Starting and growing a business demands vision, creativity and leadership. The latter quality has a potential drawback, however: entrepreneurs can be reluctant to delegate tasks, stemming from an understandable desire to control and protect a unique product or service in which they’ve invested time, effort and money.
Jim McGuigan takes a more intrepid view. He doesn’t even like the word “delegate”, preferring “ownership” and “responsibility” when it comes to enabling his team to work more effectively.
“The more we empower people and give them responsible roles, the more they become embedded into the culture of the business,” he says.
“So, some of our younger members of staff now have junior members working under them and they appreciate that ladder of progression. That sometimes allows me not to be as involved in the day-to-day running of the business, while the whole culture of how we do it filters down from top to bottom.”
McGuigan is CEO of Cleartech Group, the Blantyre-based specialist service provider HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) commissioning, water treatment, water hygiene and Legionella compliance, which he founded in 2004.
With offices in the central belt, London and Sunderland – where it recently relocated to a larger office – the company now employs more than 50 working on projects across the UK and Ireland, including at JP Morgan’s office block in Glasgow’s International Finance District and the North Tees Hospital.
And while stressing the building of an open relationship between its clients and the company, McGuigan is clearly passionate about encouraging his team, who are at various stages in their own career path, to maximise opportunities through their own network. “This is something that will stay with them for life and helps them keep working hard through the difficult times, learning that when you have to take a few knocks they don’t dwell on it and get straight back up, having drawn something from the experience.”
The areas in which Cleartech specialises have recently and increasingly come under the spotlight.
“Our marketplace is primarily in construction and facilities management, working for end users and looking after buildings to make sure the air and water in their buildings are safe and compliant.
“These issues were always there but I think there has been a greater awareness now of the need to invest budgets for water and air compliance, which has allowed us to increase our customer base and increase our revenue streams. We are also able to offer more than just one service to a client, which can extend to three or more different services.”
Employing young people from the local community has always been a priority for Cleartech, he explains.
He continues: “And I’ve never been afraid about taking on young people – that has always been part of my mindset and the culture of the company. It’s been a positive attribute because, if we drive that message throughout the entire business, it allows us to attract better people and – importantly – to retain them because we’ve found at certain times in our journey that apprentices and apprenticeships were scarce and recruiting qualified people was quite challenging.
“We just had the vision to continually feed that conveyor belt of talent with talented young people and we have demonstrated the value of that over the years.
“Our first apprentice started with Cleartech when he was 16. He’s now probably 35 and he’s been with us ever since,” he says with evident satisfaction.
The company, he adds, is always willing to give people a chance. “I’m not claiming that we have a 100% success rate with new starts and young people during the growth of the business but we do see the merits of getting entry-level technicians coming in, who escalate themselves into senior positions and became contract managers through various industry-led training schemes, including online courses.”
McGuigan’s other enduring community interest is in charity work and staff from the Blantyre HQ recently took part in a 10k walk for the Beatson Cancer Charity – an event which he describes as “enjoyable but very wet”.
Cleartech is also a staunch supporter of the Kilbryde Hospice, a voluntary independent hospice in East Kilbride that provides specialist palliative care to patients with life-limiting progressive illnesses and to their relatives and carers, and which the company has supported since its inception.
Reinforcing his own approach to lifelong learning, McGuigan says: “Remember that the young team members are clever cookies and don’t let age be a barrier when empowering them and giving them responsibility.
“Also, don’t be afraid of opening yourself up to advice – and to pay for it.”