The challenge
Our client was a a 22 person home maintenance and renovation company operating across three regional offices. They had built a solid reputation over twelve years in business, but by the time they approached us, their managing director was wrestling with a problem she couldn’t quite name. Staff turnover had ticked up, there was a low-level but persistent tension between certain teams, and customer satisfaction scores, while not alarming, had been quietly declining for the best part of a year.
As we talked with her in our initial consultation, a clearer picture emerged. The business had grown steadily from a small founder led team into a 22 person operation spread across three offices, and the people side of the business hadn’t kept pace with that growth. There were no clear frameworks for how teams were expected to work together, no shared norms around communication, and no forum in which people from different parts of the business ever actually sat down together. Sales, operations, and the administrative function were each doing their jobs conscientiously, but largely in isolation from one another.
The knock-on effect on customers was becoming visible. Jobs were being booked with commitments that operations hadn’t been consulted on. Queries were being passed between contacts without clear ownership. The experience of dealing with the company felt inconsistent, depending on who you happened to speak to. The MD knew something needed to change but was unsure where to start, or whether it was even an HR issue. (It was.)
Our advice
Our starting point, as it almost always is, was the people rather than the processes. Before recommending any structural changes, we advised the MD to create space for an honest conversation with her team, across all three functions, about how working relationships were actually experienced day to day. We provided a framework for conducting these conversations in a way that felt safe and purposeful rather than like a performance exercise, and we guided her on how to communicate the purpose clearly so that staff understood this was about improving how they worked together, not about identifying who was at fault.
What came back from those conversations gave the MD the insight she needed. Staff were not disengaged or unhappy in any deep sense- they wanted to do a good job and they liked the business. What they lacked was any real understanding of what their colleagues in other teams were dealing with, and any forum in which to build that understanding.
On the basis of this, our core recommendation was to design and launch a structured cross-functional project, a defined, time limited piece of work that would bring people from sales, operations, and administration together around a shared goal. We advised making customer satisfaction the focus, partly because the data pointed there, and partly because it was a goal that everyone in the business could see themselves contributing to, regardless of their role.
We advised the MD on how to set this up for success: how to select the right mix of people to involve, how to frame the project so participation felt meaningful rather than mandatory, how to establish clear ownership without it becoming one person’s burden, and how to create a simple rhythm of check-ins that would keep momentum going without overloading people who were already busy. We also worked with her on the people-management dimension, specifically, how to handle the two or three individuals whose working styles were likely to make cross-team collaboration more challenging, and how to use the project as an opportunity to quietly build some bridges that needed building.
We recommended against introducing new tools or technology at this stage. In our experience, small businesses often reach for a software solution when what’s actually needed is a people solution, and adding complexity too early can distract from the more important work of building trust and shared habits.
The impact
Six months on, the results were tangible. Customer satisfaction scores had improved meaningfully, and the feedback customers were leaving had shifted in character. Comments about communication, consistency, and feeling well looked-after had become noticeably more common alongside the usual praise for the quality of the work itself.
Internally, the cross functional project group had taken on a life of its own. What had started as a structured, time limited initiative had evolved into an informal but regular touchpoint that the teams had chosen to continue of their own accord. The MD reported that relationships between teams felt noticeably warmer, that information was flowing more freely between departments, and that the low level tension she had described at the outset had largely dissipated.
Staff turnover had also stabilised. Though the MD was careful not to attribute this to any single factor, she felt that people feeling more connected to colleagues across the business had played a role.
Key learnings
Growth changes the people dynamics, even when nothing else seems to have changed. What works when there are eight of you often quietly stops working at twenty. If communication or morale has dipped without any obvious cause, look at whether your structure and culture have kept pace with your headcount.
Listening before advising is never wasted time. The instinct when something isn’t working is to fix it quickly. But in our experience, the time spent genuinely understanding how people are experiencing the workplace pays for itself many times over in the quality of the solutions that follow.
A shared goal is one of the most powerful tools for breaking down barriers between teams. Abstract calls to “work more collaboratively” rarely change behaviour. Giving people something concrete to work on together does.
The people-management dimension of collaboration is just as important as the structural one. It’s not enough to create the right forums and frameworks, leaders also need support in understanding how to bring different personalities along, how to manage the dynamics within a cross-functional group, and how to sustain momentum when the initial enthusiasm fades. That’s where HR expertise genuinely adds value.
If you would like any further advice, do get in touch.