additionally as a WAG-approved training provider, with access to our own funding support, we can manage a range of available funding options for our clients and learners that in many cases means the employer has very little to pay.
As well as creating these tailored approaches to learning and development, our portfolio also includes accredited NVQ programmes, management and leadership development courses, open-course programmes and IT courses and qualifications.
Sectors to date where we operate include clients in manufacturing, catering, contact centres, retail, the public sector and a number of other sectors where quality staff are vital to support organisational success.
Q: How important is training to Acorn?
A: As many of our clients will profess, the opportunity for staff to learn and to develop in their role is fundamental to organisation success. As is borne out from our recent successful IiP re-assessment, Acorn is an employer that considers the development of its staff, whether its simply ensuring our internal communications are effective in keeping people informed, updated and made to feel equally valued as part of the Acorn team; or by putting in place individual learning and development programmes, linked to appraisal and corporate objectives, which allow staff to grow in their role, to flourish and to express themselves confidently and professionally.
Like every business we also need to ensure we give due consideration to our succession planning, and importantly, especially as customer satisfaction is inextricably linked to employee satisfaction, and being in the ‘business of people’ that we are, means there is a direct link to the commitment, the professionalism and the behaviours of our staff to the retention levels of our clients and candidates, and therefore the overall performance of the business.
There are indeed some deeper considerations to the simple statement that ‘people are productivity’.
Q: What areas of recruitment does Acorn specialise in?
A: Whilst Acorn has branches across Wales as well as in Bristol, Runcorn and Edinburgh, we have a reach in some areas of our business that is UK-wide.
As well as some general recruitment support at most levels across most industries, our specialist areas cover commercial and office admin; marketing, business development and sales; construction, technical and engineering; nursing and healthcare; industrial, warehousing, driving and logistics; contact centres and customer service; rail and civil; public sector; HR; and a specialised permanent recruitment service for senior executive and management.
As I have already mentioned we have made excellent development in recruiting ‘professional’ people; in particular we are currently looking at increasing activity in high-level engineering and IT, in the short-term with business being targeted in the defence and aerospace industries. Our Permanent Recruitment Division has also grown over the last year or so, now with eight fee-earning desks dealing with placements between £20k and £100k per annum. Indeed, we will place around 350 permanent placements during this year alone.
Q: What are the future plans for Acorn?
A: Acorn has a stated aim of increasing revenue to £100m annually by 2010, but we now think we could achieve that by the end of 2007. This will be accomplished via a combination of timely acquisitive growth and through organic development and expansion of our core services and regions.
We are currently in various negotiations regarding some possible acquisitions; ones that open up some growth markets for Acorn both sectorally and regionally; and we are on schedule to open another four new branches to extend our existing regional coverage by the end of the year.
Last week we announced the launch of our new HR Development Service. This is in response to the increasing move by organisations to out-source their HR support to be utilised as and when, thereby reducing overheads and providing the ability to buy in expertise precisely when it is needed. This doesn’t of course mean that businesses are simply becoming reactionary, much of the advice Acorn provides through this new consultancy arm is preventative in HR terms, ie. helps to develop HR strategies for organisations, including the implementation of procedures and processes to safeguard both the employer and its employees. We can also deliver training for supervisors and managers to ensure they are aware of what good practice is and what should be expected of them in a supervisory and leadership capacity. Of course the full range of HR advice is available and we have appointed one of the UK’s leading HR professionals, Pat Kiely formerly UK HR Director for EADS, to take this forward.
As you’ll appreciate, the triangulation of our portfolio to encompass recruitment, training and now HR consultancy builds on our unique position in the marketplace as a truly comprehensive and sophisticated ‘people solutions’ business. And the encouraging thing is, all these developments have been client-led, in that we have developed them around the feedback and changing operations and expectations of our client businesses.
I am convinced that in the years ahead, it will be companies like Acorn, of a certain size with a multi-platform approach to the delivery of recruitment and people-development solutions that will continue to grow in what is increasingly a competitive market for the recruitment and training sectors.
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