As we approach the beginning of a new year, we’re looking back at 2021 and celebrating some of our many developments. To give a good feel for what we’ve achieved, we asked our Managing Director, Damian White, to share some of the main highlights.
Damian: It’s been a very exciting year for us, as we’ve put significant focus into enhancing our website, blog, social media, brochures, email campaigns and other digital marketing platforms. Early in 2021, Clarity was rebranded with a new logo and style that better reflects our ethos of achieving efficiency through visual communication. We also relaunched our online shop to make it easier than ever to find the visual management tools required to make your workplace more productive.
We’ve been busy sharing our insight with a range of industry publications too, including a recent piece in Manufacturing Management, where Matt Thomas provided a solution to their CI Dilemma. The team is also growing, as we welcomed Olivia Thompson in the important role of Marketing Executive and Jethro Büchner in Sales and Business Development.
Damian: COVID-19 resulted in businesses across every sector having to adapt to entirely new challenges. Whilst the team here at Clarity enabled business continuity by temporarily replacing on-site visits with Zoom consultations, we also helped our clients to make their work environments safer for everyone.
Through clear signage, eye-catching floor markings and bespoke visual management tools, we’ve played a core role in ensuring that companies across the UK have everything in place to maintain optimum levels of health and safety, as well as social distancing and workplace sanitation.
Damian: We certainly did! In fact, we took the pandemic as an opportunity to analyse the needs of our clients more than ever before. Many businesses were finding it much harder to communicate with their teams, so we immediately set about designing new products that facilitate communication and collaboration.
This took the form of heavy-duty whiteboards and 5S cuboids, which increase visual management on a micro level and actively improve standards. We’ve also provided virtual training and showed management teams how to increase employee engagement even when people are working remotely.
As we exit the pandemic, our wide range of visual management products are helping businesses to reengage their staff and reignite their Lean strategies. This is particularly important due to the consistent growth of the UK manufacturing industry.
Damian: We’re especially proud of this, as Clarity’s free webinars have allowed us to share advice, insight and recommendations with people based all around the world. They proved so popular that we’re now developing a webinar programme for 2022 and we want our clients and followers to suggest future topics for discussion. If there’s anything in particular you’d like us to focus on, please let us know through our contact form.
Damian: That would be our Operational Excellence Academy, no doubt about it. This has received significant interest and we’ve had four clients say they’d like to enrol multiple members of staff, including high street retailer Next.
The Clarity Operational Excellence Academy is the answer to marketplace feedback, as 92% of senior managers said their key constraint to growth is operational efficiency. Taking this as the top business imperative, 2022 will see our OpEx Academy begin to deliver exceptional training at our facilities in East Yorkshire.
The timing of this is perfect, as the Manufacturing Productivity Index shows that the UK has experienced consistent increase over two quarters for the first time in twenty years. It’s our role to continue fuelling this growth by training people to be outstanding managers who are passionate about achieving operational excellence.
Damian: Employee retention is by far the most pressing problem for many businesses. There’s a very clear need to invest in people, which can be done by improving work environments, implementing visual management tools that support their day-to-day duties, and embedding a company culture where everyone is working towards the same goals.
That’s what Clarity is all about, as we’re always ready to provide expert advice and help companies to reshape their infrastructures around the requirements of their people.
Damian: We’re dedicated to providing the UK manufacturing sector with leading operational excellence strategies, coaching, training, bespoke visual management products and Lean consultancy. Now that workplaces are back to normal, we’re ramping up our on-site assessments and also helping clients to achieve their environmental targets following COP26.
Any business that wants to reduce waste, minimise its carbon footprint, optimise transportation and reinforce the UK’s supply chain should get in touch, as we’re passionate about facilitating efficiency, productivity and sustainability in equal measure. To find out more, contact our team on +44 (0)1482 296451 or fill in our contact form.
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