Hear from our Founder and MD, Will Akerman
“Since our rebrand to Connectr 12-months ago, we’ve had an incredible first year, and thanks to our amazing team and partners we are continuing to grow. We have so much to celebrate. I wanted to reflect on some of our key achievements that have brought us to where we are now, and which are paving the way for a highly successful future!
As we continue to navigate a hybrid working world into a challenging 2023, Connectr’s candidate and employee platforms will continue to play a vital role in supporting our partners to hire, progress, and retain their most critical asset to success – their people. I am delighted to see the impact Connectr’s technology and services are delivering to our partners and their communities. And I’d like to welcome the many new mentoring-platform clients to the Connectr family including Thales, Heathrow, Atkins and National Grid.
Our social commitment
Born from a heritage in DE&I, Connectr is built upon the belief that every person should have equal power and opportunity to shape their future. I’m proud to say that these values shine through in everything we do, and I feel genuinely honoured to work with a team who are both talented and caring in equal measure. At Connectr, we care about our work, our impact, and about each other.
We’ve grown our team by 38% in the last year in order to support our customers, help them to onboard and progress their people, and meet their own DE&I targets. It’s a privilege to be working with so many leading companies who share our values and are working hard to level the playing field for new and existing talent of all backgrounds, particularly those from underrepresented groups.
Our Product Development and Engineering teams have worked closely to ensure our world-class and award-winning platforms continue to evolve and reflect the needs of our customers. This feedback is incredibly valuable and will continue to be key in defining our development roadmap.
Enabling career progression
Over the last year, we have worked with some incredible customers and made great strides in developing Connectr’s platforms. But the personal stories from those who are benefitting from their mentor connections are, above all, the most inspiring and humbling.
Hearing how mentoring is enabling meaningful growth in skills, confidence and career progression is the best thing in the world and a true testimony to the brilliant work that everyone at Connectr is doing.
Supporting the ‘marvellous middle’
I was recently talking to an HR director of a global employer who explained that her first priority in the current climate was to help progress the ‘marvellous middle’. These are the vast number of employees who are neither at the top levels in the business, nor in entry-level positions.
The ‘marvellous middle’ are those who are already experienced and have in-depth knowledge and skills which are key to moving forward and delivering company objectives.
By enabling these employees to progress and move forward into more senior roles will mean the business continues to benefit from their experience, commitment, and loyalty. This, in turn, frees up spaces that can then be filled by more junior employees as they progress in their career journeys.
Connectr’s mentoring experience compliments our partners’ business models and commitments to growth through empowering the personal development and progression of all employees, which in turn, boosts overall commercial health.
Hearing this first-hand really brought home the positive impact we’re having on a huge number of employees across the UK.
Mentoring as we approach a recession
With a looming possibility of an upcoming recession, our mentoring platforms have never been so mission-critical for businesses. Connectr’s technology supports enterprise businesses in three key ways which, combined, provide a highly cost-effective solution for navigating choppy economic waters and emerging even stronger:
- Reducing incoming talent drop-outs, decline rates, and rehiring costs through pre- and onboarding journeys supported by mentors.
- Accelerating career development across the whole workforce, from incoming talent to the ‘marvellous middle’, to senior leadership teams. Future and existing employees are upskilled, engaged, and retained through meaningful career pathways.
- Supporting people from underrepresented groups and ensuring businesses maximise their skills, knowledge, and insights. There is a vast pool of often overlooked yet highly talented individuals who have so much to contribute to companies and their success.
For most businesses, it’s far more cost-effective to develop existing employees who already have company knowledge than it is to recruit and train new people. The key development and retention tool for 2023 will be mentoring.
Mentoring technology in the hybrid world
At the beginning of the pandemic, continuity for many businesses was enabled by cloud-based software which empowered limitless connection across remote, widespread teams.
To quote Microsoft’s CEO, Satyella Nadella: “We saw two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”
In our post-pandemic recovery, hybrid working is now firmly entrenched in working culture, enabled by technology which continues to evolve.
Connectr’s platforms revolutionise the candidate and employee experience by reducing historically time-consuming, ad-hoc and clunky processes into a streamlined and trackable end-to-end journey for all talent.
Delivering at-scale mentoring impact is now much easier thanks to Connectr’s world-class algorithm that smartly matches mentors and mentees based on their aims, personality and background, irrespective of workforce size. This- alongside a suite of dynamic digital features that enable real, human connection – is one of the main reasons why more companies are turning to us to help them pave the way for their success stories of tomorrow.
2023 holds great opportunity for Connectr’s platforms, our partners, and their people. It’s this that gives me the energy to spring out of bed every morning!”
For more information about how we can help your business progress the people who are so critical to success, please contact us!