Profile Joanna Swash A woman of substance Joanna Swash, group chief executive at Moneypenny, talks to Jane Simms about her focus on staff wellbeing, redefining the way we work and learning to navigate the new normal I t is a source of amusement to Joanna Swash that every time she goes back to her old school (state school, she emphasises), the same one her children now attend and where she is a parent governor, she remembers her three Ds at A level and the teachers comments that I would never make much of myself. Swash is the group chief executive of Moneypenny, an outsourced communications provider that handles more than 20 million calls, live chats and online interactions annually for 21,000 companies from the likes of BMW and Innocent to SMEs in the UK and the US. She has also recently been appointed to the Prime Ministers new Business Council, established to translate the levelling up slogan into practical actions that will boost productivity and growth throughout the UK. There are three pillars innovation, infrastructure and skills and Im going to be working on the skills side, she says. There is a great deal of work to be done, says Swash, on raising young people who are equipped to work, giving them good career advice, and better connecting the education and business worlds. We shouldnt be measuring success by the number of pupils who go to university, she insists. No wonder so many graduates wish they had done an apprenticeship instead, or are unhappy in their jobs and weve got a skills crisis. We should be measuring success by the number of people who, 10 years after they leave school, are living a happy fulfilled life and doing a job they adore. If you measure the wrong things, you get the wrong result. People at Moneypenny, by all accounts, are doing a job they adore. Famous for a culture based on mutual trust and respect, the company is regularly recognised in the top 10 of the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For list. A very visible (but by no means the only) manifestation of the boards efforts to ensure that staff are happy, engaged and supported is the bright and lofty modern atrium in the companys Wrexham head office, which with its treehouse, model giraffes, and aptly named Dog and Bone pub resembles a playground for adults. Happy equation If staff are happy, then customers are happy, says Swash; for her, its a simple equation. My job is to keep people happy so that clients get long-term relationships that benefit their brand. So, we need a great reputation as a good employer, which allows us to cherry pick the best people locally, and then ensure they feel safe and secure, and happy enough to want to stay with us. Its the same with employees as it is with clients, she continues: We are open to feedback, we solicit feedback, and we act on feedback and, since the beginning of the pandemic, we are listening more intently than we ever have. If the formula is so simple, however, and it yields such great returns (the company expects revenue to grow by 15% this year, to more than 60m), why dont more companies emulate the Moneypenny culture? Leaders have to live and breathe the values, and ego often gets in the way, Swash explains. You know the kind of thing Ive worked my way up the organisation and I like having my dedicated car parking space. You cant be like that if you want a culture of equality. I believe in servant leadership its not about what my business can do for me, but what I can do for my business. So, if I walk into the kitchen here and there are pots around, Ill clean them. You do what you can to make it a good environment. The culture at Moneypenny is rooted in firm foundations. The business was established in 2000 by brother and sister Ed Reeves and Rachel Clacher, and, from the start, they planted themselves firmly in their employees and customers shoes. The novel idea at the heart of the venture was to make answering services more personal, by ensuring that Moneypenny people taking the calls on behalf of clients had a strong relationship with those clients: each client has a dedicated, hand-picked PA. The companys enduring ability to understand fully its clients and its staffs requirements, combined with its commitment to technological innovation and a strong teamworking ethos, mean it has weathered the two years of Covid lockdowns better than many. It migrated its then 1,000-strong workforce to home working in just three weeks, with barely a ripple to business continuity. 16 Impact ISSUE 37 2022_pp16-19_Profile.indd 16 28/03/2022 14:45