The heartbeat of Teamwork People are our team, who bring together decades of experience in helping drive individuals, teams and organisations to succeed.
Our Teamwork People founder, Emma Cowan, combines operational leadership experience with practical performance insight to help organizations improve execution, accountability and team effectiveness. She has spent nearly 30 years in Senior HR Leadership roles in various industries, partnering with business leaders of multi-sized teams, as well as leading her own HR functions and teams. Emma is an Insights Discovery® Licensed Practitioner, Licensed Habits for Health® coach, Licensed Mindgym coach and she is Six Sigma Yellow Belt certified. She has a first-class degree in Human Resources, is a chartered member of the CIPD and is a member of the British Psychological Society.
Emma is passionate about equipping and enabling teams so they are ready for the future. She has led the people teams and led the delivery of countless strategic people plans within various industries. In addition to supporting BAU teams, Emma has refocussed teams after restructures, leadership changes, mergers, acquisitions, scaling up and downscaling in both the public and private sectors.
Our Resilience solutions uniquely merge both the psychological and physiological aspects of optimising team energy. We are proud to partner with Julie Patching-Ellis, our Habits for Health® programme expert, and we have crafted an approach that truly understands what makes individuals and teams become resilient and ready for the future.
Our Teamwork People Resilience Co-Partner, Julie Patching-Ellis, is an expert in energising individuals and teams so they can reduce physical and psychological overload. As a Licensed Habits for Health® coach, she has delivered the programme to hundreds of delegates over the past ten years in a wide variety of business sectors and within the wider community. Julie is a DTLLS qualified educator, tutor, assessor, instructor and coach in the specialisms of anatomy, health, fitness and physiology.
Julie has spent over 20 years leading her successful fitness business, Strictly Fitness, specialising in; group fitness, resistance training, Pilates, dance and wellness in private health clubs, local communities, corporate organisations, teaching pupils and teachers in schools, providing support to various charities and specialising in exercise for people with Parkinson’s providing important physical activity to improve strength and control.
.jpg)
We understand through first hand experience why it is vital to unlock high performing teams – through being HR function leaders, business owners, and being trusted business partners to leadership teams in multiple industries. This unique perspective has shaped our approach to creating solutions that truly work.
We know firsthand the challenges of finding high-impact, credible team performance optimisation solutions in today's crowded marketplace. That's why we've built our services around what organisations actually need: comprehensive, proven solutions that deliver real results.
Where a client's requirements sit outside of our core OptiTeam Performance Method solutions, we draw on our high quality network of 40+ expert partners to deliver on the clients needs.
We believe in complete honesty - there are no commissions or referral fees between us and our partners. We recommend them because they're brilliant, and they feel the same about us!
We're passionate about delivering outstanding service, and we know our partners are too - because we've been their customers ourselves. These aren't just business connections - they're trusted experts we love to promote because we've experienced their exceptional work first-hand. That's why we can confidently champion each other's success.
To ensure we’re the right fit and can best meet your needs, we have a few easy and quick to answer questions!
This allows us to understand your goals and provide you with the best initial consultation we can.
Implementation timelines vary based on your organisation's size and specific needs. For a smaller organisation, the team performance diagnostic can be completed and a roadmap produced within days.
Our Collaboration, Accountability, Resilience and Engagement focussed workshops can then be delivered soon after, in half or full-day sessions. For a large organisation, diagnostics and implementation usually takes 3-6 months to fully rollout across an organisation.
Absolutely. The data is compelling: UK businesses lose over £100 billion a year to lost productivity, workplace friction and poor performance. Evidence shows us fully engaged and optimised teams positively impact your business's productivity, profitability and your ability to attract and keep customers-essentially, it impacts your organisations survival. Our "What ineffective teams cost" page shows the commercial benefits gained from investing in your teams.
Insights Discovery® case study with Indeed demonstrated a 2,063% return on investment. Organisations typically see an 18% increase in productivity and 51% reduction in turnover rates. 96% of Habit For Health course participants report direct benefits from our programmes, including improved energy levels, reduced stress and better team collaboration.
All our programmes are available both virtually and in-person, delivering the same tools and effectiveness regardless of format. We adapt our delivery methods to suit your team's working arrangements whilst maintaining the quality and impact of our services.
We typically partner with organisations of approximately 50-500 employees that are experiencing growing pains and need to regain alignment to stop the performance drift. For optimal learning experiences, we recommend workshops of no more than 12 participants, though our programmes can be scaled for organisation-wide implementation.
We have walked in your shoes and have transformed hundreds of teams during nearly 30 years in various sectors. We only offer high impact and high quality expert-led solutions and use evidence-based tools like Insights Discovery® and Habits for Health and Mindgym. In addition to our OptiTeam Performance Method services, our handpicked network of over 40 fully qualified expert Teamwork People partners, delivers on our clients needs when their requirements sit outside of our core OptiTeam Performance Method solutions.