About & Team

Leadership

• 

  David Thornhill

  CEO

  Simplicity is led by CEO David Thornhill, one of the recruitment industry’s most experienced professionals. A renowned pioneer and innovator, David has spent over 35 years in the recruitment industry, where he became an expert in identifying and fixing productivity and efficiency issues for recruitment businesses. Determined to find better…

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  David Thornhill

  CEO

  Simplicity is led by CEO David Thornhill, one of the recruitment industry’s most experienced professionals. A renowned pioneer and innovator, David has spent over 35 years in the recruitment industry, where he became an expert in identifying and fixing productivity and efficiency issues for recruitment businesses.

  Determined to find better ways of helping recruiters, he started looking around for more effective solutions. However, frustrated by the lack of appropriate support, he realised that an entirely new approach was needed and decided to tackle the problem himself using his own industry knowledge and skills. He went on to develop the first-ever software model to combine payroll, invoicing, sales ledger, funding and management reporting. It was a game-changing event for the recruitment industry and the start of a new journey.

  In 2004, David joined forces with fellow industry heavyweight Tom Atkinson to set up Simplicity. Their vision was simple - to use their combined experience and technology to revolutionise the recruitment industry’s efficiency and profitability. Together they assembled a team of like-minded recruitment experts and began their quest to develop the first full-service back office and financial solution designed for the specific challenges facing recruiters.

  Today that vision is a reality. Simplicity is now one of the fastest-growing players in the market. It has provided over £1 billion in funding and worked with thousands of recruiters, helping both start-ups and established businesses to prosper and grow. Under David’s leadership, the company has continued to invest millions of pounds in research, technology and people.

• 

  Tom Atkinson

  Chairman

  Wise as an owl always with a finger on the industry pulse. With more than 16 years’ experience in the recruitment sector, Tom Atkinson is quite simply a recruitment guru! It was in 1997 that Tom brought his 'Third Party Supplier Management' skills to the recruitment industry from the motor…

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  Tom Atkinson

  Chairman

  Wise as an owl always with a finger on the industry pulse. With more than 16 years’ experience in the recruitment sector, Tom Atkinson is quite simply a recruitment guru! It was in 1997 that Tom brought his 'Third Party Supplier Management' skills to the recruitment industry from the motor industry (where he was made a Fellow of the Institute of the Motor Industry). Tom re-shaped and re-branded a back-office funding product called Cash Friday, building it up to be the market leader, which was eventually sold to Lloyds TSB. With what was a totally unique service (now copied with varying degrees of success by others) Tom helped literally hundreds of fledgling agencies in the highly competitive recruitment industry.

  After founding Cash Simply in 2004, Tom became the Chairman of re-branded Simplicity in 2011. Tom also chairs the Forest Inspiration programme, a voluntary network of Forest of Dean business leaders who support the local community to find employment and enjoys amateur dramatics and music in his spare time.