Reflecting on this time last year, it was difficult to write a festive Christmas message which felt genuine and upbeat. Despite national lockdown ending on December 2nd, the three-tier system was implemented which caused devastation for many Leicester businesses who couldn’t operate and for families and friends who could no longer travel and meet.
Despite this uncertainty for what 2021 would hold, the business community of Leicester continued with it’s determined spirit and a year on we have welcomed new businesses to the region, celebrated the success of professionals and organisations through various award ceremonies and have continued to build strong relationships with one another to help our businesses and city thrive.
For ER Recruitment, it’s been one of our busiest years yet. Many businesses continued to grow and required additional talent to join them, candidates saw the pandemic as an opportunity to take the leap to explore new career opportunities and some organisations saw the year as a chance to take advantage of our consultation offering to ensure they had they were promoting themselves as an employer of choice to both attract and retain.
But alongside the day to day, Team Purple were busy in other aspects of the community, including our MD Eileen Richards MBE who was appointment President of the East Midlands Chamber throughout 2021. Eileen set out to achieve 3 goals throughout her year of Presidency, alongside raising money for 3 of the region’s charities: Chesterfield Samaritans, Help the Homeless Leicester and Nottinghamshire Hospice in which a phenomenal amount of £12,000 was raised.
In addition to these 3 charities, ER Recruitment has continued our support for many other charities and incentives with Eileen most recently being announced as the Vice-Chair for Hope Against Cancer where she sits as a Board Trustee. Furthermore, blood donations for our #BleedForHayley campaign have continued to make a positive difference to those who need it and we’re looking forward to our next round of group bookings early next year.
The internal team at ER have had their own personal and professional successes throughout the year as part of Generation Next, Network LE, The PA Way and after being shortlisted for community awards winning the Midlands Business Awards which we were absolutely delighted to win!
2021 has also been a fantastic year for our partners with us now exclusively recruiting for several clients as their recruitment partner of choice. This has seen us work on large projects such as placing nearly 100 people into Everards Meadows and supporting well known organisations with crucial hires at all levels from entry to SLT. Our partnership with DMU to deliver the BrightER Futures programme has also been a huge success, 20 students were effectively placed with leading organisations for experience and our next cohort is bursting with talent ready to hit the ground running in January.
Although there is still uncertainty about what’s ahead with cases of the new variant rising quickly, our message is one of hope that our business community will come back kicking once more in the new year. As we head into 2022, we hope that the year ahead brings health, prosperity, and success for you all. For us, we will be continuing to connect fantastic businesses with talented professionals, injecting our passion within the business community and adding a few new faces to ER Recruitment who will become an integral part of #OurDNA.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and look forward to working with you again within 2022!
