Simon Baddeley: 21 years of Progression at REED

Posted January 25th, 2021 in Spotlight On..., Management, Reed Specialist Recruitment (RSR)

Simon Baddeley, Managing Director of Business Services, celebrates 21 years at Reed this January. Simon shares his thoughts, stories and advice from two decades in recruitment below…

reed international careers - simon baddeley - global offices REED

From 1999 to Present Day…

“Many of my friends during University had temped through Reed in Oxford to support themselves and they always spoke highly of the team in the office. Coming from Lincolnshire, I had never heard of a Recruitment Agency and had no idea what one was until my time at university!

“Anyway, I decided if my friends all said that Reed were excellent then this would be a great place to temp until the graduate schemes came around again.

Reed Oxford reception area (present day) — Reed Oxford office (present day)

“I ended up temping for a couple of weeks with Reed clients before the team asked me to temp in the Oxford office to help them out – I joined the Oxford team in Jan ’99 as an Administrator / Receptionist and am still here now…”

“Technology has been the main driver of change; this has brought more competitors to the market now compared to 20 years ago.

“The other big change has been regulation and control; in 1999 there was nowhere near the level of regs and compliance required in today’s business.”

Implementing the Digital Workplace

“Digital Workplace was the best solution for our business, offering the best blend of business agility, cost control, communication tools and scalability.

“To start with most people were thrilled to be getting rid of some of our older systems! Then they started to discover all of the new tools and realised that this can revolutionise the way we work.”

Ian Nicholas - MD of Reed Global with his home Digital Workplace setup — Ian Nicholas (MD, Reed Global) at home with his Digital Workplace setup.

Click the image above to meet some key members working on the Digital Workplace implementation.

“The team really have done an amazing job in the face of adversity. The roll out plan we built and had approved had to be completely re-written due to the first lockdown; 9 months’ work went overnight.

“Henry and the team had essentially 6 weeks to design Plan B and get it rolling so we could move as many Co-Members as possible onto the platform whilst delivering devices to houses rather than in bulk to offices.”

Recruitment Operations to Business Improvement

After 18 years working in Operations at Reed, Simon stepped across to take on his current responsibilities within Business Services…

“It was a rather large surprise to be honest, Tom Lovell (former Global MD ) suggested in one of my reviews that he thought it was time I challenged myself to use my Operations knowledge in a different way, he asked me to consider applying for the Business Improvement role rather than one of the restructured Ops roles.

“I had never considered leaving Ops before this point and I did think maybe he had lost the plot in encouraging me, however, once in the role I could see how bring the Operational knowledge into that role was beneficial.”

Simon Baddeley in New York with colleagues — Simon celebrating with colleagues in New York

My peers were very supportive and helped make the transition much smoother than I feared it might be.

“I had spent a bit over 18 years in Ops and loved it (still do), I knew lots of people, could get things done and had a strong network internally and externally. Leaving this behind to focus on something new was scary at the time, however my peers were very supportive and helped make the transition much smoother than I feared it might be.”

"The range of opportunities across REED is incredible. I really had no idea when I first started that we had the breadth and depth of roles available. "Networking internally is also very important, I have been lucky enough to have two fabulous mentors early in my career that pushed me, these two gave me the confidence to ‘get out there’."

If you have any business or career queries about the above content, you can connect with Simon Baddeley on LinkedIN.

For all current openings, click the button below.

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Simon Baddeley: 21 Years of Progression at Reed