From bedroom startup to £20m turnover by investing in people

August 1st 2023

A leading managed service provider has explained how its journey from a North Yorkshire startup to an award-winning nationwide company with seven offices, over 500 clients and 170 staff, has largely been achieved by investing in its people.

razorblue was founded by CEO, Dan Kitchen when he was at college after spotting a gap in the market for a strategic IT partner, and quickly earned a reputation for exceptionally high skill levels, service and forward-thinking solutions. As a service-based business, Dan knew that the key to continued success was to find the right people and take care of them, and a plan was put in place.

The company now has 180 staff, many of whom have been with the company for several years and have grown and developed into senior roles and plans to create at least 30 new roles in the coming 12 months.

Dan explains: “Many businesses offer a pool table, pizza Fridays and so on, but that’s not investing in people. For us, it’s all about culture at every level of the business – providing genuine value to our staff in and out of work. While we do have the fun things, we’ve also made significant investment in a dedicated strategy which benefits our employees personally and professionally, and as a result we have high staff (and client) retention, strong employee Net Promoter Scores, and an amazing team of dedicated people.

“We offer ‘nice to have’ things such as private healthcare, enhanced sick, maternity, and paternity pay, electric vehicle and tech schemes, but this year alone we are investing over £100,000 into staff training and development at all levels of the business and across each discipline - so that everyone can benefit from professional development.”

razorblue has a people director, Joanne Finkeldey who sits on the board and has implemented a number of initiatives such as leadership development programmes, ILDPs, mental health first aiders, employee incentives and recognition, and the launch of the razorblue Academy which is designed to help close the digital skills gap and retain North East talent in our region.

Joanne said: “The success of our training and development schemes can be demonstrated by the number of staff who have been with us for many years, becoming an integral part of the team and company.

“Our existing training and upskilling processes as well as passionate work culture has resulted in 34 internal promotions throughout the last 12 months.

“Individual Learning and Development Plans are a vital part of our business, and every employee’s journey with razorblue, so much so that we have recently recruited a Learning and Development Manager to drive this even further. We are also implementing one training day per month for every employee to utilise, this is for them to work on upskilling and to help them thrive in a career they enjoy.”

razorblue specialises in managed IT, security services, super-fast connectivity, cloud and hosting and business software solutions across a broad range of industries.