Each year, the MorePeople conference explores powerful themes relating to both the development of our team and the business as a whole. In 2023, we explored Growth, in 2024, it was Maturity, and this year, we took it to the next level, Scalability.
Imagine your typical work conference. A structured day, hand out slides, refreshments, and you go home feeling brain-fried and wonder if you retained any of the information.
This couldn’t be any different from our conference.
Hosted at the beautiful venue, the William Cecil in Stamford, the day was packed with energy, motivation, vibrancy and excitement. We really took the festival theme to new heights with branded T-shirts, lanyards, bunting, giant deckchairs, and yes, even our very own Sax player, DJ and fire breather! (I know!)
But what we are great at here is creating an engaging atmosphere, combined with motivational content, meaning everyone became engrossed with the topics, and can question, where do I fit into this expansion? Where do I see myself in 5 years?
We can all grow together.
Managing Director, Richard Hanwell and CEO, Andrew Fitzmaurice, kickstart the conference by reflecting on how the business has scaled and plans for the future. Watching the growth our our desks since 2021, especially the Agriculture and Horticulture teams, leading to the birth of the garden centre desk, was eye-opening. You can’t imagine MorePeople without these desks now! Cogs were turning whilst we discussed sectors on our fingertips that we could delve into, and how this expansion could impact the MorePeople Team.
It was time to welcome the Founder of MuchClearer and the incredible Executive Coach, Sean Sankey. Sean has been part of our MorePeople conferences for three years running now, and what an influential addition he has been! After some introductory activities (including someone winning some Represent merch, you know who you are), Sean started with analysing the levers for scaling. We discussed this from a company perspective, viewing the 5 levels to scale a service-based business, and where this sits within the vision of MorePeople.
Everyone loves a personality test, right? Sean introduced us to the GC Index, allowing us to visually see how our obsession, imagination, action and pragmatism align into our own drives. This identification flowed nicely into how, as individuals, we can scale up too. We learnt that it's not just about identifying these points and saying right, I need to improve all of these instantly. Progression comes incrementally, one step at a time. Identify your first point of improvement, and continuously work towards this. Set your goals, keep yourself accountable, and be realistic!
You’ve all heard of 75 Hard, let me introduce you to Focus 50
50 days before the conference, we all committed to becoming the best version of ourselves, with one focus point in mind. For me, I was assigned personal branding. If we take this as an example, I outlined what I wanted my personal brand to be – whether it be internally in the office, what people think of me, my characteristics, as well as how I create an online presence. Now it was time to hit the gas, in the mindset of a £1m biller and think, what would they do? It's not just identifying what you want to do, let's hold ourselves accountable for 50 days and make an impact, and share what we learnt along the way.
The focus 50 session allowed us to all share our journeys on the different topics. Whether it be building rapport, taking references, post-placement care or intel gathering. We were all prepared to present, and we pulled names out of a hat to dictate who would take the mic.
One of Sean’s points from Focus 50 that really resonated with me was ‘be cool with managing liabilities’. Improvement doesn’t happen overnight. Consistency, even small increments every day, is how to start and maintain improvement. You must be ok with failure sometimes! It is how you learn. So get up and try again.
A peek behind...
This was a really insightful session, where we heard from Associate Director Tom Edmondson-Matthews, Divisional Manager Lucy Renner and Senior Recruitment Consultant Felicity Mitchell. Three completely different journeys and routes into recruitment, but a really inspiring talk from them all. From imposter syndrome, honest failures, jumping teams and location moves, things weren’t initially a smooth journey to success. It's great for us to be vulnerable and share our ups and downs; we are all human after all.
Stories of scale
During this session, Sean provided valuable context behind his ideas for scalability. He shared real-life case studies of businesses that started from humble beginnings, demonstrating how setting a clear vision, driving performance, and consistently generating ideas, paired with sustained action, is the true formula for scaling. With proof!
The ideas for scalability and progression have left everyone motivated and full of desire. But Sean now pulls us into the present, allowing some reflection time to assess how we can fit into this plan. He asked us three questions: What do I really want? What do I actually want? And what should my team be aiming for?
We discussed in our closer teams what our priorities are in order to keep scaling, and what we have learnt from other people over the last few months. We also made commitments for the future, to emphasise that scalability is about sustained action, whilst seeking the support you need to succeed.
A final thought
What really stood out at the MorePeople conference was how refreshingly grounded it felt. It's easy for events like these to focus solely on progression and ambition, but often they miss the mark when it comes to helping you see where you fit into that bigger picture. This wasn’t the case here. Whilst there is so much to celebrate within the business, Sean, Rich and Andy kept bringing it back down to the team involved, and the dedication to scaling the team to be the best it really can be.
It was a thoroughly engaging conference, with so much fun, realism and a genuine desire to better its staff. A huge thank you goes out to Sean for his motivating content, structure and presence throughout the day. Another huge thank you to Rich, Charlotte, Nat and Andy, whose hard work and dedication made the event not only possible, but truly memorable.
If that has left you hungry to join a thriving recruitment team with a great culture, let's talk!
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