Pros
Complete control of my schedule and completely trusted to perform my role. I don't see the job as a 40 hour week, that's a guideline as far as I am concerned. I feel I am able to do what I need to do to get the right results for my customer and for the business. Sometimes that means for me very long days but I am completely in the mood to work and on other days maybe less so. The work is varied and challenging but at the same time very rewarding and I am not referring to money, very rewarding from an emotional perspective. I have a number of more senior people I feel I can talk to, who listen and respect my contribution. I feel I can positively contribute to the growth and reputation of this business to become the leading Mgt Agent in the UK.
Kontras
I see a number of challenges in working with this business: I don't think we are consistent with our people. I know some excellent performers in the business and feel they are not treated any differently to poor performers. I expect an HR policy to be applied consistently to all but from a development and managing performance point of view, the poor performers seem to get away without any real challenge. This compromises morale among the team and overall business performance. In terms of recognition, we have the WoW awards and at the conference we have Wowsers. In between I don't see any real recognition from our leaders. In a previous life, a postcard would occasionally drop through my door from our CEO or MD saying well done on results or behaviours displayed. And at every opportunity my immediate line manager would always look for every opportunity to recognise achievement in the team against objectives, improvement in performance, role model behaviours or just a set of consistent results. Despite what we may think, we have too many unhappy team members who are not honest with the business and we have certainly too many unhappy customers despite the progress we have made over the years. The challenge as I see it is that I enjoy what I do currently but one day unless these things change, a good employee will leave the business and others will too. Support in the business is at 2 extremes. There are those who always do lend support even with a busy workload and those who only care about themselves. Support centre people should do exactly what they are meant to do, support the frontline teams, the customers and the business overall to achieve our business ambition.
