Why volunteering in your local community is a good move...

I am very passionate about the learning & skills arena and Continued Professional Development (CPD) and since around 2005 I have really been focusing my career towards roles which have developed and promoted these aspects of my skillset.

My first experience of this kind of work was volunteering at a School when I joined BT as a graduate in 1998. I was encouraged by my Manager (who happened to be a Governor) to help out at an industry day at a local school in Bristol. Each year for a few years I would go along to the school and run communications awareness sessions with the children. I would organise these in advance, working with other volunteers to put together interactive exercises to occupy the students and help them to learn new skills. After 4 years of running these I passed on the responsibility to new entrant graduates to continue the support to the school. I got a huge amount of experience and sense of achievement from doing these.

It wasn’t until I undertook a related role around 5 years ago within BT which rekindled my interest. I was fortunate to get involved in project managing a piece of work in the employability skills arena calledtalentmap. This exposed me to working with 4 government departments, 3 nations, the CBI, the Federation of Small Business, the UK Commission for Employment & Skills and the Prime Ministers Talent & Enterprise Taskforce. The project addressed the gap between employers and the education world and established standard language by which all can engage, with the ultimate aim of improving employability skills in people of all ages. After finishing on this project I realised this is the kind of work where I can best support BT.

In parallel to my BT work I have participated more actively in my local Community helping at a local care home (Oak House) as a Trustee Director as well as actively participating in my local Round Table. I believe the skills I have gained through BT have helped me to positively contribute to my community through these mediums. The Round Table is about having fun and trying out new things, but mainly it’s about charity and putting something back into the local community. I have held various roles in the Round Table over the years from Secretary through to Treasurer on to Chairman and the organisational skills as a project manager and the qualifications that I have gained through BT have helped me to apply myself in these roles. Some of the charitable work that the Round Table undertake has enhanced my own skills, particularly in stakeholder management and communication skills, generally through working with local council, the police and other organisations. I have applied these new found experiences to various roles in BT including my work on the talentmap. As well as this, the skills that I have built up have enabled me to help and advise tabler’s themselves, their businesses as well as their families and friends to try to persuade them to use BT services. Acting as an ambassador for BT reflects well on BT and helps to promote the BT Brand.

Within the industry cuts have meant the ability to undertake new training and development has been throttled back somewhat over the past few years and I have looked at other ways to build up my skills toolkit in the learning & skills arena. I have undertaken coaching and mentoring of others within and outside of BT and this gave me the confidence to become a School Governor which was my next logical step. Governing offered me an opportunity to extend my coaching and mentoring in a more formal structure, as well as applying my planning and strategic experience in a different context. My experience in performance management within BT, has already stood me well with helping to set the head teachers objectives! Being on the governing body is a bit like being a director of a medium-sized business; you get involved in a wide range of issues. As a Governor I have been actively making decisions, solving problems and challenging assumptions. I have helped to set the strategic direction for the school, monitoring and setting targets for the school generally and the head teacher, managing the budget and appointing teachers and senior staff. Many of these aspects are not unlike managing a project in BT and I feel that this exposure is making me a more rounded project manager with a wider breadth of experience which can only help BT within learning & skills. I really believe Governors can have a marked effect on the performance of a school; even after a couple of years of being a Governor I have seen the impact that myself and my fellow Governors can make. It’s really rewarding to be fully involved in the life of a school and to be a part of helping the children reach their individual full potential. Although the aim of the school is to develop the children, its influence extends beyond the school gates into the whole community and can serve as a unifying and positive influence to all involved.

My next career developing opportunity came to me on the back of my experience and it was to get involved very early on in developing BT’s donation service – MyDonate. This provided me with great experience working directly with charities in a consultative ambassador role to develop a rival service to ‘Just Giving’. I learnt a great deal about the 3rd sector as a whole as well as Corporate Social Responsibility in BT. I really believe that once the service goes live it will really shake up the competition and charities will reap the benefits. More fundamentally this will impact local communities.

Up to this point in my career I had performed a blend of Project Management, Consultancy and Programme Management responsibilities. In order to move towards Programme Management, I needed to gain more exposure with Programme level activity. I found an external secondment role working for Business in the Community (BITC) to programme manage a campaign to bring about transformational change to the way work experience happens across the UK – known as Work Inspiration. Although the timing wasn’t perfect, I grabbed the opportunity as it was a natural progression for my career and for me to deliver the best value back to BT. Although apprehensive about working for another company I quickly became excited by the opportunity which it gave me. Whilst in the role my skills gained through BT quickly became apparent and this gave me confidence in the role and my abilities to perform and excel. Having completed a six month secondment I look back on it as an amazing learning curve. I was fortunate to have worked with leaders of large organisations such as Marks & Spencer, Royal Mail, Serco, Capgemini, Boots, National Grid, Eversheds, Chime Communications, MacDonald’s and Barclays. I have built up a huge network of contacts and gained some great friends in the process.