Mother-of-three Sinead Kelly decided to carve a niche for herself by merging previous employment interests and taking the plunge into self employment.

Q. Please tell us a bit about yourself.
A. My name is Sinead Kelly, from Irvinestown. I am a qualified solicitor and I worked for many years in the greater Belfast area and laterally in Murnaghan Fee Solicitors in Enniskillen. I have a keen interest in employment law and this was one of my areas of practice.
I am married to Christopher, a dentist, and we have three daughters aged 11, 13 and 14. When my daughters were in primary school, I took time out to focus on them and other family commitments at the time.
During my career break, I assisted my husband in our family business (Ann Street Dental Practice in Enniskillen). This subsequent experience together with my legal knowledge led to me setting up my new business venture.

Q. What is your elevator pitch?
A. I provide a tailor-made service to businesses and organisations focusing on sustainable organisational performance through the involvement of all employees.

Q. What is sustainable organisational performance?
A. Sustainable organisational performance refers to long term business performance as a result of proper planning and strategy. Employees are the main driver of any business and my work involves consulting and assisting businesses to involve their employees in the best way, to achieve the best fit for their organisation. This encompasses recruitment, training, employee engagement, health and wellbeing, compliance/regulation, employment law advice and human resources policies and processes.

Q. Why is sustainable organisational performance important?
A. Sustainable organisational performance means that you’re not just looking at a short-term focus for business profit, you’re looking at the long-term because things like recruitment, employee turn-over, absence, that all has a huge financial cost for organisations.
Traditionally people looked at HR as someone who helps out with payroll etc. I’m trying to take it to more of a strategic level by asking businesses what are you about? Where do you see yourself in two years? What’s your mission? What’s your strategy? And here’s how we can align your people and your processes to that.
Rather than just being operational, businesses must be operating at a higher level, a strategic level. It’s about being more professional and more savvy. Businesses need their employees to add value. 

Q. How highly do businesses rank sustainable organisational performance in their day-to-day planning?
A. I would accept that there’s an element out there who think that HR is ‘that fluffy, superfluous stuff that isn’t business’. However, as someone who has come from a professional background of law and have had to work in my own family business, I believe that these things do affect your business. If you don’t get your hiring or your exit strategies right, these things could be costly – the average tribunal is £8-£10,000.
For any business, the key asset is their team.
Modern life, the way we live, it’s all technology driven. That’s had a huge impact on the way we work. Changes in the way we work include flexible working patterns which are now something that can be legally requested or businesses implementing health and well-being initiatives to alleviate mental health and stress related issues at work.
Some employers don’t have the time or resources to look into the complexities of the law around those issues so that’s where I come in and say: ‘Let me look at your staff, let me do surveys, let me carry out interviews for you etc.’

Q. Why did you take the plunge and set up your own business?
A. I was helping out in the family dental practice and when the recession began kicking in I began to examine how we were going to equip ourselves for the challenges ahead.
We really changed the structure of that organisation. The recession forced you to take stock and look at how you ran your business and the services that you offered. Rather than a ‘here’s the boss and everyone is beneath him’ structure, we had an open-door policy and we were fed great ideas from staff. We became a team rather than a traditional practice and that had a great spin off for the business.
At the same time, I still had people asking me about legal or employment issues.
I finally took the plunge because of a mixture of reasons: the encouragement of my husband, yet another phone call asking for advice, and the realisation that the children were heading off to school in the morning and I had more time to undertake a qualification in this area.
I met Lynn Carson, Managing Director of DMS Ireland, a Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) approved centre.
When I met Lynn, it took that conversation to cement my thought processes.
Prior to embarking on my CIPD qualification I had been in the comfort and security of a family business. Before that, I was in the security of a profession that I had studied from school. I had never really gone outside my comfort zone.

Q. What’s been your experience of self-employment to date?
A. I’ve worked with the dental industry, educational establishments and SMEs to date. I’m currently working with the South West College in developing a pilot project which will offer dental nursing as an apprenticeship. I worked on promoting the project among dentists locally and devising an appropriate course. We are hoping to start delivery in six weeks.

Q. How important is it that local family businesses survive?
A. Making a family business work is very important to me. I’ve come back to Fermanagh to rear my own family and I feel that we need to go out and get opportunities e.g. the apprenticeships. We need to look at our organisations and ask: What kind of person do we want to attract?

Q. How can businesses attract high calibre, hard working employees to rural Fermanagh?
A. It is difficult. It’s a case of getting out there and making ourselves attractive. Fermanagh is a great place to live. We were decreed the happiest place to live. 
Salary is a big buzz word in any business but it’s not always the only thing that’s going to engage your employees most.
Businesses can attract staff through effective reward and performance packages in the form of salary or other benefits like health initiatives such as gym membership, work flexibility. These packages help boost morale and has a knock-on effect on your organisation.
You can also attract people through branding. e.g. Ikea’s slogan is: ‘Why work in IKEA?’ They are selling themselves to perspective job applicants while traditionally it’s usually the other way around. 

Q. What impact do you expect BREXIT to have on border businesses?
A. As a HR practitioner you are going out and there is certainly uncertainty out there. It’s still relatively early to see what BREXIT is going to bring. I am saying: take stock and build resilience by working on what you can control e.g. currency transactions, stocks and supplies.

Q. What have been the main challenges since you began your business venture?
A. It’s mainly been the challenges business give you – my expectations, their expectations and the reality may be three different things! But I am determined to provide a professional, specialist service that gives them a proper business solution, rather than a report or a bit of advice.