As Operations Director at Red Education, Stuart Frampton describes his role as being responsible for ‘pretty much everything that is student related’. This means that all our training manuals, training delivery, onboarding our growing team of trainers, student surveys and more, everything that ‘you just assume would work’ in a training company, come from Stuart’s team.
Not surprisingly, having a background in customer service has been a great asset when looking after operations. At the age of 21, Stuart started out working in a tax office in Guernsey, managing income tax complaints. Although he describes this as ‘a baptism of fire’, it taught him valuable lessons that he has carried with him throughout his career. Stuart’s background has also included roles in recruitment, account management and various operations roles, all of which have been hugely valuable to the business now that he leads our Operations team.
5-star reviews
Stuart is proud of the number of five-star reviews that Red Education has achieved, but he also sees the ratings from a business improvement perspective.
“We may have 650 or 700 five-star ratings, but we need to look at the few where we get one or two stars. What went wrong? What can we improve to make sure that the next time we are getting five stars from that person? That’s how we become a better business,” he says.
The two key values that Stuart asks of the Red Education Operations Team are accountability and attention to detail. “Everything we do is customer-facing, so it all adds up to the customer experience,” Stuart says.
Stuart has also instilled a strong focus on accountability in his team. Saying that he is as ‘honest to a fault’, he believes in owning up to any errors as soon as they take place. “With my team, I always say, if you make a mistake, put your hand up, I can fix it, whatever it is. There’s no benefit in pointing fingers,” he says. He also makes a point of knowing how to do every job carried out by his team, so if anyone is away, he can step in and fill the gap. As a result, he knows he won’t over-work his team because he already knows exactly how long each task will take.
“I love my systems”
As well as the close-knit team he has built in Operations, Stuart enjoys being part of the leadership team, supporting the different functional areas of the business with the systems that make Red Education run more smoothly and make life better for his colleagues.
“I love my systems! I always look at working smarter not harder. If we have a new idea for a system, I’m the one who is responsible for its implementation and making sure it works with all the other systems we have in place. I’m the problem solver in the background,’ he says.
After the birth of his second child, Stuart took some time off work to spend with the family. This gave him time to reflect on what he had achieved in the business. “I took a moment to look at what I’ve built up for Red Education and I’m proud of all the systems I’ve implemented. They have made our business growth possible. I’ve also ensured our systems are integrated, working together so that information flows between them. Wherever you are in the business, whichever system you’re working on, you know that you’re seeing the same information as someone in a different department, rather than having different parts of the organisation looking at different information on the same person in three different systems. That’s what I really enjoy about the system side,” he said.
Stuart’s ongoing mission is to make sure that the business is in a better state than when he joined it. “At this moment I can see that this is true, so I’m happy with everything I’ve done this far,” he said.