AMES UK have announced the appointment of Nicola Sykes to the newly created role of HR Director. Nicola joins the business with a strong track record of developing talent and building strong organisation networks that bring teams together and drive business performance.

Nicola spent her early career in the retail and food sectors, including several years at Morrisons and also Greencore, the world’s largest sandwich manufacturer. Nicola brings a wealth of experience from various FMCG, retail, logistics, public sector and manufacturing environments, which have proven invaluable in the challenge to bring the business units of AMES UK together.

True Temper, Kelkay, La Hacienda and Apta are all essentially sucessful family businesses and Nicola is relishing the opportunities in bringing them all together into a single, strong, harmonised team. Her strategy includes elements of organisational change, talent development, employee engagement and health & wellbeing.
     
The program is already showing signs of progress with 20% of employees promoted to new senior roles and an overall 10% increase in headcount in the group. Nicola is developing the AMES Leadership Programme which is designed to continue this success and build succession plans for the future.
 
Amongst several initiatives designed to ensure the business is able to meet its ambitious business goals is the Health & Wellbeing plan. All AMES UK colleagues have access to a confidential 24 hour Employee Assistance Line which is able to support individuals on a wide range of work and personal issues.
 
Nicola says “Organisations succeed because of their people, so I’m not surprised that the four AMES businesses have been so sucessful – there are some phenominal people. My challenge is to manage the organisational development and create a single, harmonised AMES business with the right processes, systems and support networks for all colleagues”

 
Nicola’s most recent initiative has seen the launch of the My AMES Stepping Stone scheme, an employee benefit programme that gives discounts on a huge range of products and services from over 900 retailers. All employees are registered with the scheme which is available online and from a SmartSpending app which provides vouchers, cashback and pre-paid discount cards.

Paul North, AMES UK Managing Director added “I’m delighted to have Nicola on board and she has already made a huge difference to all our colleagues at AMES UK. One of the watch words for me is engagement and I’m pleased that the whole organisation is now benefiting from Nicola’s strong focus on communications. Our journey is so much smoother when everyone in the team knows where we are headed and each of us understands our role in reaching our goals.