INTERVIEW


Championing the region’s growing firms


Paul Bresnihan is a businessman who practices what he preaches. A champion of SMEs, and their ability to grow, Paul founded Growth Partners in 2017 to help others do just that. He spoke with Business Network Editor Nathan Fearn about the company’s journey so far, and how the help for ambitious businesses is out there.


There’s an element of irony that a business that is helping enhance and grow other companies is itself still in its early stages. And it is Growth Partners’ development over the past


two years that helps give it such credibility and trust among its growing client base. Set up by Paul to empower SMEs and enable them to


flourish in what is a volatile and uncertain business climate, the Leicester-based employee engagement business has built its own foundations, employing dozens of staff out of its large employee-focused city centre offices - Growth Partners is the embodiment of what can be achieved. Despite his 16-plus years’ experience in the employee engagement and HR industry, Paul’s business origins are, on the face of it, somewhat surprising. However such foundations, he believes, offer a clear synergy to the role he performs today. “Originally I was in the pub trade, I was a licensee back


in my early 20s,” he explains. “I have always had this thing about working with people


and working around people – you certainly get that in the pub trade and it is something that has stayed with me.” After leaving the industry, Paul looked to establish the


next phase of his career. The route he would take is one that continues to this day. “I was looking for a new role and came across a position


within a company called Personal Group, in Milton Keynes, which involved providing low cost cash plans and employee benefit solutions to various companies,” says Paul. “I was there for 16 years and worked throughout the


business in a number of different roles - from location management and account management to commercial relationships and commercial sales – providing employee benefits solutions to large blue-chip organisations which were employing in excess of one thousand people.” So after 16 years rising through the ranks at one


company, what were the main motivations for setting out on his own path? For Paul, a strong desire to make growth- enabling products and services accessible to all businesses – not just larger, more established companies – was at the forefront of his thinking. “Employee benefits and low cost discounts have always


been easily accessible to blue-chip companies,” suggests Paul.


“However, traditionally SMEs have always found it more difficult to access crucial products and services because the


38 business network February 2019


cost of acquisition for the provider is always so much more with an SME. “What we do here is aggregate those services and


discounts and pull them all together, so that when we go out and acquire those services for SME clients we’re getting it at the same costs that a large blue-chip would be able to afford.” Far from being an impulsive decision to set up Growth


Partners, Paul had been formulating the idea over a number of years and it was a perceived gap in the market that convinced him to take the plunge. “It was an idea that had been developing over a period


of time because I had seen other large benefit providers try to dip their toe in as far as getting into the SME space is concerned, but with nobody really cracking it,” he explains. “I analysed what was available elsewhere and specifically


looked at the marketplace over in the United States. Observing their model, I realised they did employee engagement differently and that there was scope to bring a twist on that model here. “We noticed a trend coming into the UK that’s similar to


the model the US uses. We’ve had auto-enrolment pensions, which is a huge administrative burden on an employer, and we’ve had real-time reporting and real-time information, so there’s lots of pressures being applied from central Government and HMRC to an employer in terms of what they need to do to be compliant. “Specifically I wanted, from the PEO (Professional


Employer Organisation) point of view, to create a one-stop- shop scenario whereby the payroll, pension, HR services and benefits of a business are all rolled into one – essentially taking away the administrative burden from the employer.” This model, Paul believes, is a perfect answer to growing


companies that, due to their development and expansion, are having to juggle more and more balls. “Lots of SMEs have come about on the back of an individual setting up a business on their own and that business has, as a result of its growth, found it necessary to employ more and more people. “But actually the core of what they do, and what they’re


about, is whatever that business is, not the legislation and processes that is thrust on them - whether that’s a car mechanic who started out in a lock up and has then grown that business or an IT company that has resulted from an individual who specialises in technology systems.


‘I had seen other large benefit providers try to dip their toe in as far as getting into the SME space is concerned, but with nobody really cracking it’


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