Mentoring: why I love it (and so do Tesco)

Meet Babette, Technology Programme Director, who talks about how Tesco puts its colleagues first, her passion for mentoring and the impact it can have on people – at any stage in their career.

“Tesco has a great emphasis on continuous learning”.

Mentoring is what gets me excited about coming to work. It’s something I’m passionate about and really enjoy – both as a mentor and being mentored myself. For me, Tesco has a great emphasis on continuous learning, all the way through your career. A lot of people think mentoring is one way, but it’s not. The people I mentor teach me things too, whether that’s seeing something a different way or new techniques I can take on board. I love the two-way learning.

When I’ve chatted to colleagues about mentoring, I’ve realised there’s experience I can bring and share – even if it’s just talking to someone about the mistakes I've made. If I can do something small that helps a person’s confidence, that could make a huge impact in their future. And you don’t have to be at a certain stage in your career to access mentoring. Whether you’re a graduate or approaching retirement, we actively encourage it here. There’s no period in your career where mentorship isn’t beneficial.

Honestly, mentoring is one of the best things I do at work. If you could be a full-time mentor within Tesco, that would be me. From a technical point of view, I can deliver great products or services for an organisation – the same as any other programme manager – from a technical point of view. But that feeling you get from mentoring? Seeing that lightbulb moment? That’s a special something.

“Tesco is all about doing the very best for the customer.”

I think of my role as a Technology Programme Director like this: we’re all going on a road trip, and someone has to steer us in the right direction. The product manager is often deciding where we’re going, the engineers and architects are providing the means (or ‘transport’) to get us there, and the programme manager is driving, making sure we’re all aligned. It’s my job to build and lead a great team of programme managers.

What I do – and what technology does too – is make people’s lives easier and simpler. That could mean providing the right tools for different people to collaborate and share information. Or it could be something more challenging, like updating our finance systems (replacing 40-year-old mainframes with the latest tech) without impacting the day-to-day operations of our 3000+ stores.

I’ve never worked somewhere with such a large group of people dedicated to amazing customer service. Everyone’s role at Tesco is all about doing the very best for the customer – it doesn’t matter where you are or what you do. For me, that means leading a team of technical programme managers. I work alongside engineers, product managers, designers and architects to deliver spot-on products and services.

It sounds cliché, but it’s the people that keep me here. Then there’s the variation of work. From building systems for online shopping, to working on systems that help our depots distribute goods more quickly, to building platforms that enable our colleagues to access better training, the variety is vast.

It’s also the scale of Tesco that keeps me here. We’re the largest retailer in the UK but a lot of people don’t realise we’re international. Millions of customers walk through our stores every single day and shop with us online, so I think colleagues love knowing they’re touching lots of people’s lives. There’s a real skill to building and designing systems on that type of scale. There are over 300,000 of us, with the majority serving our customers, or involved in that chain of serving customers.

“Happy colleagues lead to happy customers.”

But at Tesco, it’s not only about doing what’s best for customers. It’s about taking care of colleagues too. After all, happy colleagues lead to happy customers. I remember the amount of time and effort that the senior leadership and HR teams put into our wellbeing during COVID. First and foremost, they made sure colleagues were safe in store. And for those of us working in the office or from home, we were given everything we needed to do our jobs as seamlessly, and as comfortably, as possible. I think it’s in those moments that you appreciate the small touches.

Tesco has been here for over a hundred years, and for me, it’s an exciting place to work because it’s constantly evolving and adapting. They genuinely care about people and there’s so much we can get involved in. It’s work, but we make it fun.”

If you want to work alongside inspiring leaders just like Babette - check out our current opportunities: https://www.tesco-careers.com/technology