St. Modwen, Longbridge and Wright Solutions

HEAD OFFICE AND REGISTERED ADDRESS
Sir Stanley Clarke House, 7 Ridgeway,

Quinton Business Park, Birmingham, B32 1AF 

T: 0121 222 9400      W:www.stmodwen.co.uk

PRESS RELEASE 

WRIGHT SOLUTIONS RELOCATES TO ST. MODWEN’S LONGBRIDGE TECHNOLOGY PARK  

Wright Solutions, one of Birmingham’s leading recruitment and training specialists, has relocated to St. Modwen’s Longbridge Technology Park in order to benefit from the on-going £1 billion regeneration of Longbridge and to become part of its new business community.

Previously based in Edgbaston, the company has moved to one of the last remaining office suites at the Park’s Innovation Centre, which provides small and medium enterprises with a range of tailored office space solutions.

Wright Solutions director Paul Wright said: “Innovation is key to our business and Longbridge reflects this ethos. Building on its rich heritage as the former home of MG Rover, the Longbridge development is fast becoming one of the region’s leading business, leisure and retail destinations and we actively wanted to be part of its success.

“We have a huge range of potential employees and customers on our doorstep and the combination of our modern office space at the Innovation Centre, together with our location opposite the new town centre which will have shops, cafes and restaurants provides our team with a fantastic and convenient work environment and an easily accessible, well connected location for our clients too. 

“The service and facilities available to us at the Innovation Centre are a great boost to our business.  We were able to host an event on just our second day here with the on-site team making it a painless and efficient process which allowed us to fully concentrate on our clients.  We believe that this move provides us with a great foundation for the business going forward and we are very excited about our future at Longbridge.” 

With the opening of the new £70 million Longbridge town centre in summer 2013, Wright Solutions and fellow Longbridge Technology Park tenants will be located just a short distance from a wide range of shops, cafes and leisure facilities including a new 85,000 sq ft Sainsbury’s, a 75 bedroom Premier Inn and Beefeater Grill and the new £2m, two acre Austin Park. In addition, a local work pool is being established at the nearby £66 million new Bournville College and £5 million youth centre called The Factory, with the first 113 homes also under construction.

Mike Murray, senior development surveyor at St. Modwen, said: “Attracting forward thinking companies like Wright Solutions reflects the strength of Longbridge Technology Park and the Longbridge regeneration scheme as a whole. It is very rewarding to know that businesses are actively seeking to be part of the future of Longbridge. 

“The Innovation Centre is a great success story and is a real hub of activity with over 40 companies working within this highly supportive environment. We hope Wright Solutions thrives at the Innovation Centre and not only benefits from, but plays an active part in the future success of the area.”

Established in 1998 Wright Solutions attract, place and develop the highest calibre candidates in Executive, HR and Learning & Development roles. Their service is more than recruitment with training solutions that give Leadership and Management teams the competitive advantage for today and tomorrow.  The company will celebrate its move to Longbridge with a launch party on July 4th.

Along with the adjacent Two Devon Way office building, the Innovation Centre forms the first phase of the £100 million Longbridge Technology Park, which is home to many local, national and international businesses and is more than 90 per cent occupied.

Next year’s opening of Longbridge town centre will bring investment at the former MG Rover site up to £250 million since it was acquired by St. Modwen in 2003. This investment has already created 1,160 permanent jobs through the development of the Technology Park, Cofton Centre, and the £66 million new Bournville College which opened last September.

Longbridge is served by excellent public transport links, with Longbridge Train Station within just a short walking distance and over 350 buses per day passing the site.  Birmingham city centre is eight miles away and the M5 (junction 4) and M42 (junction 2) motorways are three miles away.

The regeneration of Longridge is a £1 billion project covering 468 acres. It aspires to create 10,000 jobs through a diverse range of industries, together with 2,000 new homes, the new town centre, parks and public open space.

For more details on Wright Solutions visit www.wrightsolutionsltd.com or call 0121 222 5599. For more details on Longbridge visit www.longbridgebirmingham.co.uk

-ENDS-

St. Modwen Properties PLC

St. Modwen is the UK’s leading regeneration specialist, operating across the full spectrum of the property industry from a Birmingham based head office, a network of seven regional offices and through joint ventures with industry leading partners.

The Company is focussed wholly upon regeneration with an outstanding 25 year track record of adding value by managing schemes through the planning process, remediating contaminated land and active asset management and development.

With extensive experience in dealing with complex and challenging sites, St. Modwen has a land bank of more than 5,700 net developable acres and is focused on the long-term development of commercial property and residential land.

St. Modwen’s extensive national portfolio includes; the £2bn regeneration of New Covent Garden Market, London; the redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, London; the £1bn transformation of Longbridge, Birmingham and the on-going regeneration of over 2,500 acres of former industrial land in South Wales.

For further information, please contact:

Menna Rees-Steer St. Modwen Properties PLC T: 0121 222 9400 E: corpcomms@stmodwen.co.uk

Catherine Ryan Core T: 0121 643 8151 E: catherineryan@core-marketing.co.uk

 

Creating Innovation : 5 Golden Rules

After the success of our recent Breakfast Seminar on Innovation we asked our Lead Consultant and Innovation Guru (Mark Brown) to come up with some ideas as to how you can create a more Innovative and Dynamic working environment.

                                                            

CREATING INNOVATION

If you want your team and organisation to be more creative and innovative start these 5 easy practices today and for all time:

1 - Everyone to Innovate, Everywhere, Everyday

• Innovation is for all.
• Innovation isn’t just about a few smart folk coming up with new products and services.
• Total Innovation means you and everyone else, every day, want to come up with great ideas about how you can do everything better or differently so as to enchant and delight customers.

2 - Make many more mistakes

• In those areas where you want innovation, quadruple your mistake and failure rate – try out loads of new ideas – fast, for free, safely – learn quickly, then try again.

nb. Don’t innovate in areas where it is dangerous to do so. Don’t try landing the aircraft upside down.

3 - Celebrate glorious mistakes

• Celebrate and applaud these glorious failures and mistakes.

4 - Sacred Cows Aren’t 

• Just because ‘we’ve always done it that way’ is no excuse for carrying on doing it that way.

5 - Good to Great to Brilliant

• Don’t just solve problems.
• Take those things you do well and find even better ways to do them.
• And start to do completely new things you’ve never thought of doing that will enchant and delight your customers.

                                                            

Mark is available to you to discuss individual business issues and explain how our Total Innovation Management programme can help businesses realise their Innovation potential.

We can support you in increasing the impact of your Innovation efforts through the following;

• Executive Innovation Clinic - Align executives around their understanding of Innovation and to acknowledge the role Innovation should play within the organisation.
• Leading Innovation - How can your leaders create, sustain and lead for innovation?
• The Creative Individual - How can your people have better ideas and approach tasks more creatively?
• Issue 'X' - What is it and how do you overcome it?

Utilising the Dolphin Index™, The 0D-4D Control Creativity Framework™, GISA™ and Can-Do Framework™ as well as on-going support you will embed creativity and innovation throughout the business

For more information call 0121 222 5599.

We are running a repeat Seminar on 5^th July for anyone interested

                                                           

Wright Solutions is a specialist HR Consultancy. We attract and place the highest calibre candidates in Executive, HR and Learning & Development roles. We also support and develop businesses in making the most of their talent.

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The Importance of Goals: Why everyone in your team should have them

Developing an understanding of the factors that can influence an individual's goal achievement, will enable you to drive bottom-line improvements to your business performance through effective goal setting.  

There are 4 decades of research supporting the idea that effective goal setting has a positive impact on motivation and task performance. And yet many leaders and teams I come across seem to have lost sight of their most important goals.

Try this... 

In your next team meeting give each team member a set of Post-it notes and ask them to write down the top 3 goals of the team, (one goal per Post-it) as they look around the room for inspiration, tell them not to confer. As they begin writing encourage them to be as specific as possible, goals like “make more profit” don't cut it. Stick all the post-its on a wall and count up how many Top 3 goals you have and whether they are clearly defined. 

Focus on a Few Important Goals      

It’s at this point you realise the first job to be done is to define and agree your most important goals with the team. The purpose of a goal is to provide clarity, direction and purpose, having too many goals has the opposite effect.  When there are lots of goals we don’t know which to focus on or believe that the goals are unachievable. To cope with this we focus on the tasks that are most urgent whether they help achieve the goal or not.

Agree Challenging Goals

People are more likely to buy-in to a goal if it is their own or they have at least had some involvement in its development. Be wary of any tendency to set goals without including the people who have to help deliver them. Or agreeing goals that are below what people are capable of. The perceived level of difficulty of a goal impacts directly on the action taken by the individual towards achieving that goal.  Goals which are perceived as too easy can cause disengagement and low self-worth when an individual believes that little is expected of them. Conversely, Goals which are perceived as too difficult will result in dis-engagement. It is only by knowing your peoples’ capabilities well that you can agree challenging goals that have a galvanizing effect on performance.

Declare your Goals

When you have agreed the most important goals both at a team and individual level, you should be confident enough to share them with your significant stakeholders, i.e. those people who have an interest in the success of the team and/or the individual. Making a goal public will increase levels of commitment; a goal known only to an individual is much easier to abandon than one which has been made known to a significant other.  

Encourage Belief

There is plenty of evidence that supports the idea that the more capable people judge themselves to be, the higher the goals they set for themselves and the more firmly they remain committed to them. You must not underestimate the role that support and encouragement plays in the achievement of goals. Encouraging an individual’s beliefs in their own abilities and potential drives higher levels of self-motivation.

Report on progress

Now is the time for honesty, think about all the times you set goals or the team agreed goals that were never reviewed or were looked at just before the annual performance review, or were quietly dropped when they seemed a bit tough to achieve.  If you truly want to achieve the goals then you have to create a culture of high standards and accountability. Break the goals down into manageable milestones. I quite often work with teams on 6 week sprints encouraging a focus only on what is achievable in that timeframe and insist on a team report out. This keeps motivation levels high and increases the accountability individuals feel when reporting on their progress on a regular basis.   

Celebrate Success 

Deliver some quick wins and celebrate them, people like to be part of a winning team. This fuels the motivation and belief that drives further goal achievement.  When you have achieved what you set out to do share it publicly with those same stakeholders you were brave enough to declare your goals with.

One final thought, when you have achieved the goals don't be surprised if expectations of future success increase.  Embrace the challenge...

Steve Bussey* – Business Coach (& Guest Blogger)

*Steve is an experienced Business Coach and partners with clients such as Microsoft, BaxterHealthcare, Pfizer, and BT, and is primarily involved in supporting individuals, leaders and their teams to deliver higher performance. Steve has extensive experience working with other global professional services, training and development companies such as FranklinCovey and worked with a variety of clients in the private and public sector. He is an accredited coach and is currently completing a Masters Degree in Coaching and Mentoring Practice at Oxford Brookes University.

He is one of our Lead Training Consultants. For an informal conversation with him about what he can do for you and your business call us on 0121 687 4040.

The Rules of Engagement

Sometimes phrases like "Employee Engagement" sound so vague and "corporate speak" that many cynical operational managers just don't want to get in to an initial discussion with HR about how they might tackle these sort of issues.

With this in mind we asked a previous Engagement Manager at Morrisons Supermarkets (who incidentally we placed!) to come up with a simple introductory document regarding Employee Engagement that would outline the key elements of how to go about building "Engagement" in your organisation.

It is a simple guide, it is supposed to be, but if you want to have a more detailed conversation with our contact please do let us know (0121 687 4040)

The Rules of Engagement

Having an engaged workforce is proven to increase productivity and revenue and reduce sick leave and staff turnover. It is also intrinsically linked to good customer service – if you’re happy in your work, your interactions with customers will automatically be more positive than if you’re merely going through the motions.

More and more businesses are starting to understand the value of engagement, but according to recent studies, the UK is still behind the rest of Europe. Your business is only as good as the people who work for you - if you don’t engage your people, they will either leave in search of an organisation that truly values them, or they will ‘quit and stay’.

Here are some of the key elements in building engagement in your organisation;

Individuals – All your employees have a life outside work! Understanding this and recognising that they have families, friends, needs and interests away from the workplace will help you understand their motivations, development needs and preferences.

Alignment – Do your employees fully understand the goals, values and strategic direction of the business? In reality, very few employees can even cite the company's objectives, much less articulate how their work helps achieve them. But it is crucial that everyone in your organisation understands this connection.

Trust – If you treat people like grown ups they will probably act like grown ups! Creating policies and procedures that must be rigidly adhered to may seem easier than coaching and managing performance, but inviting discussions about these rules lets people know that there is a degree of flexibility to allow for common sense and this increases engagement.

Communication – it is important to communicate in a transparent, open and honest way to keep employees informed and up to date with the needs of the business, but communication has to be a two way thing. Giving your employees a voice and really hearing what they have to say is also a key factor in engagement – and you may just learn something.

Leadership – an employee’s relationship with their manager is one of the biggest single factors in employee engagement. Equipping your managers to coach and support their teams, set clear goals and praise good work will result in employees who willingly give discretionary effort and know how to apply it.

It’s not usually large complex things that affect engagement. It’s mostly about the management style – energising the human side of your organisation and creating a passion, not just handing out tasks. Encouraging people to enjoy coming to work will build team working and morale and finding out about each individual person to see what makes them tick and what motivates and drives them – because we are all different!