Simon Hill: How a desire for public service led YPO’s MD ‘full circle’ to managing over 500 staff

“I’m an adopted Yorkshireman,” says Hill, speaking from YPO’s headquarters in Wakefield, where the firm employs over 500 people.

“I’ve just turned 60, but I moved here from Swindon just before my 30th birthday, so I’ve spent half my life in Yorkshire, which I have to say has been extremely positive.

“Both my parents were teachers, which is kind of relevant, because with YPO we supply education – so I’ve come full circle, but I fell shy of following the family business and struck out on my own when I went to work for Rover Group making cars.”

After completing a degree at Newcastle University, Hill’s first job would see him purchasing dip sticks for Rover, the small metal rods used to measure the amount of oil in a car engine. He then went on to broader purchasing and procurement for the firm, before stepping into general management and sales roles.

Hill would then go on to take on a role at regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, something he describes as going “back to his roots”.

“I did Economic Geography at university, so when the role at Yorkshire Forward came up it just seemed perfect,” he says.

“I was really interested in regional economic development, and the job was supporting businesses in the region at a time when they really needed it. It also allowed me to use the 20 years of business experience I had at the time. I just thought why not go back to my roots and pursue a career in that.”

The agency, however, was wound up in 2012 after the David Cameron coalition government’s “bonfire of the quangos”, which saw many non-governmental organisations wound up after funding cuts.

“Unfortunately, we were one of the quangos that went on the bonfire,” says Hill.

It was around this time that Hill would take up his role at YPO.

The West Yorkshire firm, which was first founded in 1974, primarily supplies products to schools – its branded glue sticks and rubbers now synonymous with education to many people across the region.

“YPO was originally founded to provide education supplies on the basis that every school at the time needed the same pens, pencils, desks and so on,” explains Hill

“If you bundle all of that together you can get much better buying power and can buy cheaply on behalf of schools, so many people who went to school in Yorkshire would have grown up with a YPO exercise book on their desk.”

Hill joined YPO at a time of transition for the company. As many schools were converted to academies, the way the business operated was forced to change.

“When schools got control of their own individual budgets and then when academisation came along, we became an independent commercial business, so there was no compulsion on anybody to use us,” he says.

“That was a transition I came in at the tail end of, this transition from being a centrally owned purchasing body that everyone had to use to becoming a stand alone commercial business that had to stand on its own two feet and become competitive with the private sector.

“We now have to win every piece of business that we do in the marketplace, but I think that's the secret to our success really. We’re not a bureaucracy, we have to be a slick, efficient commercial businesses because we’re competing in an aggressive marketplace. We have to make sure we’re generating profit and that we’re able to invest in the future of the business.”

As well as going back into the company, profits made by YPO go into the public purse through its ownership by 13 local authorities. It is through this ownership that Hill is also able to satisfy his desire for public service.

“It's a constant balancing act, but it's also a good challenge,” he says.

“We always try to get the best prices we can, but what's most important to our 13 local authorities is what we are doing in their communities.

“We’re increasingly trying to use local SME suppliers and encouraging them to engage in tender for our contracts, so yes we’re getting competitive prices, but we’re making sure we spend our money in the communities where our authorities are located, and encouraging suppliers to engage in apprenticeship schemes and sustainability.

“We do an annual benefits statement to our authorities, and it says ‘because of your membership to YPO you’ve saved this much money, we’ve paid you this much back in annual dividends, but we’ve also spent this much in your local economy and created this many jobs and this many apprenticeships’.

“So it's about that balanced scorecard approach which says ‘yes there's a commercial benefit to being with YPO, but we’re also reaching some of the hard to reach individuals in the communities.’”

Though Hill never went into education directly like his parents, part of his “coming full circle” has been reintroducing an education element to YPO’s business model, bringing apprenticeships back to the forefront of the company’s staffing.

This, he says, is his proudest achievement.

“We had an ageing workforce when I came in, because we didn't get a lot of staff turnover. This is a great thing, but we could see there was a problem coming in the future in terms of where the future leadership was going to come from.

“So investing in our future leaders and bringing some of those very bright young people through has been extremely rewarding for us. I’ve no doubt that some of our apprentices will be the future leaders of YPO, and that's a great legacy to have.”