Louise Potts, People and Culture Manager at SolutionsPT

Coming from a family of musicians, Louise Potts went on to study music in London and specialised in playing viola. However, soon after graduation she forwent the world of music in favour of a career in human resources. Today, Potts is People and Culture Manager at SolutionsPT, a Cheadle based company specialising in industrial automation technologies.  

Louise Potts handles Human Resources at SolutionsPT

The route into HR
Potts started her career at Boots the Chemists in Manchester. The role provided her with a good grounding in HR, a taster of what the sector is all about.

After gaining solid experience at Boots, Potts joined Manchester United’s conference and catering division. “Match day staffing was one of the main challenges of this role. For every event, the organisation needed around 800 casual staff,” remembers Potts.  “As a consequence, I decided to introduce group interviews, which meant that the recruitment process was taking less time without diminishing the quality of the interview for individual applicants. This also meant that the company could reduce its dependency on agency staff, which translated to leaner and more cost effective recruitment,” she continues. 

Dealing with the good, the bad and the ugly in HR
In 2003 Potts started working for one of the largest loan and mortgage brokers in the UK at the time - Freedom Finance. The company went through very rapid growth, which meant a lot of people needed to be recruited in a very short period of time. Standardised processes had to be introduced for almost every aspect of human resources and staff management. 

But hard times lay ahead and when the global economic recession hit, the company had to downsize. Three years of redundancies and cuts followed and Potts had to deal with a difficult employee environment.

“My last three years with Freedom Finance were tumultuous and challenging times… There were a number of redundancies and staff morale dipped every time restructuring took place. Nearly 200 employees were laid off during those three years and, from a once 14 strong HR team, there were only two of us left by the end of my time there. This made communicating with employees very difficult; because of the limited resources and the overall situation. However, I still think that my time with Freedom Finance was a great learning experience. I’ve had to deal with the extremes of HR: expansion, downsizing, redundancies and everything in between,” explains Potts.

The importance of innovation
Potts’ roles have been varied and complex at times, but that didn’t hinder the development of innovative ideas. “If there is one thing that people frequently attribute to HR it’s that it is bureaucratic and inflexible,” she admits. “And when your job is to manage individuals and their expectations, you must be creative about it and make staff management easier for other departments.”

Because of this objective Potts implemented HR forums at Freedom Finance. These consisted of bite size sessions meant to keep managers informed on any changes in employment law and developments in HR best practice. She also organised a management development programme which was designed to increase supervisors’ knowledge and ability to manage their team, legislation and provide practical advice.

In 2012 Potts is working on a career path programme for SolutionsPT demonstrating how employees can progress within the business. “This clear and individually tailored career path means that people can quite easily see how they can develop and what key roles they can potentially progress to,” Potts explains.

Increasing the employer brand
Potts will be focusing on increasing SolutionsPT’s employer brand and achieving Best Companies and Investors in People accreditation for 2012.

“Employer branding describes how an organisation markets it’s offering to potential and existing employees,” explains Potts. “Marketers have developed techniques to help attract customers, communicate with them effectively and maintain their loyalty to a brand. Employer branding involves applying a similar approach to help attract, engage and retain people working within the company,” she says.

SolutionsPT has been included on The Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work for List for the last four years. It has also been voted one of the Best Companies in the North West every year since 2008.

“The focus of my work with SolutionsPT will be on employee engagement and development,” said Potts. “My goal is to help people become aware of their potential within the company. It is very important to make sure you have the best people in the right places. Also, having a strong employer brand and high levels of employee engagement translates to a low turnover of staff and greater employee commitment,” she concluded.