One of the UK’s leading recruitment consultancies has been announced as the latest member of a new support collective designed to help manufacturers grow.
Jonathan Lee, which employs 100 specialists across five offices in the West Midlands, London and Dubai, will join forces with The Manufacturing Hub to provide permanent, contract and interim staffing solutions, along with talent management and HR consultancy.
Headquartered in Stourbridge, the company offers industry unrivalled access to the candidate market, from semi-skilled operatives, technical and engineering specialists through to senior management positions across product development, manufacturing, commercial and supply chain.
It joins Cucumber PR, Start 2 Finish Marketing (S2F), PP Business Improvement and former MAS experts Alison Phillips and Rachel Eade (MBE) in the Manufacturing Hub.
Between them, the members provide SMEs and larger organisations with a single source solution for lean manufacturing, strategy, continuous improvement, sales and marketing and public relations support.
“We firmly believe in the power of collaboration and sharing best practice, which were the principal drivers behind us getting involved in the Manufacturing Hub,” explained Mark Bignell, Managing Consultant at Jonathan Lee.
“With the amount of political change and uncertainty of late, manufacturers have found themselves lacking specialist support and are confused as to who to turn to for assistance on key issues, such as becoming more efficient, accessing funding or managing expansion.”
He continued: “Finding the right people to add value to your organisation is critical to the success of any manufacturer and the existing skills gap is growing, as uncertainty inevitably leads to lower candidate confidence.
“We use our market knowledge and sourcing expertise to build the most appropriate recruitment solutions so that clients secure the best candidates for their business.”
“Recruitment companies have been known to over-promise and to under-deliver, leaving clients without the key people they require to grow. We take time to listen and get to know them, which means we are best placed to deliver the right results. Being part of the Manufacturing Hub means we can work more closely with other industry specialists to add real value to the client.”
Established in 1978, Jonathan Lee Recruitment has developed its suite of services to meet any sourcing challenge a client might face.
Recruiting permanent, contract and interim staff both across the UK and globally for manufacturing firms, the company has specialist teams in place supporting the automotive, aerospace, defence, aviation, rail, FMCG, automation & robotics, power generation and subcontract engineering sectors.
A team of 50 consultants – all specialists in their industry or function – works closely with clients on providing an initial skills review to identify gaps in talent, before developing a bespoke solution that delivers people with the right skills and cultural fit for their clients.
Mark added: “Manufacturing SMEs are the backbone of industry in the UK and can often struggle to compete with larger companies in a skills-short market. We want to ensure that our services meet their needs too.
“We have listened to our clients and have developed a model geared around smaller firms, appeasing cash flow issues, while sharing the risk within the recruitment process.
“We also offer talent management solutions, HR consultancy, payroll services, market intelligence and salary benchmarking, so our clients are supported across all aspects of staffing.”
Steve Jolliffe, Director of S2F and Chair of the Manufacturing Hub, concluded:
“Over the last few months we have been talking to a lot of engineering companies and one of the topics that kept cropping up was recruitment.
“We decided to address this by sourcing a recruitment consultancy that understood the sector and had a proven track record of delivering the goods…that firm had to be Jonathan Lee.”
Companies accessing the Manufacturing Hub can use one, two or all six members to help their business, with one point of contact managing all of the delivery to ensure an effective and coordinated approach.
Between them, the collective has helped more than 1000 firms over the last five years, safeguarding and creating in excess of 25,000 jobs in the process.