Colleagues have paid tribute to a Norfolk managing director who helped spearhead the Best Employer initiative.

Alex Pearce, 51, who was the boss at Diss-based eras, died recently in the Royal Papworth Hospital after a short illness, leaving a wife and five children.

Colleagues described him as having a “fast-talking dry wit, wise counsel and immense knowledge” and said his “professional legacy would live on”.

Eras chairman Andrew Kitchen said: “He leaves a competent team at eras with all the enthusiasm, sense of purpose and expertise needed to keep his dream alive – but all those who have ever worked with him will miss Alex, the man, more than words can say.”

Eras has provided psychometric products and consultancy for firms for more than 30 years. Mr Pearce helped, together with the Cambridge-based recruitment firm Pure, create the hugely influential Best Employers Eastern Region initiative, backed by this newspaper, which promotes the region’s best firms in how they look after their workforce. The scheme went on to include 400 of the region’s businesses.

In 2000 Mr Pearce was living in Surrey, working as head of test development for a major psychometric assessment firm. His wife Tammy was pregnant with their first child when he answered an advertisement to join eras as a consultant.

With some nervousness about the vast change in their lives the move would bring about, the couple moved to Diss in early 2001.

Eras was then a well-respected regional recruitment, assessment and training consultancy business, aiming to expand its horizons.

Over the next few years, Mr Pearce propelled eras into being one of the top five psychometric assessment businesses in the UK, providing services to customers in more than 100 countries and in 18 different languages.

Alongside his considerable technical expertise, Mr Pearce was described as “approachable and kind, with a Liverpudlian sense of fun and humour that was never far from the surface”.

Lyn Walters, executive director, Pure, said: “Best Employers Eastern Region has become the trusted ‘go-to’ on employee engagement for organisations across the eastern region and it would not exist if it wasn’t for Alex.

“What I personally loved about working with Alex was his drive and innovation to continuously improve and move the project forward. In some ways, he was a very private and modest man, although, by no means afraid to speak his mind. On many occasions, I urged him to speak at our Best Employer conferences, to share his immense knowledge and expertise, but he shied away from the limelight and preferred to lead from the back.”