Member Article

MetroMail inspires the next generation of business leaders

ONE of the country’s leading mailing houses is being used as a model of best practice to businesses and an inspiration to the next generation of business leaders.

MetroMail was selected by international leadership development organisation Common Purpose to share its knowledge and experiences which have helped it grow to a 220-strong employer.

As part of the Common Purpose North East Meridian 2015 programme, a diverse group of business leaders visited MetroMail’s multi-million pound Seaham facility to hear from Managing Director Alan Purvis about his role in helping MetroMail achieve year on year turnover and profit increases.

The annual programme, which Alan himself graduated from in 2004, is designed to give business leaders and the next generation of directors an insight into the challenges of running a business and inspirational advice from people who at are the helm of successful companies.

Alan Purvis, Managing Director of MetroMail, said: “It was a real honour to be chosen by Common Purpose as the programme participants were visiting some extremely heavyweight companies, so its testament to how much we’ve grown that we were on the list.

“As part of the visit we talked about the company’s journey and how we’ve expanded our portfolio of services to ensure we remain competitive in the industry, and also our commitment to staff investment which we believe is key to our continued growth.

“Having graduated from the programme back in 2004, I was delighted to share my story with business leaders and future company directors, and we’ve had some great feedback which is fantastic.”

Gemma Messenger, Senior Course Director at Common Purpose UK, North East, said: “As part of our North East Meridian programme we took a group of senior leaders to MetroMail to hear from Alan Purvis.

“As a programme graduate himself Alan values the knowledge and understanding he gained by hearing from senior decision-makers in the region. He is always keen to give something back to the next generation of leaders and he recounted the inspirational turnaround story of MetroMail to the group.

“He shared with them his lessons learned and discussed his experience of leading complex change in the hope that it may help the group as they progress through their own careers and leadership challenges. It is a fantastic success story for the North East and one that Alan, and indeed we all, should be very proud of and share with others.”

The Common Purpose visit came just weeks after MetroMail hosted a visit by HouseMark, the leading provider of business intelligence to the social housing sector.

The visit, through HouseMark’s Business Connect programme, was designed to give members an insight into the running of a successful business to help them improve their own organisation.

One of the attendees was Karen Morris from Derwentside Homes. She said: “I found the visit to MetroMail so interesting and informative. I’ve taken away from it how important it is to invest in your workforce. Their staff are so committed to the business and that stems from the leadership of the organisation.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Leanne English .