Busy Bees are the nation’s largest nursery group with over 400 nurseries in the UK and they are the third largest globally, with in excess of 850 sites. They have extremely ambitious growth plans which was why they instructed Stanley Royce Jones to appoint four Director level roles, within a 12 month period. 

These searches included the appointment of a Director of People for the UK business. Our challenging brief was to identify candidates from businesses of significant scale, both in terms of number of employees (Busy Bees have over 10,000 employees in the UK for context) and physical site footprint. As well as having the scale necessary, candidates also needed the drive, intellect and stretch potential that are a pre-requisite for Busy Bees. 

The Solution 

Our research identified exceptional talent across a broad range of high volume, consumer facing sectors with a particular focus on retail, leisure and hospitality. Whilst the shortlist of candidates came from sectors as diverse as pubs and aviation, all were united by the scale of businesses they had led and their rapid career trajectory to date. Busy Bees appointed Emma Langford, who was previously Head of HR for leading contract caterer Elior, a business with over 10,000 employees across 1,200 locations, giving her the scale needed. Emma had been promoted four times at Elior so clearly had the potential needed to develop her own career, in line with Busy Bees rapid expansion. 

The other three searches we have successfully delivered for Busy Bees are; 

• Sales Director
• European Marketing Director
• Operations Director