2023 Looking back and into 2024

As we approach the end of the year, it felt like a great time to reflect on some of the successes and challenges of 2023 and what we are looking forward to in 2024.

Our successes

Thought I might start by sharing our successes this year in the theme of the 12 days of Christmas …. apart from there are 15!!  Feel free to sing along ….

15 team building events
(which has seen 280 people get more connected to their business, its goals and each other)

14 employee retention and engagement workshops
(with over 200 people attending helping to encourage more employers to focus on the engagement of their teams.

13^th year of Pro-Development
(lucky for us) 😉

12 coaching relationships
(helping people to overcome challenges and supporting them to find their best self)

11 amazing team members
(loving our fabulous team)

10 strategic projects
(helping with business growth through vision, values, talent and performance)

9 employee engagement surveys
(we’ve sent out over 400 surveys throughout the year)

8 Continual Professional Development sessions
(where we share learnings and keep our own skills up to date)

7 Online leaders
(we only did one online programme – interesting that most are wanting to go back to face to face)

6 new strategic partnerships
(we love to be able to work with others to support our clients)

5 gold rings
(well, we can’t change this one, too integral to the song but we felt like Olympic champions with our Small Business of the Year Award throughout 2023!)

4 quarterly sessions
(this is time for us to connect to our purpose and plans for the year)

3 First Line Manager programmes
(we love these 6 month programmes that help support those who have never had training)

2 outdoor experiential leadership programmes
(that’s another 12 people making it just short of 100 people who have experienced the transformation of their leadership)

And a shed load of people we have trained!!
(We’ve trained 150 people on our one day professional development workshops ranging from Honest Conversations to Exceptional Customer Service and a further 135 people who we have developed in their leadership and management skills)

What difference has this made in our region

For those of you who know us well, you’ll know how important it is for us to make a difference.  Here’s just a list of some of the impact that we have had with our clients:-

• Supported the retention of employees
• Improved engagement in the clients we have run surveys for by 8% on average
• Improved productivity across many businesses
• Helped make individual time savings
• Upskilled 100s of people to help them improve how they work at every level of the business
• Reduced the time it takes for people to be give more responsibility and be promoted
• Supported more innovation with some implementing new technology and products
• Helped people to adapt  and improve behaviour to work with others more effectively
• Supported people to consider how their actions will impact others when making decisions
• Improved processes to help streamline and make changes across businesses
• Encouraged more suggestions and ideas from all team members
• Effectively worked through differences of opinion and resolved conflict
• Offered ongoing feedback and supported others to do the same
• Developed a more coaching and mentoring approach to empower people and teams
• Ensured people are looking at continuing professional development and lifelong learning
• Supported bottom line growth of business in Yorkshire and the Humber
• Changed lives for the better, not just for the leaders we have worked with but everyone they are involved with too

What have been our challenges?

Michelle often referred to this year as the “Thriving in a Weirdy World” year!   At times, with the aftermath of Covid, Brexit, the Ukraine War and Supply chain issues, it has felt tough for a lot of clients this year which in turn makes it feel tough for us.  We want to see all our clients succeed and I think many of us have felt a bit drained by the constant changing economic landscape.

For us, we started off last year with big plans for 2023, as did many of our clients, and whilst we might not have achieved all we set out to do, we are just pleased that we are still able to support our clients, invest in our business as well as futureproof it and reward our team along the way.  We took on extra costs in 2023 with the introduction of the new Training Suite but it has given us and our learners such joy to be able to create a fabulous learning environment for them all.

The changes around funding with the move out of the EU was tough as we have loved been able to get money towards the investment our clients make into their people and teams.  Shared Prosperity Fund has been slow in coming through and the money available is nothing like we have had before, but we are making the most of the opportunities that are available and constantly looking for new ways to access funding for our clients. Make sure you are signed up to our newsletter so you don’t miss any updates.

We’ve said goodbye to a couple of people this year, the retirement of Juan and Helen making the move to follow her passion for pottery. It’s always sad to see people go but we gave them both a good send off and it was great to see them following their hearts and dreams.  We’ve learnt a lot from a couple of recruitment processes that didn’t work out, that are already informing and shaping our future recruitments.

So, what’s next for Pro-Development

We’re super excited for 2024 and have lots of exciting plans.

As often when we come to the end of a chapter, it brings new opportunities and we’ve welcomed a few new faces this year and have been delighted to have Abi Hutchinson join us as another full-time Learning and Development Consultant and she is already making a huge difference to her learners.  Then towards the end of this year, we created a new role and welcomed Dan Holland as our Business Development Manager and Michelle and Dan are loving working together to find ways in which we can help even more SMEs in our region.  And watch this space as a new member joins us in January.

With our incredible team in place now, we look forward to working together with you to create even more magic and make even more of a difference in 2024.

With the introduction of Leadership Bootcamps towards the end of this year we are hopeful that we can access funding to be able to deliver more of these from April 24.

Concerns around recruitment are leading to more and more businesses focusing on retention so we plan to run more employee engagement surveys to help businesses truly understand why people are staying and what might be getting in the way and the risks of losing people.

With our South Yorkshire funding in place, we are hoping to help more businesses in this region.

Our Leadership Behaviours Framework consultancy work is making a real difference to the clients that implemented this in 2023 and so we expect to be supporting more clients to create a leadership culture in their business around leading yourself, leading others and leading the business.

We know that many business leaders are feeling fatigued by what has been a tough few years, so we look forward to working with them as a trusted partner to be there for them, help them overcome challenges and have the successful 2024 they truly deserve.

So, as we come to the end of the year, we want to take the opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and we hope that 2024 is a healthy, prosperous and successful year for you, your family, your teams and your business.