CEO Paul Bresnihan heads up Growth Partners PLC, an Employee Engagement company that delivers expert-level HR & Benefit services to SMEs. A results-driven Business Leader, Paul has over 16 years’ experience in the industry and has made it his mission to revolutionise UK workplaces by making them healthier, happier and ultimately more productive environments.

1/. Why a career in employee engagement?

PB – I’ve been in this line of work for over 16 years now. If I’m being honest, when I got the job offer for sales executive all those years ago – it was just that. A job to pay the bills. A new job in a string of many, having been working since the age of 13. I didn’t know it at the time, but that one decision, sales executive at Personal Group would shape the rest of my career. Employee engagement as a term is relatively new, and back then even more so – having been knocking about for only a decade, if that. You know the saying “Work smarter, not harder”? Well that’s employee engagement in a nutshell, it’s the field looking into what it takes for an employee to perform well in their role. And this I think is what hooked me. I’d spent years before this, grafting away. I’d worked a chain of different jobs, but it was in this line of work that I found a real value in what I was doing, and for the first time in my career I found that the industry I worked for excited me.

2/. What’s the appeal of it?

PB – For employees all over, the employee engagement industry creates real, positive change. Better working environments, happier, more productive workers. That’s the short of it. Throughout the 16-odd years that I’ve been a part of it, I’ve worked with all kinds of workers from every sector. Finance, retail, healthcare, sport, construction, you name it. All types of work sites and working conditions, and I’ve learnt a lot. One reason why I like what I do so much is because of how relevant the work is to the everyday person’s life.

3/. I imagine you get a lot of insight into what works and what doesn’t for all sorts of careers?

PB – Exactly. Every job has its own set of demands that you have to consider. But let’s say as a general example, your bog-standard regular full-time job. You’re up at 7 and asleep by midnight. Factor in the getting ready, the commute to and from, and of course the hours clocked in – the average person spends easily two-thirds of their day wrapped up in their work, no matter the industry. On top of that, not everyone ditches their job the second they’ve clocked out. There are deadline pressures, work squabbles, and general stresses that follow you out the door meaning that when you add it all up, the bulk of your time is given up to your job. The appeal of my career for me then is not just the fact that I get to meet different kinds of people, but that the work I do helps to improve the time these people spend at theirs.

4/. You recently started up a company called Growth Partners. Tell me a bit about it.

PB – Yes, since 2017. We’re getting ready to celebrate our second year anniversary actually, it’s fantastic. A bit about us. We’re based in Leicester, and we’re an employee engagement company that offers a practical solution to common employer concerns like underperformance, or worryingly high turnover and absenteeism rates. We’ve designed a unique business support tool of HR & Wellbeing services, that we host on our Growth Pro platform. Through Growth Pro, we give our clients a team of HR experts to cut down the time-consuming admin work that eats up their company’s time and resources. We take the full task of payroll & pensions off their hands, and offer support in areas like employment law, occupational health, recruitment. As well as taking the weight off the employer, we also give their employees a bundle of work perks at no extra cost. Growth Pro gives employees a network of wellbeing support, access to an NHS registered online GP service, counselling, fitness support, membership to a leading retail discount provider and more.

5/. Where do you see your industry heading?

PB – You can already see the rise in responsibility of HR, and the rise of the burden of care the employer must have for their staff. Soon, I predict that an inclusion of wellbeing schemes to support each employee’s work (and out-of-work) challenges will be incorporated across a larger spread of companies. My advice: be smart, get ahead. It’s no secret that businesses scoring high in employee engagement benefit greatly from improved commitment from staff, productivity and innovation. Because of this, employers are recognising more and more that it’s in their best interest to care about employee welfare, especially when it comes to retaining top talent and high job performance.

6/. Finally, throughout your career, has there been any advice that has stuck with you?

PB – I’ve had some excellent mentors along the way and one line that’s stuck is “Great people make great businesses.” It’s simple, but to me this belief is key. From director at one the UK’s leading Benefits providers to now starting up Growth Partners from scratch, there has been a huge learning curve. As CEO, you often find that it’s the toughest decisions that land on your desk, but you chalk it up as the territory of the role. I’ve found that in both cases, my previous role and now, an office full of proactive, passionate people is better backing than a team disinterested in the company’s goals. In the past year, Growth Partners has grown from 0 to now 30 employees strong, and it’s a piece of advice that I’ve embedded both into our own recruitment practices as well as our overall company culture.