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AAB People / Sectors / Construction & Property / Page 4
SMEs. High-Growth Businesses. International Businesses setting up in the UK. Not-For-Profit. Public Sector.
HR & Employment Law. Health & Safety.
Food & Drink. Hospitality. Construction & Property. Public Sector. Not-For-Profit. Business Services.
Based predominantly in Glasgow, Louise McCosh has a hugely varied role as Partner at AAB People and part of the AAB Group. Louise has a background in HR and Employment Law, and has 15 years of experience in employment compliance, mainly in a consultancy environment.
Louise’s role is to provide leadership and strategic direction to ensure we deliver a great client service, alongside growing and driving the business forward. Louise has the pleasure of working with an exceptional team of employment compliance professionals dedicated to delivering a first-class service to our clients in HR & Employment Law and Health & Safety.
“Clients come to us for support with HR & Employment Law and Health & Safety to simplify the complicated, to provide proactive and practical solutions and options to deal with the issues they are facing – they ultimately look to us to provide reassurance on handling their people matters.
It’s really important to me to build strong and lasting working partnerships with clients where they feel they can really trust you to deliver as an extension of their team. The foundations of this for me are built on providing solutions-driven advice, which is pragmatic and commercial, and to deliver this in a personable way.”
“The best piece about working with clients is to see how the HR & Employment Law and Health & Safety solutions we have implemented have helped their business.
AAB Group has strong core values which really resonate with me, and my favourite value we talk about has got to be “Clients are our passion”. To me, this passion couldn’t be more evident across the group – we are a truly dedicated group of professionals who are relentless in our dedication to supporting clients to achieve their goals. I went into employment compliance because I wanted to help people achieve their goals, and I get to do this every day working with our clients delivering tailored and flexible solutions which ultimately provide reassurance and help our clients sleep at night.”
“A pet hate I have about the people profession is we are seen as a bureaucratic function creating red tape that gets in the way of business. That couldn’t be further from the truth, particularly in our approach to working with clients – we want to support and collaborate with employers to navigate what is an increasingly litigious world of work avoiding risk and getting the best from their people.
The employment compliance market is littered with identikit providers who take a one size fits all approach, locking clients into lengthy contracts and forcing them to jump through unnecessary hoops. Our service is the exact opposite and is designed to disrupt this trend in the market, and deliver what we believe is most important to clients centred on delivering tailored, flexible solutions which fundamentally meet their needs.”
“Alongside in-depth knowledge and experience in employment compliance, my key strength is in understanding how to grow and scale businesses, whether that is in working with clients or in the people business itself. I also have a strong ability to think outside the box which I can use to visualise and plan how to get from A to B delivering solutions that meet the needs of our clients and the business.
A client once said to me that I am the most commercial people professional they have worked with – they said I get what’s critical to their business and am then able to support them with what they need to tackle issues head on.”
“It couldn’t be a better time to be part of AAB People which is growing and delivering tangible results for clients, and I get a real buzz from being part of that journey. The AAB Group is growing rapidly which is hugely exciting to be part of, particularly as the group has developed a real breadth of service for clients to tap into.”
Proud to support a diverse range of clients
SMEs.
Health & Safety Policies & Procedures. Risk Assessments. Audit & Inspections. Contractor Accreditations. Training.
Across all sectors.
Lee Craig is the Service Lead for the Health & Safety team and manages the health and safety consultancy service working alongside her colleagues in the HR team.
Lee is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and has a NEBOSH National General Certificate, NEBOSH Fire Safety and Risk Certificate, and Post Graduate Certificate in Safety and Risk Management.
In her role, Lee enjoys getting to know clients and finding out about their business so that she can use her wide knowledge and experience to demystify health and safety, and give them practical and sensible support that works for their business.
“We aim to be part of the client’s team and build a relationship of trust and mutual respect. Clients trust us to give them practical, sensible advice and we trust them to keep us informed of things that are happening in the business, especially where there is a health and safety-related impact.
Navigating health and safety can be tricky, so I always strive to provide a friendly approachable service delivered in plain English that is relatable, practical, and reasonable and works for their business.
I also genuinely really enjoy learning about our clients’ businesses, every day is a learning day and the challenge of working out how to make health and safety compliance fit into their business model, culture, etc. is very rewarding.”
“Our role is to do the best job possible for our clients, they are the top priority, and we want to work in a solid partnership with them. Their successes become our successes and when things sometimes go wrong, we are there to help get things back on track. Put simply we care, and everything we do is in their best interests.
There is no greater satisfaction than knowing I have truly made a difference with my advice and support. One of the greatest compliments a client has paid me was telling me how much they appreciate me for making it so much easier than they thought it was going to be and that I had lifted a giant weight from their shoulders.”
“There’s a common misconception that health and safety is just about saying “No, you can’t do that” or delivered by grey men with clipboards who frown at everyone. But this is far from what health and safety truly is about. Health and safety is an enabler. It enables businesses and people to do amazing things, create, build, innovate, grow, challenge, explore and so much more! But at its heart, it’s about people, just like you and I, and keeping them safe, healthy and happy.”
“One of the greatest challenges in my profession is the ignorance of health and safety responsibilities – you’d be surprised at the number of businesses that fail to understand the depth or width of health and safety law in the UK. So as a professional, it is my primary responsibility to help business owners understand and navigate these challenges. Every journey with a client is one of education to help to demystify health and safety and support them to understand what they need to do and how.”
“I am very proud that our Health & Safety consultancy is totally bespoke to each client, not delivered by formula like a lot of the larger providers in the marketplace. The business continues to grow and I continue to learn so much. I am excited to continue that journey of growth, without compromising the quality and professionalism of what we do. AAB provides a platform for the growth of the business but also creates a fantastic career and professional development opportunity for our team.”
Fios Genomics provides bioinformatic data analysis services to pharma companies and academia for drug discovery, development and applied research. (Bioinformatics is the science of collecting and analysing complex biological data such as genetic codes.)
Founded in 2008 and based in Edinburgh, Fios is listed among the top bioinformatics providers, with a large client base in all life science areas. In the last six years alone, its 10-strong team has grown to 46, working with top pharma companies around the world.
Fios has a specialised team of bioinformaticians, statisticians and biologists based mainly in Edinburgh, AAB People has supported the company for over six years in all things HR, excluding recruitment. In the absence of internal HR expertise, Fios sought a long-term partner who could manage, develop and advise on all aspects of workplace life, employment practice and employee relations. The ongoing brief is wide-ranging general HR expertise, guidance and practical tools, from compliance and procedures to performance management, professional development and employee engagement.
A priority since 2022 has been to provide team training across ever-evolving areas relating to people management, such as company-wide diversity and inclusion awareness, to reflect and respect the changing nature of the workplace. Also vital in the post-pandemic landscape of hybrid and remote working has been the provision of training relating to a re-distributed workforce. Pre-2020, almost all Fios staff were based in Edinburgh. Now, most work remotely or within a hybrid arrangement, presenting fresh challenges for leadership, communication and performance management.
Consultant Donna ran training workshops for all 46 Fios employees, including management team training. They included performance management and appraisals guidance for new and established managers, where sessions were created for managers to learn how to manage processes relating to performance management and employee feedback.
Also vital was awareness training in several continually evolving areas: diversity and inclusion, the importance of emotional intelligence in a highly technical, analytical, often ‘black and white thinking’ environment, giving sensitive feedback and having difficult conversations, building resilience and the challenges and practicalities of working from home and here-to-stay hybrid working.
AAB People also provided employee relations guidance, featuring end-to-end process education on all aspects, from mediation, casework, performance management issues to annual leave, maternity leave, absence management, occupational health referrals and disciplinary procedures. In addition, a benefits review and set of recommendations was conducted for Fios in 2022.
Turning to company culture, AAB People ran a Values workshop for Fios in 2020. The outcomes have since underpinned all workplace behaviour, outlook and recruitment, as well as approaches to everyday challenges and problem-solving. An adapted version of AAB’s own ‘Ways of Working Charter’ was introduced, covering mindful, respectful communication with colleagues, people development, time management and overall company culture guidance.
An employee engagement forum was established, in which six representatives of different departments meet voluntarily every six weeks to discuss workplace incentivisation schemes, any emerging team issues and ideas for all-important team social activities, many of which happily include AAB People!
Ensuring robust policies, procedures and compliance is another key part of the brief, including a Right to Work audit to ensure that correct documentation is supplied for every employee in every circumstance.
Ongoing support and a ‘listening ear’ is central to the AAB People-Fios Genomics relationship. CEO Sarah Lynagh has weekly calls with Donna to discuss emerging HR issues and challenges. These might include retention challenges, performance management or specific cases relating to individuals. As testament to her trusted role as senior advisor and HR Lead, Donna is regularly invited to internal leadership meetings where people strategies and decisions play a significant part. She is also first port of call for any employees with HR questions or concerns.
CEO Sarah Lynagh particularly values the advisory role that AAB People play over and above the practical support and guidance of everyday HR issues:
“We have the ideal arrangement, where AAB People are part of our team but act as a slightly independent, neutral source of knowledge and expert guidance. They also ‘keep us right’ in negotiating the teething problems associated with business growth.“
“As CEO of a growing business, you can sometimes get lost in the weeds and the trees. It’s great to have a sounding board in Donna, who can help us decide what to sometimes let go and what to pursue. It’s also beneficial for our business to have access to her wider team and all their client experiences. It takes away the typical pain points of running a company.”
“Before we found AAB People, we had academic processes in place and legal support, but we lacked the ‘softer touch’ expertise needed to nurture a growing team. We needed to take stock and professionalise our HR!”
“We’ve had several new managers facing new scenarios – people whose roles are very technical and who’ve benefited from AAB People’s management training, having never run teams before or been responsible for the development and wellbeing of other colleagues. The training around diversity and inclusion and emotional intelligence really opened our eyes.”
“The emerging issues around post-Covid hybrid-working have been particularly challenging to navigate. It was like a grenade being thrown into our working practice, leading to several new flavours of contract and with them, new types of policy and new people management issues!”
“The world has changed; the levels of flexibility that new recruits, especially younger ones, are demanding, is brand new territory. It’s a fine balance between encouraging office-based working to suit the needs of the job Vs. alienating the discerning talent you’ve worked hard to find. The ‘Monday-to-Friday in the office’ culture is simply no longer an option for some recruits.”
“The values workshop that Donna ran for us was terrific and very worthwhile. We apply the outcomes to our daily practice and stick to those values in our comms, our marketing and in recruitment interviews.”
This 16-strong team of ‘smart security’ experts has grown quickly since launch in 2019. Best known for its DIY smart home burglar alarm battery-powered system, the Edinburgh-based consumer security hardware and software start-up has big plans to grow over the coming years as it develops and manufactures more new smart home security products.
The team sought ongoing HR expertise to help them navigate a growing team and all that comes with needing to introduce people management processes, policies and procedures. With 11 staff and growing in Summer 2021, they hired AAB People for guidance, advice and practical support.
Keen to engage experts who would do more than assist with transactional HR tasks, they were looking for structure, rigour and deeper insight into all things HR. The company has been supported by Scott and his colleagues not just in everyday HR operations, but in more advanced, strategic, often complex and sensitive areas. With a management team who are largely tech specialists, the firm had no internal HR expertise on board and had previously relied on an impersonal call centre support system. They sought a more human, ongoing partnership and a proactive approach that would reach far beyond helping meet ‘legal minimums’.
“We now understand far more about HR. Often in larger firms, people see HR advisors and departments as ‘blockers’ to getting things done. Our experience is quite the opposite. Working with AAB People has helped us learn more about nurturing, motivating and managing employees. We’ve even come to enjoy forming a structure for organisational development! And the monthly Pulse surveys – so simple yet so effective – are one of the best tools we’ve gained. We wonder now why we never did something like that before!” CEO of the Smart Security Firm
“We now understand far more about HR. Often in larger firms, people see HR advisors and departments as ‘blockers’ to getting things done. Our experience is quite the opposite. Working with AAB People has helped us learn more about nurturing, motivating and managing employees. We’ve even come to enjoy forming a structure for organisational development! And the monthly Pulse surveys – so simple yet so effective – are one of the best tools we’ve gained. We wonder now why we never did something like that before!”
CEO of the Smart Security Firm
AAB People has focused on bringing ideas and suggestions, reducing stress and helping the firm make people-related decisions that rely on a deep knowledge of employee needs, workplace relations and professional development. One of the most powerful new tools introduced by AAB People has been the concise monthly one-minute Pulse Surveys, which help the board to ‘take the temperature’ of the team around job and workplace satisfaction and work life balance. Other solutions introduced by AAB People include:
AAB People has brought far more awareness to the board of “when people problems are there”. Beforehand, there was less management information and general HR acumen to be able make pivotal decisions. Robust processes are now in place to identify people-related issues and to know how to approach them. The team reports more confidence and more visible infrastructure – for the company and its investors – to enable the business to scale up.
The CEO is clear about the impact AAB People has had on operational life:
“We’ve been pleasantly surprised at how positive the impact has been. Working with an HR consultancy in this way is a great model for business of our size with a limited budget for hiring HR specialists in-house. A challenge for start-ups like ours is to introduce some structure but not so much that it constrains innovation and growth. Together we enjoy a consultative approach to designing new HR processes and tools and a healthy exchange of ideas where we can challenge each other.”
“It’s really invaluable knowing we’ve got someone in Scott who understands what we need and has the in-depth knowledge to ‘catch us’ in areas we’re uncertain in, and in challenging and sensitive times that require deeper knowledge than we have of a complex legal system.”
“Thanks to AAB People, we have a reliable, pragmatic, insightful, professional HR capability. Before this partnership, we were rather under-structured in terms of people management. We value the knowledge, rigour and vital flexibility that they bring.” “As a result of having AAB People on board, we have peace of mind that all things HR are guided by advisors who know the industry, can advise frankly on risks and implications, and help us motivate, inspire and look after the employment needs and challenges of our growing team.” COO The Smart Security firm
“Thanks to AAB People, we have a reliable, pragmatic, insightful, professional HR capability. Before this partnership, we were rather under-structured in terms of people management. We value the knowledge, rigour and vital flexibility that they bring.”
“As a result of having AAB People on board, we have peace of mind that all things HR are guided by advisors who know the industry, can advise frankly on risks and implications, and help us motivate, inspire and look after the employment needs and challenges of our growing team.”
COO The Smart Security firm
Crabtree & Crabtree is a bespoke holiday letting agency, with a curated portfolio of exclusive holiday homes across the North of England and South of Scotland. Founded by Emma Crabtree in 2004, it has grown to become an 11- strong team with properties across four unspoilt regions. Until recently, most of the team worked in the Kelso office in the Scottish Borders.
In 2019, during a period of controlled growth, the business sought a human resources partner that could lead on all aspects of people management and effectively become an extension of the team. The focus was on a strategic relationship and personal touch service that would provide longer term recommendations as well as assistance with employment contracts, policies and appraisals. AAB People was recommended by a colleague at Scottish Enterprise.
“We sought HR guidance in a phase of controlled expansion, building the team from 7 up to now 11 with a view to continued growth” explains Emma Crabtree. People here are passionate about our brand. It’s a friendly, family feel team who know each other well. We recognised a need to formalise how we work as we grow, which we hadn’t particularly done before, but without losing our sense of camaraderie and warmth. We sought a listening ear, a partner who could recommend responses to formal and informal issues quickly and sensitively.”
The arrival of the pandemic in March 2020 presented a series of new HR (as well as business) challenges. As well as managing growth and formalising procedures, another significant HR challenge emerged. Sudden remote working, and uncertainty around how and to what extent the holiday lettings industry would return to business, presented immediate people management priorities.
“We sought HR guidance in a phase of controlled expansion, building the team from 7 up to now 11 with a view to continued growth”
Five months before the pandemic took hold, AAB People began building its role as a close partner who would respond in a bespoke way to all emerging HR needs.
The team installed a framework for recruitment, employee relations and professional development and introduced tools, systems and processes to manage everyday HR needs. They helped with the process and procedures around a maternity leave and a promotion to manager position and the development needs around that. The team also refined all documentation to suit the style and feel of a small growing business, moving away from a cover all approach.
As the pandemic struck, Crabtree & Crabtree found themselves having to reorganise thousands of bookings, as well as processing deferrals and cancellations and adjusting to new legislation and ever changing guidance (and sometimes lack of!). The team became busier than ever. All new recruits were interviewed and hired online, with AAB People guiding the team carefully and sensitively, helping the interviewers to listen well in an unusual setting and observe the candidates as well as ask leading questions.
One of those essential recruits was an operations manager, a new post that became increasingly urgent with so many changing external factors affecting liaison with customers both holidaymakers and holiday property owners.
“It was vital for us to get this right, and AAB People helped us to form a strong double act: they knew how to help us find ideal candidates, ask the right questions and remain calm in the face of hospitality industry chaos! Recruitment is about the right people, it’s not just about growth. AAB People are a valuable, professional helping hand in identifying who we need and where to find them.”
As pandemic restrictions eased, the business became even busier, on boarding new property owners in all four regions of England and Scotland. As a result, the property management team continues to expand.
In a time of great change and uncertainty for the hospitality industry, Crabtree & Crabtree describes AAB People as a professional, reassuring HR partner “who knows exactly what we need, when we need it and how to achieve it.” They see the team as being “under the skin of the business and its changing needs”.
The business now has a more bespoke and personal, less generic set of documents and contracts relating to people and workplace management, including a valued new employee handbook.
“We also now have a strong and reassuring knowledge of how best to manage the more intangible parts of HR, keeping the ‘feel’ informal, whilst creating a more structured framework for how we behave as we grow the business. It’s good to have guidance on how to bring out the best in our team’s enthusiasm and capabilities without over -formalising how we do it.”
In 2021, Crabtree & Crabtree has a clear plan of what needs to happen to manage and grow its ever -busy team, with everything to do with people management clearly signposted.
“In AAB People we’ve found a team who understand us, are similar in size to us and are growing like us. They help us manage our people and any emerging situations, large or small. With the new HR plan, we feel as if we know what’s coming next and always have a reassuring sense of calm in the face of sudden changes. Our contacts are delightful, efficient and best of all, they understand us and reflect our own warm culture.” Emma Crabtree, Director, Crabtree & Crabtree
“In AAB People we’ve found a team who understand us, are similar in size to us and are growing like us. They help us manage our people and any emerging situations, large or small. With the new HR plan, we feel as if we know what’s coming next and always have a reassuring sense of calm in the face of sudden changes. Our contacts are delightful, efficient and best of all, they understand us and reflect our own warm culture.”
Emma Crabtree, Director, Crabtree & Crabtree
