Colleague spotlight: meet Ami Harrison, Client Relationship Manager

Lizzie Buxton

Written By AdviserPlus

13th August 2019

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In our second colleague spotlight blog, we meet Ami Harrison, a Client Relationship Manager who came from an unconventional background and rose through the ranks to become a hands-on advocate for a major financial services customer.

I have an unusual background for someone working in the HR industry. My degree was in law – specialising in employment law, to be exact – and I spent the first few years of my career working in tribunal litigation at a solicitors’ firm.

Like many of my colleagues, the culture at AdviserPlus was one of the main things that attracted me to join the business. In law, the culture is often highly competitive, and totally money-focused; this organisation is much more centred around values and making a real difference for our clients. Though I didn’t take the traditional route into HR, many of the skills I developed in my tribunal case management role have been really useful for my eight-year career at AdviserPlus.

A diverse business with diverse opportunities

It’s easy to assume that there’s a lack of diversity in the way a business like AdviserPlus works – after all, everything we do is focused on HR. But with so many different technical solutions and consulting services in our repertoire, there’s a huge range of roles and specialisms you can develop. I’ve had so many great opportunities here so far, and I’m always excited to learn and do more.

I started as an HR adviser to small and medium-sized businesses, before moving into other more technical and operations-focused roles. Now, I’m a dedicated relationship manager for a large financial services client. It’s a really varied role and depends a whole lot on where my client’s objectives currently lie. Any given day could include contractual discussions, onsite visits, service reviews, or even day-to-day ER queries – whatever kind of support the client needs.

In terms of diversity, although small businesses and enterprise organisations come up against a lot of the same challenges – absenteeism, policy and strategy alignment, disciplinary procedures – the difference in scale means the way you have to approach these issues changes drastically. High absenteeism, while frustrating and costly in a large corporate environment, can be hugely detrimental to a business with only a few employees. To use another example, small businesses often closely follow their statutory requirements rather than building their own policies, whereas enterprises (particularly those in a regulated environment) usually need to have carefully tailored processes to make sure they meet their statutory obligations and compliance requirements.

Hands-on with colleagues and clients

Originally, I was the relationship manager for several smaller clients – the variety in the work was challenging and fun, but it made it difficult to go really in-depth with each client’s individual needs. Now, with my financial services client, I get to build stronger relationships with the key stakeholders and develop a truly granular understanding of how the business works and what they need from AdviserPlus.

Financial services is a complex industry to work in – because it’s so heavily regulated, there are strict requirements which AdviserPlus needs to align with in delivering all aspects of the service. I work closely with our operational team to make sure we’re delivering effective, efficient service, and that connection also allows me to have more valuable conversations with the client, because I’m close to the detail of service delivery as well as concentrating on the relationship.

Recently, my client completed a full audit of the AdviserPlus service. It was a detailed review that gave us a great collaborative opportunity to reflect on how we’re working, what we’re doing well, and what we can change, to deliver an even better service.

We’re always learning how to expand and improve our systems, user experience, and support – and those lessons can be applied throughout AdviserPlus, whichever client and whatever challenge we’re dealing with.

Read more about AdviserPlus’ employee relations managed services here.

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