Meet Stonehouse Recruitment Group’s Finance Director – Debbie Spencer! Debbie has 26 years’ experience in the Finance Industry, including the last decade in roles including Head of Finance and Finance Director. When Stonehouse Recruitment Group began to consider bringing their finances internally, there was only one woman for the job. Thank you, Debbie, for all your hard work, expertise and your fabulous sense of humour, which you have brought to Stonehouse - we are so grateful to have you be a part of the family!
It really began after bouncing around lots of jobs and then registered with an agency and the owner’s friend another agency owner was looking for someone to help with temps payroll. I started at Susan Hamilton as an assistant to the person doing temps payroll and when she resigned soon after I joined, I told Susan there was no need to have 2 people doing the job and I took over the whole function. It was the first time I could honestly say I loved what I was doing!
It’s hard to pick out what the biggest highlight – probably being promoted whilst on maternity leave because my boss realised I was running the team, and she said, ‘it was a sinking ship without me’.
Most challenging is the constant changes in legislation and years ago software wasn’t always ready to handle changes e.g. when holiday pay was first introduced for agency workers we were keeping manually records and calculations for 500+ temps, seems crazy now. Most rewarding…I love an email saying thank you from a candidate, client, colleague – it’s the simple things and I’ve made a lot of friends along the way, we spend most of our time with co-workers, so it helps if you make great relationships.
So that comes back to relationships and trust. I’ve always tried to approach things from both a front office and back office viewpoint, then you are looking to achieve the best results for everyone and for the business.
Take every opportunity to learn from your colleagues, not just finance – understand other areas of a business and how the business works and more importantly WHY the business exists. If you are bought into a business and its purpose you will naturally strive for both the businesses success and in turn yours. And stay on top of the ever-changing tech world! I feel like a dinosaur, but if you are starting your career its going to be fundamental for the future in this field.
Stonehouse is at a very exciting point in its growth, and I’ve joined as the initial systems and processes are being outgrown. So, we now get to reshape what this all looks like for the future. Being part of designing the best systems and processes is an amazing opportunity for me.
Legislation will always be changing, so making sure you have multiple sources of information is key. Technology is constantly changing too and that’s the bit I have found hard to keep up with, so getting to a point where I can explore the advances and how that can help Stonehouse achieve its goals will be fun. For the next 5 years it’s all about what’s best for the Stonehouse family and our success, working closely with Sohan on business strategies and how to make it happen. I love being part of the ’make it happen’ piece.
I think sometimes your threats are your opportunities. So, for instance, legislation changes can sometimes create fear in your supply chain. I remember when IR35 was being introduced (I was working in private sector at the time), our clients were talking about not using Ltd company contractors at all. The opportunity is to find the best possible process that meets all of the legislative requirements and educate your clients on how you can help them remain compliant, reduce or eliminate their risk and advise them on how damaging it is for a business to not use the best candidates to complete their projects on time. Our clients need flexibility.
Also, I think one of the biggest challenges across the recruitment sector is hiring and retaining staff. Finding people who are motivated to be successful, that fit your company culture and understand that you have to work hard is tough. Our industry is seen as a ‘revolving door’ for employees and that’s not because that’s what business owners want, its because people come into recruitment thinking its easy and quick to earn good money. For some maybe it is, but for most it’s not so easy and that’s why we have great mentors and a coach, hopefully we can break the revolving door perception!
