Company: Karrikins Group, North Sydney, NSW, Australia
Company Description: A global growth-oriented consulting firm focused on elevating our clients to be the obvious choice in the hearts and minds of their customers, communities, and employees.
Nomination Category: Company/Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Fastest Growing Company of the Year

Nomination Title: Twelve months at Karrikins Group, formerly known as ChangeLabs

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated organization since the beginning of July last year (up to 525 words). Begin your essay with the following two figures, in percentage terms: Year over year revenue growth: Year over year employee growth:

YoY revenue growth: 25%
YoY employee growth: 45%

Karrikins Group has achieved exponential growth in the areas of staff headcount, revenue, and operational reach in the past twelve months. Led by CEO Yvette Bellamy, Karrikins Group works with global clients to elevate the impact of their social investments to create shared value for their customers. In the past twelve months, a large number of existing client contracts were up for renewal, all of which were re-signed and further investments made into the respective programs. Karrikins Group have additionally welcomed two new clients, whom represent milestones in terms of scope for client diversity. University of Cincinnati Economic Centre will be the latest international client to be engaged predominantly in the Australian-based business, and the Cerebral Palsy Alliance have come on board as the first not-for-profit organisation with the Just Like You program. On-boarding of new clients and growth within existing clients created a 25% revenue increase at July 1 2014, $7m per annum in value. This equates to a 77% increase in operating profit, improving a potential 201% growth to the bottom line for 2015 financial year. Operating profit margin has consequentially risen from 14% to 23% since July 2014, a 153% improvement.

Staff numbers have increased by 45% since July 1 2014, corresponding with a 6 point decrease to 16% staff attrition at 30th June 2015, and subsequent reduction in turnover costs. Although an increase in headcount can sometimes come at a cost to engagement measures, a Gallup survey measured a 9% increase in staff engagement score to 64% of staff. This score, which is an overall score of 4.24 in a 5-point scale, puts Karrikins Group amongst Gallup’s Best Clients, organisations who’ve reached a median of 63% engaged staff. All functional areas have subsequently increased in scope due in large part to an expansion of client base, program size, and therefore income. A key example of growth in terms of program reach is the Start Smart program, delivered in partnership with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The reach success of this program inspired a further investment to grow the delivery with 22 more facilitators across Australia. Optus have expanded their Digital Thumbprint program into Queensland, while Football Federation Australia and Mondelez International have stabilised another facilitator for their Play Project program in Victoria. This has enabled Karrikins Group to urge forward on internal goal of 100,000 “nudges”, which are provable impacts on the number of recipients of the programs delivered.

Yvette Bellamy’s pioneering processes and client relationship aptitudes have been crucial to the business’ achievements and agility to integrate them all within a twelve month period, maintaining stability for the current work environment whilst continually improving and innovating. The engagement score of the Executive team she leads has increased from 4.19 to 4.8 in a 5-point scale in the past twelve months. This growth within the business speaks more broadly to reputational growth in the market, which has been the result of the work completed in the past year on a forthcoming company re-brand. Translating growth from client interaction, through internal engagement, to consumer satisfaction is an immense achievement, exceeded all stakeholder expectations.

Provide a brief biography of the person or persons who lead the nominated company (up to 125 words):

Yvette Bellamy has led Karrikins Group as CEO since 2013. Having pursued an innate desire to help and inspire people, Yvette's wealth of experience includes work as a Donor Service Manager at Opportunity International (2004 – 2006) and saw early success in implementing strategies resulting in an increase of $8 million revenue yearly. Yvette was then headhunted for a General Manager role at C3 International (2006-2009) and managing a small team, was key in increasing revenue from $100k to $3m per year. Returning to Australia in 2010, Yvette was appointed Program Manager at Karrikins Group, then known as ChangeLabs, progressed to Chief Operations Officer and soon appointed CEO. Yvette balances strategic priorities, customer pipelines, client needs, operational delivery and leading an inspiring and successful team.

Choose one (even if both apply):

The CEO (or other principal manager) of this company is a woman, and at least 40% of the management team is comprised of women.