Oakleaf are a Sunday Times Best Small Company to Work for 2018
We are delighted to announce that, for the third year running, Oakleaf Partnership is a Sunday Times Best Small Company to Work for, coming in at 39th in the rankings. We also kept our three stars for employee engagement for the third year in a row, the highest possible award, which reflects our continued commitment to employee wellbeing and satisfaction.
Oakleaf named in Recruiter Hot 100 for 2017
Oakleaf have gained an impressive 18 places in the rankings since the 2016 Hot 100 report, coming in at 37th in 2017. We are also proud to announce that we feature in the Hot 10 Professional Sector Recruiters for 2017, coming in at 9th position
Oakleaf recognised in London Stock Exchange's 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain 2017
We are delighted to announce that Oakleaf Partnership have been recognised in the London Stock Exchange 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain 2017. The accolade is a celebration of some of the fastest growing small and medium sized businesses in the UK and Europe. Oakleaf are one of only 11 recruitment agencies featured in the listings, and the only HR Specialist firm recognised – a fantastic achievement!
Jacquie Beck promoted to Finance Director
Congratulations to Jacquie on her promotion to Finance Director at Oakleaf.
Gareth Evans promoted to Associate Partner
Congratulations to Gareth on his promotion to Associate Partner of the Financial & Professional Services division.
Amy Morris promoted to Partner
Congratulations to Amy Morris who has been promoted to Partner of our Interim Commerce & Industry team.
Oakleaf Birmingham office opens
Oakleaf are delighted to announce the launch of our new office in the Midlands. The ongoing success of our Midlands region business over the last 12 months, under the excellent leadership of Sarah Westwood, has resulted in our decision to invest in physical premises in Longbridge.
Oakleaf named in Recruiter Hot 100 for 2016
Oakleaf comes in at an incredible 55th in the Recruiter Hot 100 2016 award. 2016 marked the 10 year anniversary of the publication, and Oakleaf were the only specific HR recruitment company to make the list! The award examines gross profit per head and highlights an organisation’s effectiveness at extracting the best performance from its own people in a sustainable manner.
Oakleaf Partnership retains 3 stars in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2017
We are delighted to announce that Oakleaf has been recognised as a Sunday Times ‘Best Small Company to Work For’ for the second year running! We were awarded 3 stars for employee engagement (the highest accolade), and were awarded 20th place in the rankings – a great achievement!
Recruitment International 2016 Top 500 rankings
Oakleaf Partnership has moved up to 395, up from our previous year’s ranking. Our new ranking is a reflection of the ongoing success of our business, with a turnover in excess of £10 million last year. In terms of Net Fee Income per employee, we were ranked 41st, the highest of all independent HR recruitment firms in the UK.
A new Associate Partner at Oakleaf
Following the continued growth of the Reward & Analytics division, Jamie Newton has been promoted to Associate Partner. Jamie and his team have continued to dominate the UK Reward market and have seen phenomenal success over the last four years. The team is continuing to expand whilst also actively contributing to the industry as a whole with regular publications and the establishment of well-known groups in Women in Reward and the Reward & Analytics Club. As Associate Partner Jamie has also taken ownership for the firms social medial strategy, expanding our market present from a marketing a PR perspective.
Oakleaf Is Awarded Three Stars in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For
The Best Companies Accreditation Standard follows the elite Michelin style star rating system for organisations that demonstrate high levels of employee engagement. Based on staff feedback, organisations receive a Best Companies Index score (BCI) which determines their star rating compared to a fixed standard – ‘one to watch’ is good, one star is very good, two stars are outstanding and three stars are extraordinary.
Oakleaf Enters Recruiter Top 100
Oakleaf comes in at an incredible 51 of The Recruiter Hot 100 award. This award examines collective and individual positions of the most productive recruitment companies in the UK, particularly gross profit per head showing effectiveness at extracting the best performance from its own people in a sustainable manner.
ISO 9001 Accreditation
Oakleaf Partnership, the recruitment consultancy that specialises in HR, payroll, reward, pension and human capital services, has achieved the internationally recognised Quality Management System IS09001, establishing Oakleaf as one of the leaders in their field.
July 2015 - We start Human Capital Services
Will Tear joins us to lead our new Human Capital Services team. The HCS team focus on providing expert staff who provide services to the HR community. Typically these are professionals whose specialisms are outsourced by HR departments although we also cater for these roles in an in-house capacity. Areas we cover: Global mobility, HR consultancy, Immigration, Employment law, Employment tax & Expatriate tax
May 2015 - Sponsorship of the inaugural HR in Law Awards
Oakleaf show their support to the legal sector sponsoring the Excellence in Talent Management award won by Osborne Clarke. Taylor Wessing were highly recommended.
April 2015 - Sands Becomes Our Employee Choice Of Charity
OP Academy starts
We begin supporting top entry-level talent in networking and career development. Our sponsors include Bank Of America Merrill Lynch and Metro Bank.
Another year of growth
We placed more than 500 HR professionals into contract and permanent jobs during the financial year, whilst our headcount reached 44, and our turnover £9.5 million.
October 2014 - We set up HR’s first specialist part-time initiative
We also hosted an industry leading working breakfast around the topic of Part-time and Flexible working. It was sponsored by Linklaters and HRVille, and supported by Karen Mattison of Timewise MBE. We presented a white paper forwarded by Tanith Dodge, HRD – Marks & Spencer.
Launch of the Oakleaf Salary Checker
Launch of HR’s first UK-specific salary data portal.
July 2014
Oakleaf’s Charity of the Year, 2014, was Alzheimer’s Society. We raised £5,500.
A new Associate Partner at Oakleaf
Following continued success in driving and building our financial services and professional services business Katrina Mallory is promoted to our first ever Associate Partner.
Our best ever year
Ending the financial year with 42 employees at Oakleaf, our turnover was up 57%, GP (NFI) was up 64% and PBT up 166% – the result of a lot of hard work by a bunch of very talented people.
March 2014 - A new talent community
Women in Reward networking group set up by Jade Sweeney, one of our specialist reward consultants.
December 2013 - Oakleaf start a specialist payroll arm
Having worked with a number of customers who have asked us to commit greater resource to supporting them with their payroll needs John O’Brien joins Oakleaf to set up and build a payroll team. We achieve a 45% conversion rate on all payroll roles.
More Senior hires and a record revenue month/quarter
Jacquie Beck joined us in August as Head of Finance. A qualified Chartered Accountant, she had previously worked for a number of years in the same capacity at Digby Morgan.
Jamie Newton joined us in October as Practice Lead of the Reward & Analytics business, a key growth area for us. Jamie’s HR recruitment career spans more than ten years with names such as Advantage Resourcing, Piper Pritchard, MDH and Badenoch & Clark.
Ex-forces in Human Resources
Our inaugural ‘Ex-Forces in Human Resources’ event at the Help for Heroes offices was a great success. We raised over £1,000 on the night for our charity of the year.
Winner of the Here Is The City “Best HR Recruitment Firm” Award.
Oakleaf charity of the year, 2013, was Help for Heroes.
We raised £4,000.
Housewarming party in Norfolk House
We were joined by many old and new friends to celebrate our move to the new office.
Move to Holborn
After eight years in Middlesex Street, we eventually out-grew the offices and moved to wonderful new premises in Holborn. It was a clear marker of our success – with plenty of room for further growth.
End of the best ever financial year for the business
Our PBT was £244k, with total employees at 27.
Oakleaf sponsors the Personnel Today Employee Engagement Award 2012
Flanked by actor and comedian Hugh Dennis, Richard proudly awarded the prize to the winning company, Balfour Beatty Major Civil Engineering. This was the first ever award sponsored by Oakleaf and a significant show of support for the HR community. It was also indicative of the ongoing success of the Oakleaf business.
Record revenue
The highest revenue quarter ever was achieved in October. This coincided with the appointment of Simon Hunt to the Board.
Only seven years old, Oakleaf was now the largest independent HR recruitment business in the UK, with ambitious growth plans for the future.
Our Partnership Promise
We created the “Partnership Promise”, a set of behaviors and guidelines that the team agreed they would all work by. This was combined with the Oakleaf definition of culture, via the “Culture Map”. We also formally launched the Placed Candidate Mentoring Scheme – a market first in HR recruitment.
Social Media drive
The first ever Oakleaf Facebook and Twitter pages were designed and launched.
Introduction of additional career paths
April saw the promotion of Marie Bliss to a newly created Managing Consultant position. This was a result of the ongoing success of the Financial Services interim/temporary businesses.
Raising the Bar in HR Recruitment seminar
As a result of the success of the research document we felt compelled to share our findings. This culminated in a breakfast seminar for a key selection of some of HR’s most senior representatives and media.
“(HR should) stop navel gazing and lose the existential angst…”
Linda Kennedy, Global HR Director at SIG
The first OP newsletter
The first quarterly OP Newsletter was published. It reached over 25,000 HR clients and candidates.
Raising the bar in HR recruitment research
Is HR guilty of not using all its strategic recruitment skills to attract staff to join its own sector? Our research investigated whether the recruitment of HR staff was indeed being neglected by HR departments, and if so, what were the reasons behind it and what could be done to change the situation?
We launched the research in conjunction with one of the leading HR practitioners in the UK, Ralf Schneider, and with the sponsorship of The British Bankers’ Association.
Clarity of vision
January saw the creation of the Oakleaf’s vision statement to support future growth.
New Board member
Nicola Grimshaw joined as a Board member to work alongside Richard Colgan and Brendan Forster, with Simon Hunt taking responsibility for day-to-day management of the teams. Nicola is a qualified Andersen accountant with 17 years’ recruitment experience and was previously on the Board of Digby Morgan.
Growth and expansion
2010 was a recovery year, seeing an increase on the previous years’ turnover of 30%, and the staff numbers increasing yet again to make the team 25 strong.
IT Services move in-house
A dedicated in-house Head of IT & Comms, Leighton Grant, joined the team.
A year of firsts
During the financial turmoil of 2009, year-end revenue was down 32%. The firm ploughed on through the year and came out the other side fighting, still reporting respectable revenue of £1,852,000.
Great prospects
By the end of the financial year 2008/2009, our headcount had grown to 20 members and the year-end revenue was up 17% on the previous annual figures. The company took on the 3rd floor of 131 and converted it into an interview suite and Boardroom.
By the end of this year, it was clear that the financial markets had some hard times in store, and so we launched a dedicated Commerce & Industry business to offer our candidates a broader route to market. Regardless of the gathering storm clouds, the Board made the decision to re-brand with a clean, fresh logo – a true sign of our ambition.
Impressive staff growth
In 06/07 we had just 8 people. In 07/08 we had 17. Year-end revenue was up a huge 123%, with the highest individual revenue month of £160,000 in September for Richard Colgan.
Media Advertising campaign
The year started with a concerted media advertising campaign, showcasing the variety of services the business could offer, as well as the vast experience and knowledge at its fingertips.
Simon Hunt joins
Simon Hunt joined the business from Frazer Jones in 2006. In its first full year of trading, the business turned over £620,022.
New senior appointment
Brendan Forster was named Executive Chairman in October 2005.
Oakleaf Partnership asserts market presence
As the business began to develop, so market share began to grow. Embracing our five core values from day one has always been vital to our philosophy at Oakleaf. It’s allowed us to become the largest independent HR recruitment firm in the UK.
Our Core Values:
HONESTY
DIVERSITY
PASSION
HOSPITALITY
ENDURANCE
Oakleaf Partnership Limited is born
Oakleaf Partnership began life as a small entrepreneurial business with two MD’s Richard Colgan and Martyn Wright, and their PA at the time, Harriet Lavender. It was the brainchild of Richard Colgan, the Founder and Managing Partner. Having worked for Michael Page for 9 years, and co-founded their HR recruitment business in 2000, he decided to leave to create a business that not only reflected the customers he served, but also embodied his own values.