I worked as a project lead on key local government initiatives within the housing department. This involves me working on process improvement as well as mid-large scale procurement projects with multi million pound budgets.

In this role I managed the implementation of a Knowledgebase system across Sky Betting & Gaming as well as managed the Help & Support pages on the website. This work fell within the remit of continuous improvement

In this role I have moved into project management, managing various projects from inception through to implementation. The projects I am working on have had a customer focus and been with the aim of improving the overall customer experience for Asda’s online grocery customers. I have achieved success in this role, with projects I have been working on contributing to the improvement in the Net Promoter score (NPS). Projects I have worked on have included the implementation of a service-training programme for all Customer Delivery Drivers, E-Commerce Managers and Personal Shoppers. This training programme now runs regularly throughout the year and I create content as well as engage and rollout the training to necessary colleagues. The last training session saw 10,000 colleagues and 500 managers trained and was highly successful in its ROI and KPI performance. This role has added project management experience to my skillset and is a role I have learnt a great deal from. I am also a line manager to a small team in this role, supporting them with the rollout of smaller customer centric projects.

In this role I was leading a team of supply support administrators, which help stores with any supply issues they have as well as manage the inbound capacity into the Asda depots and into the Asda Supply Chain. In this role I was leading a team of supply support administrators, which help stores with any supply issues they have as well as manage inbound capacity into the Asda depots and into the Asda Supply Chain. I led a team of 20 people and was responsible for managing performance, development, KPI delivery as well as planning and organising the monthly planning within the team. This was a role I learnt a great deal out of and it supported my development immensely in leading a team and developing colleagues to achieve highly.

I was a George and General Merchandise Trading Manager within Asda Abbey Park store for 9 months. This was a customer-facing role and gave me a wide and varied experience of work across a varied retail environment. I led two large teams and was accountable for driving sales, ensuring maximum product availability and achieving effective cost controls across both these areas. My primary responsibility was to coach the supervisors in order to achieve, and implement to a high standard, the activity plan within the George and GM functions. In addition this role put me within the stores senior leadership team and I was drawn upon to run the whole stores operation in the absence of the Store Manager. This helped my development hugely and increased my knowledge of various aspects of the business.

This role placed me in the centre of the training programme for the Birmingham region during a restructure of the retail management population in the summer of 2014. I was placed in Coventry working as a training manager, understanding training needs as well as conducting training modules and sessions with various levels of management, from Deputy Store Managers to supervisors. I taught a wide variety of sessions including shrink management, e-commerce, managing a team and having essential conversations with colleagues, amongst others. This helped develop my confidence hugely, particularly in public speaking and presentations but also was key in helping me to communicate with the trainees in an effective and easy-to-understand manner as well as coach them to learn what they needed for their new roles and prepare them for their return to the various stores within the region. This was a role I learnt a great deal from and I am pleased I was put forward for this position as I feel it has aided my development hugely.

As part of my graduate programme with Asda I was given the opportunity to undertake a small project with the Wage Planning team. As part of this project I was working to simplify the rota scheduling system and get to the root cause as to why stores were not using it to its full effect. A major problem I identified with this was the training documents were not fit for purpose and were out-dated, making it difficult for the supervisor population to use the system effectively. I thus rewrote the training documents as well as put forward a series of recommendations to the developer about how the system itself could be made simpler. My training documents are still in use today, something I am very proud of. It taught me key organisational skills, the importance of seizing the initiative and managing my own time as well as analysing a great deal of qualitative and quantitative data and using it to inform training materials.

In this role I led an E-Commerce operation within store which included a home delivery service as well as Click and Collect. It was my job to support the Section Leaders and colleagues to drive KPI performance and deliver consistent service to the customers at the doorstep or collection point.

In this role I worked as a Financial Admin Assistant, processing invoices and liaising with care providers to ensure the correct fees were paid for each individual receiving council support. I learnt skills of communication, time management, prioritisation of my workload and gained experience of SAP & CISS accountancy software.

For one year I worked on a fixed-term contract for QBE insurance, a global insurance company providing cover for a range of products. I worked in the commercial department and aided underwriters in providing quotations for commercial businesses. In this position I provided quotations for certain types of insurance, extensively used the telephone to contact brokers regarding quotations and renewed and altered policies where required. I also carried out administrative tasks such as dealing with incoming/outgoing post, creating files for clients, photocopying insurance documents as well as inputting and collating data into the computer software. I thoroughly enjoyed this work and it has given me a huge insight into how global businesses operate.