Member Article

Helen Makes All Things Bright and Beautiful

A former advertising and marketing manager who previously worked in California’s Silicon Valley has used her life experience to grow her North Tyneside housekeeping business.

Helen Ross runs Holystone-based, Bright and Beautiful North Tyneside, a professional home cleaning and housekeeping service with a premium level of customer care, eco friendly products and exceptionally motivated staff.

Despite being only three years old, the business has won a number of professional acolades including Best New Business in the North Tyneside Business Awards and Employer of the Year in the FSB North East Small Business Awards.

Working for various marketing agencies in the UK and USA, Helen generally found that she and other staff were simply regarded as numbers rather than integral team members. The exception was a technology company where she worked in Silicon Valley where the Chief Marketing Officer left a lasting impression on Helen.

“I loved the way that she treated her staff, understanding their strengths and weaknesses and leading through mutual respect and understanding. She was always so calm and provided a degree of freedom to her team, empowering them to achieve objectives. “When I was made redundant three years ago and decided to start my own business, I wanted to adopt my USA boss’s management style as it echoed my own thoughts and values perfectly.”

With the COVID-19 crisis bringing key workers to the fore with a new-found respect, Helen has set out to bring pioneering change to her sector by ethical, professional and proficient working practices and the simple philosophy of investing in her staff.

Helen currently has 11 members on her team and has just taken on her 50th regular customer. Every member of her team is uniformed, DBS checked and trained to a high standard in customer care.

Two years ago Nicola Waddell started with Bright and Beautiful as a Professional Housekeeper and since then she has climbed the career ladder offered by the company, progressing to the role of Team Leader, then Senior Team Leader and has recently been appointed as the company’s Quality and Training Supervisor. She is now studying for industry accredited qualifications.

“The company has a very positive attitude towards women and views the cleaning industry in a very non derogatory way. My confidence has grown since I joined Bright and Beautiful and I’m looking forward to meeting the challenges of growing the business with Helen,“she said.

Indeed Bright and Beautiful North Tyneside is facing immense challenges as the world seeks to get back to normal following COVID-19. Helen has followed her ethical conscience and taken advantage of the Government’s Job Retention Scheme to furlough her staff resulting in no job losses. She. and her team have also put a number of important procedures and practices in place to protect her clients and staff.

“All of my team have received specialist COVID-19 training and we are abiding by social distancing rules, operating staggered start times, wearing the correct PPE, using new hospital-grade eco disinfectant and cleaning our own kit after every job.

“We are now emerging into a different world, where homes, offices and business premises need to be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. Door handles, light switches, desks, telephones, keyboards etc, are all high touch point areas and need extra time spent on them to ensure safety and peace of mind for our clients.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Keith Newman .