Georgina White and Mathew White are Sales Director and Operations Director at White’s Bakery, a specialist home-baking provider for the Education sector. They both completed the Help to Grow: Management Course.

Why we joined the course:

Mathew:

We joined the course as we’re going through a succession plan at White’s Bakery. We’re a family run business and our father, who is the Managing Director, is planning to step down in the next few years with myself and my sister set to take on that role and responsibility. Help to Grow: Management helped us better understand the role and responsibilities of a senior leader and how they might apply to our future role in the business.

How has the course helped your business?

Georgina:

The course helped us create a clear growth development plan which included training and development for all our supervisors and staff members. This has resulted in everybody working towards the same clear goal.

Mathew:

One challenge I have encountered whilst leading my organisation is staff recruitment. As we start to grow, making sure we have the correct individuals in the right roles is incredibly important. A few modules on the Help to Grow Course definitely changed the way I approached recruitment and vacancy management.

What were the benefits of sending two members of staff on the course?

Georgina

Having both me and Mathew attend the Help to Grow course has been a real benefit as we both learned different leadership skills from the range of modules. He might have learned something that I didn’t quite understand and vice versa. We were then able to discuss this at the end of the day and implement both of our learnings into the business.

Mathew:

I feel more comfortable tackling current business challenges after the course. One of the main highlights of the course was the peer group session. It’s nice to know that you’re not the only one facing industry challenges and that others are dealing with similar issues or have past experiences with them. Their insights and support can provide answers or ideas that might help you in your business.

Tell us about the further opportunities you’ve accessed through Sheffield Hallam.

Mathew:

We are also completing a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Sheffield Hallam. This involves having a postgraduate student on site for 18 months to assess our product range and try to make them as healthy as possible. This includes, reducing sugar and fat content,, increasing the amount of fibre, and hopefully at the end of the 18 months we’ll be market leaders for school confectionery.