With 2018 drawing to a close, I wanted to reflect on what has been arguably one of our most exciting years since first launching.
Our year was dominated by a series of projects that sought to primarily address how we operate as an employer in our own right. It started with a period of inward reflection asking tough questions to get enlightened answers. How do we engage with our staff? How do we retain them? How do we attract calibre people in a market where there are extreme shortages of such people? How do we train our people to be better versions of themselves? Equally we gave thought to how we want to be perceived by our customers, our employees and indeed, ourselves. Without being contrived or insincere, what is our corporate voice? How connected are we to our mission and values? How do we stay relevant in an industry that is so very misunderstood in terms of public perception and at the same time, experiencing so much change with the advent of new and emerging technology?
The answers to all of these questions, and others, laid a foundation for over 20 projects that we initiated and completed this year; and for me what I enjoyed most was the degree of participation that we had from within our business; not just at executing on these projects, but actually in and around helping define them.
Over the course of 2018 our business has navigated all of this; and it has experienced unprecedented growth, of which the highlight was the opening of our Charterhouse Medical brand in the UK. With Sophie Easthope at the helm, in under 10 weeks she has grown the business to one that now employs 10 people and operates within 6 distinct job families across medical. Both our Sydney and Melbourne businesses experienced scaled growth across each of their business lines and we opened into two new markets that we had not previously done before.
A busy year and one that simply could not have been done without people.
And so…I wanted to take this opportunity to thank our candidates and clients that have worked with us over the past 12 months. Our 2019 roadmap has a number of initiatives that we want to launch that directly talk to the “how” of how we work better with both our candidates and clients, as whilst your patronage is appreciated, it is never taken for granted.
I wanted to thank the various people and companies that we engaged over this past year to help us on this journey. Our recruitment-to-recruitment partners that have helped us in the market, our technology providers that have provided invaluable counsel to us as we modernised, to our marketing partners who worked with us closely to rebrand; and to do it right.
Finally, I wanted to publicly thank the people with whom I come to work with every day. Our ability to practice our credo of “people over placements” is solely down to your day-to-day efforts and amidst so much change you have carried yourselves with aplomb. Thank you, and I can’t wait to get into 2019 and get cracking.
Best wishes to everybody for a safe and enjoyable festive season.
Jason
