Jade Thomas, office manager for Pure Commercial Finance Ltd, explains why Ben Lloyd should win the Leader of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
Myself and my colleagues are very proud to work at Pure Commercial Finance and count ourselves lucky to have Ben as a leader. He has helped us all develop our skills and confidence, while still having fun and becoming good friends.
Despite his age (he’s only 30) and the business being under three years old, you’d think that he had been running it for so much longer. We work in a complex area of finance and things can get manic when we approach a deadline, yet Ben is always on hand to help coach us and make sure that we develop both as individuals and as professionals, even if it puts him under a lot of pressure, which it often does.
We love it that Ben knows when to relax and has a work-hard, play-hard attitude. After a recent record month he took us all to the rugby, out for food and drinks and made sure we all had a good time. It’s one of the reasons why the company is growing so quickly, as we all work hard and love what we do.
We also appreciate the fact that he started this business for the right reasons - to provide the best service for clients and work in a transparent way, which is rare in our industry. This integrity gives us a good reason to come to work each day and means we have a great culture.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
