A careers woman

As the chair of billion-pound recruitment company Pertemps, where she has spent almost her entire working life, Carmen Watson is s standard bearer for what is possible for women in the workplace, often against the odds. Add to that her drive for diversity and inclusion, and life-enhancing work in the wider community, and you have a bona fide asset to the region. HENRY CARPENTER reports.

With its parkland setting complete with pools and rolling lawns, Meriden Hall looks for all the world like a private stately home nestled on the edge of a West Midlands village.

It is actually the headquarters of Pertemps, probably the largest independent recruitment firm in the country which two years ago saw its turnover break through the billion-pound mark for the first time.

On a spiteful rain-lashed winter’s morning, the reception area with a deep-pile carpet and comfortable seats is a warm haven from the elements outside. It has an opulent feel, one of a business done good.

A sculptured bust of the firm’s founder, Constance Watts, is positioned against the wall, as though presiding over the room. Constance – or Connie as she was more usually known – was an indomitable figure and perhaps something of a rarity as a woman leading the way in what was a man’s world when she founded the firm at the start of the 1960s.

Under her initial guidance and then the robust, dynamic and visionary leadership of her son Tim, Pertemps grew into one of the West Midlands’ great success stories, guiding hundreds of thousands of people into new careers.

So several decades after founding the business, you feel that Connie Watts would look at the business with pride, not just at the firm’s extraordinary commercial success, but also at the culture.

Culture is ingrained in a business, and it comes from the top. No one exemplifies this better than the group’s chair, Carmen Watson. In many ways Watson has defied the odds to rise through the ranks since joining Pertemps to become the figurehead she is now.

That she has achieved what she has as a woman, and a woman of colour, is testament to both her resolve and ability, and also the company’s culture of an inclusive and diverse environment.

We talk about a whole range of subjects, including Covid, changing work trends, AI, and of course her career trajectory. But as March marks International Women’s Day – the annual day celebrating women’s achievements and their rights – it is perhaps most topical to ask what advice she would pass on to prospective female business leaders.

“All the time, I’m hearing about the work-life balance,” she says. “I work incredibly hard and I’m not embarrassed to say that.

“Aspiring business leaders are put off from top jobs because to them the work-life balance signifies working hard, not having a life and having no fun, and so why would they want that?  

“I have never seen that. It doesn’t have to be that way.

“Because you can look at your personal life and your work life not as separate boxes, but as intertwining threads. If you can then move between the two seamlessly you can have a much better experience, and I think that’s what I’ve done.

“It’s a juggling act but, you know, women are good at that – they have to be as mothers and carers, too.”

Talk to those who work with Watson, as many have for several decades, and it is clear that she is viewed with both a great deal of affection and also the utmost respect.

“I genuinely don’t believe you have to be bullish, arrogant or any of those things to be respected,” she says.

“Perhaps I’m from that old-fashioned breed of thinking that respect is earned – it doesn’t come with the title.”

And earn it she surely has.

Wolverhampton born and bred – she still lives there now – the young Carmen didn’t find school particularly easy. As she saw it, the sooner she left the better – so she did.

So after completing a secretarial course at the Queen’s Business College she walked into a recruitment agency on the high street in Wolverhampton. There was only one such agency in the latter half of the 1970s – and it was called Pertemps.  

“I had no aspirations to be on the board of a recruitment company and, ultimately, chair of a recruitment company. So I’ll declare that straight up!” she says with a smile.

“Anyway, they found me four job vacancies – and after interviews I was offered a job by all of them.

“I decided to take the one that represented the greatest challenge. It was an industrial manufacturing firm with a 72-year-old Scottish chairman.

“When he interviewed me, he said he’d love to take me on because ‘you’re a proper ball of fire but I don’t think I can because you won’t fit in around here’.”

But she was determined to prove him wrong, and she was duly offered the job which she took.

“Oh my goodness did I stand out!” she recalls. “This was an all-male, very much white environment where the average age was about 40.

“But I made it work, I won everybody around and some of my colleagues have remained friends to this day.

“After a spell there, however, I knew that secretarial work was not going to be for me.”

Back to Pertemps she went in a bid to find work elsewhere . . . and hasn’t left since. By complete coincidence, the agency itself had a vacancy in its newly formed technical division which placed people in engineering jobs.

That was in 1978, Connie Watts – “a great role model” – was very much still part of the business and Watson has watched the business mushroom to where it is now – 200 branches across the length of the country with up to 40,000 staff in total, 1,600 of which are direct, placing 12,000 people into permanent work a year.

That’s some curve for a business which started in a tiny office in Temple Row in 1961 with a workforce of two.

What’s changed in the 45 years Watson has been with the firm? With recruitment being an industry within industries, the answer reflects the changing nature of the region’s – and indeed nation’s – commercial landscape.

While several industries have largely been lost – such as steel, coal and, to a certain extent, manufacturing – others have taken their place, while the service market has remained a constant throughout.

“There is a whole sphere of recruitment that we would not have had 40-odd years ago,” says Watson. “Medical is now a very big area for us. IT, too.  

“Historically we might have provided people who do a bit of coding or data entry, whereas now it’s so vast with the likes of AI, cyber, data analytics and the way people are using information much more to run businesses.

“We have to be fleet of foot with the ever-changing use of technology.

“Something else which I think has changed is workforce planning. Many years ago employers wouldn’t even think about it if somebody was off for a week or a month or went up on maternity – they would just provide cover.

“These days I think businesses are much more strategic.”

It also becomes apparent that Covid was a game changer. Not only was working Britain turned upside down during the pandemic, but there has been a seismic shift in the balance of power between employee and employer, with new working patterns very much governed by the former.

Covid meant Pertemps “went big on medical, education and logistics”, according to Watson.

“We were doing a lot of work on major Covid projects. People had to eat. Bread and supplies were needed in the stores. We had to get tests packaged and delivered out.

“We were getting orders of up to 1,700 people requirements a day which put us under quite a lot of pressure to fill these positions.

“When Covid came all bets were off – it was all hands to the pump. What we saw for the first time ever was people moving to support other areas of the business – workers in the finance department, say, stacking shelves.

“And yes, we definitely saw a shift in the balance of power towards the employee. If you set that against the backdrop that there aren’t enough people for the jobs anyway, prospective employees can afford to be choosy.

“We saw real lifestyle changes for people being able to do their work at home. They feel that they are just as productive as having to sit on a motorway for two hours to get into work. So yes, their requirements changed.

“The word on the street from our branch operations is that there is still a key requirement for hybrid working. They want the choice. I think it's too early to say how all this will play out and whether it will last.

“I’m not sure that you can grow a business from home working. I might be a bit old fashioned but young people agree with me when I say there is still a preference for that face-to-face contact. People buy from people. People learn from people.

“If you look at the demographics at the moment, we need to bring people into work. If you take on a youngster, letting them sit at home in their kitchen on a laptop, how do they learn?

“You try sitting at home on Zoom all day for seven hours. It’s horrible.”

What about the spectre of AI, quite possibly the biggest talking point of all right now?

She thinks it’s “going to be fantastic”, and it has already been proved to great effect in the Pertemps offices, saving a great deal of time for the consultants who can then spend more time with customers.

“I don’t ever want it to replace the human element – that would just be dire.

“I do think government needs to step up to the plate though to work with businesses to make sure that we’ve got robust policies in place so that people are on a level playing field.”

Unsurprisingly perhaps for a figure respected nationally in the world of recruitment, Watson could chat for hours about anything and everything to do with the jobs market and all associated topics of today.

I’m not sure if there are other poster-girl figures in her industry but it’s hard to believe there are any who do more for the diversity and inclusion than Carmen Watson. And she’s been able to assess the shifting attitudes over the decades with the eye of someone very much in the under-represented category.

She is also in prime position to ensure that Pertemps follows the example of its chair.

“I think progress has been made in general, but I think we’ve got a lot of work still to do. For us as a company we do quite well. At Pertemps, 40 per cent of our board is female, which although rare is not deliberate – it’s very much a meritocracy.

“I wasn’t chosen for my role for any other reason than the fact that I’ve got a good track record. I had great relationships with clients, I made a lot of money for the business and I had the skills to do the role.

“I can’t tell you how much fairness and equality means to me. I mean, it’s one of my real moral standpoints. I hate to see iniquity anywhere. If I see it and it’s not right or not fair, I’m going to call it out.

“It is one of the reasons why I’ve stayed at Pertemps for as long as I have because even in those very early days there perhaps wasn’t all the D&I rhetoric that we have now, but there was a very, very strong philosophy of equality of opportunity.

“I think for people to thrive and for businesses to thrive it’s quite crucial.”

Watson has been a strong supporter of the national Women of the Year campaign to promote women for what they do. Pertemps, no doubt under her instruction, supports LadiesFirst, a West Midlands-based women’s professional development group.

These schemes put her in contact with remarkable women who are doing great things but are perhaps more comfortable hiding their lights under a bushel.

“I would like to see them shout about themselves a little more to give confidence to other women,” she says.

Then there are other extra-curricular commitments too, as well as her home life. She is a magistrate, a deputy lieutenant and an adoring mother and grandmother. “They are both the apples of my eye; I can’t spend enough time with them.”

She describes all the components in her life her ‘communities’ – and how she juggles them is key to her fulfilment.

“I’ve got my work community, my social community, the community within the courts and the communities within the lieutenancy.  

“My work communities have been formed over many, many years. I still deal with clients now that I dealt with 35 years ago.

“They know that I don’t take their orders anymore, but they still want me to know what they’re doing and that I’m keeping an eye on it. To me that’s just incredible.”

And it seems she can’t get enough of her work as a DL.

“I’ve probably invested in more tissues since I’ve been involved with the lieutenancy that than ever before because there are just so many stories about people doing fabulous things.

“I’ve seen what the work means to people who are the beneficiaries. We have King’s Award for volunteer service and the Young Achievers Awards. I absolutely love it.

“To me it’s all about the development of people and few things give me more pleasure than seeing people grow and maximise their potential.”

That’s Carmen Watson to a tee – at work, at home and in the wider world in general.

There can be few in the region who have touched as many lives for the better than this “proper ball of fire”, to quote her first employer.