14th Birthday of Talk Staff people consultancy

Wow! How is it our 14th birthday already?

This blog is a celebration of YOU and our team, as a people consultancy you all make us who we are.

This year’s round up in numbers

1 Business Joined the team. Welcome D4S!

1 television appearance on ITV for Time to Talk Day

1 New Director welcome Richard Stokes

2 Colleagues promoted – Congratulations Keeley and Ellie!

7 new starters – Welcome Jordan, Kris, Hannah, Alice, Richard, Sophie and Charlotte

12 Pay Day pizzas hosted by our employees

12 Free Espresso development sessions hosted

14 Milestones over the years

Founded, 2009, with a vision of inspiring people, delivering results

Being people-focused is at the heart of all we do. Co-founders CEO Gary Parsons and MD David Orange shared a vision to inspire people and create people-focused environments which deliver incredible results. And that vision has only grown over the years as we’ve hired a dream team of people who believe unreservedly in the power of people.

That starts at home with our own ‘Talk Staff Family’ building a culture where everyone grows and celebrates together; whether that’s through our fortnightly team development days or bonding over our infamous pay day pizza! You can see more photos of our Talk Staff Family on LinkedIn.

Our clients continuously use our expertise to develop effective people strategies. Why? Because when your people feel motivated and empowered this has a huge effect on productivity, profitability and the collective wellbeing of your team.

And when you incorporate this into your L&D and HR programmes, as well as how you onboard and expand your team, you operate at a whole new level structured for success.

The expertise we’ve acquired within organisational growth, design and development, and our own people with their specialisms from talent acquisition to leadership development, means we’ve helped both huge international companies as well local SME’s achieve extraordinary results.

Outsourced HR and Payroll Services

Putting your people at the centre

We started out with a focus on talent acquisition in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and surrounding areas, helping companies build their dream teams. But we quickly realised there were other ways to support organisations through our experiences too.

So, we prioritised growth within our own team to offer outsourced payroll services and outsourced HR services.

With Talk Staff’s HR Support Service, you can find comfort and peace of mind knowing that you will always have someone to rely on and guide you through any people-related issues you may encounter. Our comprehensive service includes providing sound HR Advice, ensuring employers have up-to-date contracts, documentation, and on-site support for challenging investigations, and conversations within your business.

Our Payroll Bureau provides a refreshing relief from the complexities of payroll, ensuring compliance and helping you avoid fines from HMRC.

We’ve partnered with businesses to focus on scaling and reaching their ambitious goals, by offering fast responses to everything from processing the data right through to providing online payslips, creating reports, and dealing with queries.

We pride ourselves on providing a human-to-human service to our clients of all sizes.

Left, David Orange MD and Gary Parsons, right, CEO

Supporting vulnerable local people

Helping our local community is really important to us, which is why we give our team an extra holiday each year to volunteer at a charity of their choice.

In 2017 we took part in a project to provide warm clothing, together with local residents we collected over 40 large bags worth of donations, making a huge difference to the lives of homeless and vulnerable people. Thanks to everyone who took part!

When social enterprise meets payroll

With a side helping of ice-cream

We’ve been proudly supporting the work of Just-Ice by providing outsourced payroll services and HR Advice at no cost for the last five years. Just-Ice is a social enterprise, creating employment for people who’ve been exploited through trafficking and modern slavery, giving them hope for the future.

Here’s the lovely Sally surprising us during one of our infamous pizza days with some tasty ice-cream.

Debbie (left), Talk Staff outsourced payroll team, and Sally Just-Ice (right)

Read the Just-Ice small business payroll case study

Expansion into Nottingham

Starting out at our Belper office we were helping such a diverse range of clients, both geographically and in terms of sector, that we realised we couldn’t help everyone to our full potential out of just one office.

So, we expanded with a Nottingham office so we could support people in the city centre and surrounding areas in the East Midlands.

We now have an office in Edinburgh too with clients throughout the UK as well as those that operate globally…more on that later.

Halloween decorations in our Nottingham city centre office

Multi-Award-Winning People Consultancy

We’ve been nominated for many awards over the years.

Last year we were finalists at the Business Desk Awards for Fast Growth Business and Small Business of the year.

We also held the award title for Commitment to People Development for the East Midlands Chamber Business Awards in 2017 and Employee of the Year at the Post Business Awards in 2018. With previous nominations in the Derby Telegraph Business Awards Employer of the Year and Leadership team of the year.

Derbyshire Times Business Desk, Gary and David receive award

When employers meet the future of work

The pandemic rocked the boat of talent acquisition making things extremely tough for both employees and employers.

It’s changed the landscape significantly particularly with the hybrid working cultural change within businesses.

In more recent times we’ve used blended learning and our cultural change expertise to help teams develop new ways to work together, whether that’s moving back to the office or expanding innovative culture whilst working in a hybrid setting.

We’re constantly exploring topics on the future of work from AI to building leadership skills.

Celebrating and promoting our people

We know that organisations thrive on the growth of their own people. In 2022 we saw several promotions including Ellie who became our principal consultant and Keeley who moved to a consultant role within our recruitment services team.

To reward her hard work and to celebrate the event, she was treated by the directors to a top-notch meal at the hidden gem that is La Rock in Sandiacre.

D4S joins the Talk Staff Group

Designed4Success (D4S) joined Talk Staff last year in February 2022, forming our new Organisational Development Team, whilst continuing to trade under its own brand.

This team focuses on positive cultural change and organisational development, with a unique approach to helping people achieve their goals, using the latest psychological insights and in-depth research.

Their shared knowledge includes that of experienced psychologists, facilitators and executive coaches that have a natural passion for supporting individuals, teams and organisations by improving wellbeing, increasing productivity and developing your people to thrive and perform at their best.

The team are deeply interested in getting to know your people, the work they do, and their role in your organisation. Their passion is delivering into cultural & behavioural change as well as the wellbeing of your people. When your people thrive through positive cultural change the impact is vastly significant at both an individual, team and organisational level.

Some of our core team who work on both Talk Staff and D4S projects. 

From left: Richard, Charlotte, Jordan, David, Hannah, Shay and Gary

Explore the Learning at Work Week Sessions

Launching our series of Podcasts

We launched our podcast series in 2021 covering everything from open culture to modern slavery.

We love the quote from our second episode “Culture helps us make better decisions together.”

And here’s our podcast with Just-Ice on modern slavery 

Richard Operations Director joins Talk Staff People Consultancy

Richard Stokes joined our team as Operations Director this year covering everything from operations and accounts to workplace health & resilience. He’s also been instrumental in setting up some of our favourite monthly rituals from breakfast clubs to employee of the month.

More people join our Espresso events

Here are the topics we’ve hosted over the last 12 months:

• The Power of Self-Coaching
• Managing Overwhelm – Taking back control
• Innovative Thinking – Powerful Ideas
• Crisis Leadership – How to lead effectively in a crisis
• Building real empathy in business
• Awakening Passion in your role
• Creating good habits for remote working
• Mastering the metaphor – The next level of communication
• Effective feedback
• Inspiring trust and building relationships
• Flow: How to activate a state of pure motivation
• Being in the moment
• Engaging minds through clear communication

Sign up to our free virtual personal developments here:

Upcoming Monthly Espresso Sessions

Feature on ITV and speaking at work health hub events

We’ve given a series of talks as part of Derbyshire at the launch of the Work Health Hub and Mental Health Productivity pilot with Gary sharing the difference workplace wellbeing can make to a team and organisations.

We want to take a moment to thank Kate Wood and her Derby team for all her hard work on these events and bringing people together to talk about mental health at work.

The differences we’ve made to customers and our people

Our employees will be sharing more about what it’s like to work for us, our company culture and what our clients have said about us and how we’ve helped them in an upcoming blog.

So keep your eyes peeled!

We’re always here as a soundboard so drop us a line if you want to discuss how to inspire your people and deliver results.

Speak to our Team

Last Updated on 2 months by Hannah Ingram

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