RSS feedsWorcester may come across as a slightly sleepy kind of place, but it has more than its fair share of stand-out local businesses. They include Lea & Perrins, which gave its name to the famous Worcester sauce, the domestic heating engineering company that is now Worcester Bosch, as well as a car manufacturer with a much loved and world-famous brand, the Morgan Motor Company.
Nestling in the shadow of the city’s ancient cathedral in a Georgian close is a firm with strong local roots, Rabjohns. The firm, says managing partner Ian Smith, has been in Worcester ‘forever’. Its current building, which has just been remodelled to open up meeting rooms and create an open-plan space, has been there since 1935.
So much for nostalgia. While Smith clearly cherishes the firm’s tradition and location, he has reason to be proud of much more. He has been responsible for its modernisation and setting its agenda as a full-service, forward-looking practice that seeks to develop its in-house talent. He also personally looks after some key clients, including a long sought after relationship with Morgan Motor Company.
Up until the mid-1990s, as regional firms go, Rabjohns didn’t really have any distinguishing marks other than a very developed insolvency practice, says Smith. In 1995, Smith was made managing partner, at which point he realised it was time for a rethink.
‘I’m a chartered accountant, but I’m not really a numbers person. I have a
very high sales drive in me and I’m very much a relationship person. I get
excited about dealing with people, getting on with them and solving their
problems.’
Having visited many other types of business and other accountancy firms, Smith
developed a vision of how a renewed Rabjohns and its partners might focus their
time and energies.
‘The gist of that was to try and free up partners to stop having a desk full of files and stop messing around doing things that other people could do and get out there to spend time with clients, acquire interesting clients and make the job fun again,’ he says.
Smith readily admits the changes, the pursuit of interesting clients - and fun - were geared around what he wanted to do with his own working life. But it means Rabjohns is well and truly linked to the businesses that are revitalising the local economy. ‘We’ve got a fantastic client base and some great names, and there are some terrific things happening,’ he says. One client, Worcester Rugby Football Club, for instance, used to languish in its local league. Now a premiership club in the middle of a £23m stadium redevelopment, Worcester RFC currently has its home city buzzing with excitement. Much of the investment comes from long-time Rabjohns client Cecil Duckworth, the man behind Worcester Heat Systems, which became Worcester Bosch.
A client’s for life
Smith attributes his client-handling ethos and overall outlook to two partners at Deloitte Haskins & Sells in Birmingham where he trained. He wanted to be remembered in the same way and wanted to replicate their client-centred approach at Rabjohns.
‘I want people who, when they leave here, if you cut them in half, they’re Rabjohns. So we just came up with some very basic principles of how we do things. One of them is “a client for life”. Cecil Duckworth [who became a Rabjohns client in 1962] would be the prime example of that. In the mid-1980s he floated on the stock market. We could never deal with that, so KPMG acted for the plc, but we did all the subsidiaries, we acted for him personally and when he sold out to Bosch we acted for him. When he then reinvested all his money in the rugby club, he was still with us.’
Smith has a lot of connections at the club. ‘I used to play for them a long time ago, when three men and a dog used to turn up to watch,’ he adds.
‘The other part of this is having a team for life. We are not trying to take over the world and become a huge firm because we believe in being one office. We have a very unusual, strong culture that I think would be difficult to recreate somewhere else. So there cannot ever be opportunities for everyone here. By definition we are going to encourage people to go and help people to go to other places, but we want to train them not just for here, but for later life, so again, cut them in half and they say Rabjohns.’
Smith can already see the fruits of this in business relationships in the local economy. The financial controller at Worcester RFC is ex-Rabjohns and the bursar of a local girls school qualified with the firm. ‘Not surprisingly, when we come to get our bills paid or do work, if it’s someone that you’ve trained you’ve got a pretty good relationship there. We’re working on the assumption that it might cost us in the short term, but in the long term we’ve got people out there who have very fond memories of us. And they’ll end up being clients or recommending us.’
As well as taking on trainees, Rabjohns runs a directors’ academy for its potential high flyers, but unlike the talent management programmes of big companies and firms, participants are not just selected by the firm; they have to put themselves forward.
‘It’s partly for succession and it’s partly for people going out into the outside world,’ says Smith. ‘Traditionally, a firm of our size would pick out the golden children. So if someone is coming up through the ranks and you think they’re going to be great, they go under the wing and you look after them and all the rest of it. We’ve turned it round and said here is an organisation through which we’re going to help and coach people to become directors, either here or somewhere else. But you have to apply for it and then you have to tell us why you want to do it. And then it’s a joint effort.’
The academy helps the firm’s high flyers hone their commercial and networking skills, but the partnership also expects them to become involved in charitable activities outside of work and to be the first to volunteer assistance at Rabjohns’ events outside normal working hours. If it emerges that an individual is not such a good match for the firm, or would benefit from experience in a different culture, the directors help them to seek out and evaluate alternative opportunities.
‘It’s a different way of doing things. It’s enlightened self-interest because we’ve got very motivated people who take on a lot of responsibility. It helps them with local banks and lawyers, because other employers don’t do this and so it puts them ahead in their own peer group.’
Smith rarely has more than 12 clients at a time, but he has the biggest portfolio within the firm in terms of fee income. His personal client roster includes Morgan Motor Company (as a local boy, he is a long-time fan and a proud owner), the rugby and cricket clubs, Eastnor Castle and a handful of owner-managed businesses.
For him it is all about spending quality time with clients. The firm runs a lot of fixed-price agreements, so clients don’t have to wonder about the clock ticking and will attend meetings with them or offer up its meeting rooms for their use.
Bite of the Big Apple
One of Smith’s clients, Severn House Publishing, undertakes a significant amount of work in the US and Smith has spent time working on the Severn House stand at the Public Library Show and Book Expo in New York.
‘We always say we want people to go beyond their comfort zone. Well, it’s all very well saying you know a client’s business, but when you’re selling stuff on a trade stand all day, that can be scary.’
Winning the Morgan Motor Company audit - after a 15-year courtship - was a coup that Smith clearly still enjoys five years on. As a newly qualified accountant at Deloitte Haskin & Sells, he missed out on working on the audit when the firm lost the account. When Smith joined Rabjohns he resolved to win the audit for the firm.
Although Smith is a Worcester man, Rabjohns isn’t limited by its geography. It is part of the Kreston International association, drawing clients from across the Midlands and beyond. It competes against Birmingham for staff ‘so we have to do things differently’. The new building refit runs to a gym in its basement, quarterly sessions for members of the firm with a reflexologist, which all members of the firm sign up to, a sympathetically refurbished building with views of the cathedral and flexible working. ‘We try and do things a bit around the edges because we can’t compete on salaries, but we have a lot of flexible working, working mums and not many people working a standard week.’
It’s not a bad offering for an independent firm and delivers a decent stab at helping members of the firm in that all-important pursuit of personal satisfaction in their working lives.
Beyond expectations
A successful firm is an open one to the Rabjohns way of thinking. To that end, Smith updates everyone on what is going on in a weekly news email and for the past 12 years the firm, with three equity partners and a fee income of around £2m, has published its accounts.
Smith also likes to encourage a sociable atmosphere and on Fridays staff forgo internal emails in favour of walking around the building to talk to colleagues instead.
Beyond that, his advice to other firms is encourage a culture that is enjoyable – and different from other people’s – and to make sure you go beyond client expectations.
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