Building A GR8 Business
Building A GR8 Business
Monday, 14 November 2022 - 31 minutes
Building a GR8 Business - the inside story of the Channel Island's leading recruitment business.
Presenter: Hello and welcome, I'm Jason King and I'm joined by Lee Madden, the founder and managing director of GR8 Recruitment, as well as Emma Holliday, the company’s Rest of the World Director Isle of Man and Diane Sumnall - GR8’s Business Continuity Director in Jersey.
Established just four years ago, GR8 has grown quickly to become the Channel Islands leading specialist recruitment company.
In this podcast, we'll explore how GR8 was established and find out what makes it stand out in a competitive market.
Lee - as you head into your fifth year of operation, you've grown from startup to sector leader in the Channel Islands, and you're expanding into the Isle of Man and the UK.
Lee Madden: Yeah, we started the business four and a half years ago, by myself on my sofa in St. Mary's. It then grew to shared office space in the library in town and from there, we've grown into the sector leading recruitment specialists for blue collar sector across Channel Islands, and as you say growing to the Isle of Man next year.
Presenter: So what inspired you to set up the business?
Lee Madden: I looked at what was happening in Jersey for blue collar recruitment, and fully believed that people weren't doing it very well.
And I thought I could do better, simple as that... simple as a gap in the market.
Presenter: And you went, Yeah, I'm gonna fill it, I can fill it, I can do well, did you have any experience in the market before you came into it?
Lee Madden: Oh, my history is army police force, but mostly working for 'Back to Work', a government agency of Social Security in Jersey and I was helping people with barriers to employment back into work.
So effectively, I was matching a resource to an employer and getting them into work. So that's where my experience of recruitment came.
Presenter: What are the values that make GR8 stand out in a competitive market?
Lee Madden: Our values are PAID - not paid as in cash but Passionate, Inclusive And Driven. We're absolutely passionate about what we do. We're agile - that's in our approach, inclusive of all, whether that be race, creed, or colour, or ideology and more importantly, we're actually driven in what we do. We drive to provide excellent customer service - be that to our client or to our employee.
Presenter: And that, I guess, harks back to your military background talking about being adaptable...
Lee Madden: inclusive, driven, making things work - what we are very good at is getting things done. We don't sort of sit and wait, we don't suffer paralysis by over analysis. We just decide we're going to do something and we get on with it and do it.
Presenter: And what areas of recruitment do you specialise in?
Lee Madden: Well, when it first started, it was going to be solely construction. A friend of mine, was running a hotel in Jersey and one night over a glass of wine, he said, "give me a Chef" and I said, well, how hard can it be. And so the hospitality part of the business was born. From then from there on in we started working in retail, agriculture, healthcare early, early years care. Across all the blue sectors we also currently are working in with our partners in the white collar sector, providing some white collar resourcing through our white collar agencies in the islands as well.
Presenter: So you talk about your passion for doing recruitment better. What does that actually mean in practice?
Lee Madden: For employers, they get fantastic service. As an employer, we're a one-stop shop, they come to us, we tell them what we can do...
You've been listening to building a GR8 business - the inside story of the Channel Islands' leading recruitment business.
