HR Leader in discussion with Xref CEO Lee-Martin Seymour

As reported previously, HR tech company Xref has seen growth in the last year, with profits increasing 834 per cent.

Co-founder and CEO, Lee-Martin Seymour, spoke with HR Leader about the organisation’s achievements, and the role their HR has played in their growth.

Jack Campbell, HR Leader journalist: “How has Xref retained and looked after staff during this growth?”

Mr Seymour: “We’ve taken a number of very targeted actions towards ensuring both pre-existing and new staff are not just comfortable but are thriving as Xref employees. We recently launched a revised employee share option plan which has had a take-up rate of 97 per cent with our staff.

“We’ve embraced the level of flexibility that working from home during COVID-19 offered, and have absorbed that as a new standard here at Xref for any employees who prefer to work from home. However, we do still provide a hub for touchdown working that is focused on encouraging social behaviour if they do come to the office. We also recently took the opportunity to pass on the benefits of our financial results to our people, with a 3.5 per cent group-wide salary increase to reflect CPI.”

Mr Seymour continued: “We’ve also launched an entirely new people and culture team to help define our people strategy, and cultivate our culture even in the face of growth. We understand that growth periods can be somewhat perilous for company culture, and wanted to pre-empt any issues right from the outset. Retention is a key focus of the new team, because we wouldn’t be in this positive position of growth today without the hard work of our original team.”

“Retaining our valuable talent was actually an approach we took during COVID-19 too. We knew it was a short-term situation. We did whatever we could to retain staff during this time, so that we could emerge out the other side with a team that was as strong as ever,” he said.

Journalist: “What are Xref's goals in this financial year?”

Mr Seymour: “We are currently focussed on four key areas. Constant tech innovation is a given, and will result in a series of product launches in coming months. We are also looking to aggressively expand our footprint in the North American market, maintain our very healthy growth rate of around 40 percent year-on-year, and build sustainable profitability throughout the process.”