Health Shield is a provider of health cash plans and wellbeing services, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. The business has 120 employees and around 385,000 members.I joined the society as IT Operations Manager but gained promotion to IT Manager in August 2022, which saw the management of the IT Development and Test teams added to my responsibilities. As IT Manager I am responsible for:People management of the IT Operations, Development and Test teams. Building and managing training & development plans, alongside succession plans to ensure that the IT team maintains the necessary skills.All IT support processes, including service desk, application support, operations support, activity reporting and major incident management.Management and mitigation of all business IT risks ensuring that the business prioritises its strategic objectives within the delivery of IT services, resilience, security and change.Closely managing the performance, deliverables and governance of external IT service providers. Proactively engaging with 3rd parties to continuously drive exceptional service for the society whilst ensuring adherence to legislation, regulation and reducing costs where possible.Creation and maintenance of the Cyber Security Strategy and Incident Response Playbooks.Accountable for Information Security Management ISO27001 and Business Continuity Management ISO22301, ensuring compliance with local and international laws and best practice standards in Data protection, Business Continuity. Fulfill the role of Information Security Management System (ISMS) Manager.

People Management of a team of skilled IT Support Analysts, including coaching, performance monitoring, appraisals and discipline.Responsibility for the maintenance and improvement all IT technology and systems used by the business.Management of performance for support and continual service improvement of all third-party service providers.Ownership of Incident, Problem and Change processes including the Change Manager role.Building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders within and outside of the business.

Management of a team of 12 globally dispersed, highly skilled Infrastructure Support and Service Desk Analysts supporting over 1000 users in 20 offices across the UK, Europe, US and Asia.Management of IT support and services provided by Radius to external companies including the reporting and analysis of monthly service availability and adherence to Service Level Agreements.Ownership of Incident, Problem and Change processes including the Change Manager role.Created, developed and managed the support process for the integration of 20 overseas acquisitions into the Radius Payment Solutions UK head office IT structure, separating 1st and 2nd line support provision and implementing regular pro-active site visits to achieve standardisation of support across the group. Implemented data security processes to support the attainment of Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO27001 certifications and to meet the requirements of GDPR.

Reporting to Director of IT and responsible for all aspects of desktop and network support for the software development team and support staff in the UK, Europe, Australasia and the Americas.Delivered centralised IT technology and support for 6 geographically dispersed acquisitions and for expansions into new territories. Day to day support of 400 users across 14 offices around the world including over 250 very demanding Software Developers. I supported the desktop\laptop estate and a virtualised environment of Hyper-V VMs in the productions environment and over 100 VM used for software development and testing.Reporting and analysis of monthly Service Desk ticket statistics and major incidents and outages to senior management team.Specification and purchasing of all user software and hardware including desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets.

Reporting to IT Support Controller, I was responsible for all internal user facing IT infrastructure at the Head Office and Distribution Centre sites.Problem management to identify the root cause of persistent problems and to propose the best solution for the user. Solutions included short-term fixes and strategic planning to stop the problem from reoccurring. This required strong and successful bonds to be built with teams external to mine. Day to day management of a team of skilled Support Technicians including effective communication; conflict management and discipline, maintaining customer service standards, coaching and up-skilling, appraisal and objective setting, ensuring that the team understood the goals of the business and senior management.Customer engagement and raising the profile of the Support Team. Specification and purchase of appropriate computer equipment and software for the sites that I was responsible for and manage their deployment. Systems supported - Windows 2000 to 2008 Server and Active Directory. Microsoft Exchange 2003.

Responsibility for all aspects of desktop and network Support at the Head Office and Distribution Centre sites.Provide 2nd line support for PC, NT account, file system administration and software issues and 1st line support for server and network issues.

2nd line support for PC, Netware account, file system administration and software issues and 1st line support for server and network issues.

Responsibility for all aspects of desktop support and support of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and Novell NetWare 4.11 servers and networking infrastructure.

Onsite installation and configuration of any items that a customer may have purchased from Kerridge, which ranged from simple hardware or software upgrades through to complete LAN installations.

I gained four promotions in seven years after joining British Rail as a Customer Service trainee. I worked in an administrative role at the Operations Training Centre, Crewe as well Customer Service roles at Crewe Station and stations on the Crewe to Manchester line. I also took the opportunity to work in the Finance Department at the London Head Quarters of Railtrack experiencing, first hand, the pressures and challenges involved in a company flotation on the stock market.