A Macclesfield digital product design company is celebrating their 15th birthday in style.

Nexer Digital, employ 59 people in our town, and operate from The Ropewalks on Newton Street.

The digital design agency have clients all over the world, the biggest in our town being AstraZeneca Macclesfield.

The Macclesfield human-centred design and development agency, who turn 15 today, are heading towards breaking £10 million in sales this year.

Nexer help companies achieve their digital ambitions. And are staffed with some of the north west's best researches, designers and software developers.

Nexer works with companies large and small, in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, nationally and internationally.

They claim to "work with users at the heart of its solutions, and help to add genuine business value and bring people together." 

The team believes strongly in developing long-term, mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with its customers, with key clients including mental health charity Mind, NHS Digital and the Department for Education. 

As of today, the business are also adopting a new hiring plan to secure their future for the next 15 years.

The IT business had a party in their office today to celebrate, and Macclesfield Nub News took a big team photo.

Managing director, Hilary Stephenson, told Macclesfield Nub News that one way the agency is marking the milestone is by investing in an inclusive hiring and support plan for the coming years, which will support ongoing growth.

The digital product and service designers are bolstering its commitment to diversity in tech through a partnership with Diverse & Equal, an organisation that equips under-represented groups with the necessary skills to excel in careers in the industry. 

Their quest for greater diversity in design and tech involves hopes to hire people with ranging experiences that represent the audience, using the products and services it develops.

Diverse & Equal equips adults from under-represented groups with the necessary skills to excel in careers in tech through taster sessions and bootcamps, while also empowering organisations to create inclusive environments where diverse talent can thrive.

The company have been in Macclesfield since their inception on May 4 2007.

The partnership will see dedicated bootcamps that support candidates through the methods, attitudes and processes involved in working in the public sector, which constitutes 50% of Nexer Digital's work. In addition, Nexer Digital's practice leads and Diverse & Equal will work together to establish a support framework for candidates' initial onboarding.

Accessibility and inclusion within the development of tech and digital are crucial to enabling tech products and services to reach their full potential and allowing the greatest number of people to benefit from them. Diverse teams allow a broader set of perspectives and experiences to be used at the creation stage, leading to improved products, however traditional recruitment approaches often do not present a rich range of candidates.

Annette Joseph MBE, CEO and founder of Diverse & Equal, said: "Innovation in tech needs diversity, which is why we are on a mission to increase the number of talented people from under-represented backgrounds in the industry. Nexer Digital has long since recognised the need for a range of backgrounds in their team and this partnership is an excellent way to support its continued commitment and ensure its team is representative of the users of its products and services."

Hilary Stephenson, managing director at Nexer Digital, said: "Diversity and inclusion in all its forms and intersections is so important to us – it is the only way we can possibly hope to fulfil the diverse needs of the users of the products and services we design. As we celebrate our 15th year of trading and head towards breaking £10 million in sales this year, we are choosing to invest in an inclusive hiring and support plan for the coming years.

"Tech was and still is a fairly exclusive sector and we often find that typical hiring routes are not forthcoming with the rich range of candidates that we need. This is especially challenging as we have grown rapidly in recent years and need to service our clients at speed without compromising on the consideration or quality of our work."

Diversity and inclusion has been central to Nexer Digital for over a decade and this partnership will complement ongoing work, such as furthering work to becoming a Disability Confident Employer and support to the Responsible Tech Collective, which seeks to improve ethics, equality and inclusion in the digital and tech sector. Nexer are also working with the recruitment and education partner Love Circular to help develop user experience design talent and support their graduate community into employment.

The Responsible Tech Collective (RTC) puts people first when it comes to the creation and deployment of technology and thinks holistically about the impact of tech digital solutions on communities, society and the environment. RTC brings together organisations such as Co-op, the BBC, Department for Education and Manchester City Council in improving ethics and inclusion in tech across Manchester.

Lauren Coulman, Founder of Noisy Cricket and Convenor of the Responsible Tech Collective, said: "When technology and digital products are designed solely by majority demographics, it is simply not possible for those products to put all of the people using them at the centre of the process. When teams are diversified and a range of voices and experiences feed into the creation process, you end up with tech that effectively serves a much broader range of people and leaves no one out. Nexer Digital's dedication to this and ethical tech in the broader sense is brilliant, and something that needs to be replicated across our whole industry."

Hilary Stephenson, added: "Growing awareness of the need for better representation within tech is positive and we are pleased to be able to partner with Diverse & Equal, the Responsible Tech Collective and Love Circular to create a strong pipeline of diverse, representative and inspiring talent to help us deliver human-centred design, which will be used by millions of people in the UK."

Nexer Digital is part of the Nexer Group – a Swedish technology firm with over 2,000 staff around the world.

You can find more about their services here.

The Macclesfield enterprise are also currently hiring, as you can see here.

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