North Notts Blinds

North Notts Blinds are a one of the most prominent blinds manufacturers in the Midlands. Their homemade, British blinds are endorsed by the British Blinds & Shutters Association, and they deliver daily to addresses across the UK.

The organisation’s head office is based in Nottinghamshire, and they currently employ around 25-27 employees.

Tina Fritchley, Head of Accounts & HR, and Jessica Ledger, Director, discuss the initial sign up for Croner’s services:

“We thought it sounded like a perfect fit for our business. When it comes to HR specifically, we just felt it was something we could do better. Our contracts, handbooks, and documentation in particular needed reviewing—there were quite a lot of outdated sections in there.

“We don’t have anyone specifically trained in HR in-house,” states Jessica, “so we’re fairly reliant on Croner for HR services. Tina manages accounts, payroll, and some HR, I chip in when needed.

“It tends to be myself who calls up when there’s an issue,” says Tina, “but if I’m not around and there’s a problem, Jessica will pick up the phone too.”

North Notts Blinds have been utilising Croner’s services for just over a year, but Jessica reflects on the first contact she had with the advisers:

“I felt quite sorry for some of your advisers initially because we had issue after issue after issue with the employees we had at the time. It was almost a daily occurrence.

“When we first came on board with Croner neither of us had a full understanding of HR,” says Tina, “It had never been a priority for us before. So, that initial advice pointed us in the right direction. When new issues have cropped up, we started to get a decent understanding of what to do purely because we’d had advice from Croner on previous situations that were similar. It’s been really, really helpful.

“Sometimes we don’t know how to deal with the issue so we refer to you guys,” states Jessica, “at least then we know we’re going down the right path. And, we can ensure it’s all documented and accounted for. We’re now in a place where we really know what we’re doing, and that’s all thanks to Croner. The help has been amazing.

“Compared to when we first signed up with Croner, it’s all gone very quiet. We managed to deal with the problems we had initially. Since then there’s been a culture change, it’s really had an impact on everyone’s mind-set.

“Now, employees know that issues will be dealt with properly and promptly. If they’re facing an issue, they have the employee assistance programme to help them, or if they’re thinking of causing trouble they know they’ll be taken into account. Whereas before that wasn’t really the case. The workforce are now more aware of the consequences.”

Shabeena Molvi sat with us and went through all of our documentation. We felt a bit sorry for her too. There was so much that needed updating, and so much that needed adding in. New laws, regulations, and things we hadn’t even thought of.

There’s a few areas of our documentation that Tina is reviewing now, but once we’ve finished with that we’ll probably contract Shabeena again to make sure we’re good work compliant.