Having recently stepped up to the Managing Director position at Watershed Packaging, finding out about the Help to Grow: Management Course couldn’t have come at a better time for Paul High.

A family-owned business, Watershed Packaging was established just over 30 years ago. Its main base is in Leeds, with a production site in Gwent in Wales. It was at a packaging innovation event run by the Leeds Beckett Business School that Paul first heard mention of the course and decided to explore further.

“The timing of it fell very nicely with me taking on the extra responsibility of Managing Director. It just looked like a really good opportunity to take myself out of the business so I could refocus, re-energise, and start off that role with impetus and new ideas.

“I've been with the company for seven and a half years so I felt the course would either vindicate that what I was already doing was on the right track or, equally as beneficially, come up with new ideas that challenged the previous orthodoxies we'd been running with.”

Paul began the course in January 2025, at Leeds Beckett University, around six months after stepping into the MD role.

A clearer direction

A few months on from completing the course, the business – which manufactures a range of flexible packaging solutions, as well as selling packaging machinery - is already seeing some big benefits. “The most useful thing for me has definitely been building our value proposition. I think if you start off by getting that right and build your team, plan, culture, engagement, marketing and everything around it, then you’re in a great position.

“It all comes down to having that really strong knowledge of who you are, what you're good at, and why you do what you do. It was one of the first things I did when I became Operations Manager six or seven years ago but, looking back, some of that was a little bit woolly so it’s been helpful to revisit and refine it.”

Paul says this new, clearer vision has already had a positive impact on communication within the company.

“We've had quite a few meetings with the senior management team about the business value proposition and what that means for their communication and their management methods with their team, and we're already seeing benefits. It’s hard to put a number on it but, in terms of engagement and people’s focus, I feel the levels have definitely increased.”

It's also given the company the impetus to revisit their marketing strategy – a project that will be completed within the coming months.

“For example, we've got a much better idea of the messages we want to put out to customers. We're really focusing in on our independent status and our agility, because a lot of the companies we're going up against are multinationals and can’t be as adaptable.

Embracing digital

Another almost-immediate impact of Paul’s time on the course can be seen in the company’s adoption of AI technology.

“One of the things I brought in straightaway, off the back of the Digital Transformation module, is more use of AI. It opened my eyes to it and made me realise the potential. “Within two weeks of finishing the module I held AI workshops for all the different departments. Since then, so many people have come to me and said: “This is saving me so much time and effort”. It’s helping them with everything from lengthy emails to writing technical data sheets. Tasks that might have taken two or three hours can get done in 20 minutes.

“We’re embracing it from a cultural point of view and trying to get people to realise that it's not cheating, it's freeing them up from the banal, repetitive, lengthy tasks to focus on what they're good at.”

An exciting future

The future is looking bright for the company, which currently employs 65 members of staff and had a turnover of £10.4m last year.

“We’re an ambitious company. We want to grow both organically and through acquisition as well. We reinvest heavily in machinery and staff and, when it came to the course, I wanted ideas for growth. Whilst we've kind of been able to grow profit over the last few years, our turnover hasn't quite grown at the rate we would want it to.”

While Paul believes it’s too early to make any direct connection between the course and the company’s growth this year, Watershed Packaging has already [as of June 2025] reached profit levels from last year and is “quite significantly ahead” in terms of turnover.

“It is shaping up to be a good year.”

The time Paul spent away from the business, and the ideas that were floated, during the course have helped him find the confidence to forge ahead with growth plans – including expanding the business into Europe. The process of setting up a new arm of the business in Spain is currently underway. An HR company is also coming into the business to conduct staff interviews and collect baseline engagement scores that can then be measured each year. “All these things have come from the ideas and the thoughts I’ve had while in those periods of reflectivity and out of the business. It’s an exciting time.”

Improved value proposition

More efficient use of digital technology

Ideas for everyone

Paul says he would have no hesitation recommending the course to others. In fact, the company’s Group Director Anna Wood is signed up to start it in September.

“I couldn't recommend it highly enough to people of any level of experience, whether they’ve been in a senior role for quite some time or are relatively new to it. Help to Grow: Management will really help you take a step back and think about when and how you grow.

“I studied business at university, and I’ve done ILM courses since, but I still found it so helpful. It really re-energised me.”

Find out how the Help to Grow: Management Course can further your business here.

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