Member Article

Hebburn firm is committed to quality

A local recruitment agency has been awarded certification to an internationally recognised standard after a whirlwind couple of years of growth.

In the last two years Zenith People, who are based in Hebburn, have increased their sales turnover by 70% and doubled their workforce.

In March of this year they also opened a second office in South Shields under the name of Rising Star, a sister brand solely focussed on recruitment for young people.

Against this backdrop of high speed growth, the company felt it needed a strong foundation of systems and procedures to ensure that the growth didn’t affect the strong service delivery and organisation that Zenith is known for.

ISO 9001, the world’s most recognized quality management standard, helps organisations continually monitor and manage quality across all operations. Zenith felt that implementing an integrated quality management system would provide a strong foundation and the structure they were looking for.

Having committed to achieving certification to ISO 9001 in November 2013, they successfully achieved their objective in only six months and were awarded certification by BSI, the business standards company, in May this year.

Managing Director at Zenith People, Angela Anderson, said: ‘We’re delighted to have achieved ISO 9001 certification and the fact that we’ve done it in six months demonstrates the robustness of our existing systems and procedures.

‘ISO 9001 is an internationally recognised standard so not only can we have confidence in our quality management system internally, but it also provides reassurance to our existing and potential customers.’

Zenith People worked with Durham based Consultancy firm KBC Ltd to help them achieve certification. Experts in business improvement, health and safety and quality and environmental management, KBC worked with Zenith to turn existing processes and procedures into an integrated quality management system and helped to facilitate the implementation of this system across the business.

Michael Collier of KBC Ltd said: ’KBC Ltd are thrilled to share in the success of Zenith People Ltd with regard to achieving IS0 9001 certification.

‘It was a pleasure to work with a company who were dedicated to achieving success through quality and the fact that they achieved success within a very short time is down to all of the staff at Zenith, without whom we would not have achieved the mark of quality so quickly.’

Carla Whyte, Performance Management Specialist at BSI commented: “Zenith People should be proud of their certification to ISO 9001. This is testament to the hard work and dedication that has gone into to improving the quality of their systems and services in order to provide the best possible service to its customers.” Despite having achieved their initial objective of IS0 9001 certification, Zenith have decided the hard work isn’t over. Plans are in place to go for ISO 14001 certification in the future and steps are already being taken towards gaining the matrix standard for the careers and learning advice and support services.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Gordon Wallis .