Reflecting on the nearly two years that Emmanuel C. Ellis has been going, it seems crazy it has been so long. The world has changed in the meantime, and with it the recruitment market, which remains the core of the business. I am forever grateful to the people who have given this young business a chance, and even more excited about what is to come.
I set up E.C. Ellis with the intention of helping curate quality professional relationships. Recruitment, often a much maligned industry, can play a big part. I believe that different environments suit different people at different stages of life.I really enjoy making sure my candidates are in a working environment where they can thrive, and that my clients have employees with a sense of mission. However, there is so much more to happiness at work than just being in a good company. You need to feel valued, you need the freedom to be your true self. Some companies manage to make most of their employees feel like this, while others struggle. Some companies manage for a period of time, but then the economic reality changes and stress pushes those relationships to breaking point. As my former boss Andrew Bell used to say, you can’t buy culture off the shelf. A good company culture is always earned, and must be constantly maintained.
An aspect of culture that I think is particularly difficult for companies is that it necessarily has to change as a company grows. A company of five people, where everyone enjoys the same things, can act in ways larger companies can’t. If this small company finds that doing a pub lunch 3 times a week is conducive to success, that’s great, do what works for you. However once that company grows to 30, problems can arise. Those 5 original people may still have a pub lunch three times a week, and 5 of the new 25 employees love that part of the job. This 10 becomes a clique, and the other 20 feel they either have to do something they don’t want to do in order to get ahead or become resentful as members of the “clique” get promoted before them, because they are identified as “team players”. I’ve seen these dynamics not only within start-ups but also in within larger corporates, where teams often start small then expand as they achieve success. Good teams and good companies must become more “professional” as they grow, and the challenge is how to do this while still maintaining the energy and culture that made you special.
In the past couple of years we’ve seen the “Me Too” and Black Lives Matter movements, both of which have helped to shine a light on societal norms which result in structural disadvantage. As an optimist, I believe that the vast majority of business leaders abhor any form of structural disadvantage. Fundamentally it means your company won’t have as strong a team as it could otherwise have had, assuming we believe (as we should) that talent is equally distributed. However behavioural norms that were once fine may no longer be so as a team incorporates colleagues of other ethnicities, backgrounds and religions. The period many of us have had working from home has afforded me the chance to think about what the workplace of the future will look like. In particular I’ve been thinking hard about how Emmanuel C. Ellis can help to make sure that the workplace of the future works better for everyone than the workplace of the past.
Hopefully E.C. Ellis can play a small part in helping to solve some of the problems which have been identified over the past few years. I have some ideas, and look forward to keeping you updated over the next few weeks, months and years. By helping to solve these problems we curate a better working world and more quality professional relationships.
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