Growing up, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do as a career. I studied psychology at university, but I couldn’t see a route into that area, so I took a part-time retail job working in Debenhams where I lived in Liverpool in 2008.
I found that I was great in retail, so I worked my way up. I did retail management for about 13 years with Debenhams, all around the Northwest.
Positive opportunities out a difficult experience
When Debenhams went into administration in 2021, it was a long, drawn out and difficult experience for a lot of people. We received support from the National Careers Service within GC, and they came in and supported me and my team with everything from CV development to skills workshops.
I facilitated a lot of this with the National Careers Service. Through this, I developed strong relationships within GC and a few people suggested that I should look at jobs within their Employment support business. I didn’t even know such jobs existed.
At the time, the Restart services had just begun and so I secured a job as an Employment Advisor within the programme. The role gave me all the things that I had loved about retail – working with people, identifying skills and setting targets based on their aspirations.
First impressions of GC
I remember my first day at Lee House in our Manchester Office, it was very quiet and everyone was working from home due to the pandemic. That said, the experience still provided a really warm welcome. It was well structured and thought-out induction process. I was introduced to other areas of GC and it gave me a robust understanding of our business. Across those early weeks, it was a really comfortable learning environment, where it was OK to make mistakes and I could learn from the rest of the team.
Opportunities to progress and being agile
I did a Level 4 Employability Practitioner Apprenticeship from June 2022 because I wanted to keep pushing forward in my career. I'm not one to run before I can walk, so in GC Employment, I didn’t want to just be a manager again straight away. I wanted to make sure I understood the business first as it was all quite new to me.
The opportunity to do an apprenticeship is a huge stand out moment for me at GC. I thought I was done with my education once I’d gotten my degree. That was such a great opportunity and I learned so much from it. GC was so supportive, and my managers gave me the space and time to complete it, without feeling that extra pressure in other areas of my job.
With these additional skills under my belt, I knew that I could progress at GC. I just needed the right time and opportunity. When it was clear there were no roles for me to progress into on the contract, my manager helped me to source another role form other opportunities. I moved into a Training role across our Salford offices for 8 months – supporting new starters with every aspect of on-boarding and initial training across their first few months.
A couple of months ago, a Lead Employment Advisor role came up in our Eccles office, which I applied for and was successful in getting.
Having an impact on a bigger scale
My managers have always found opportunities to keep me going and motivated – to keep me learning and inspired within the roles I’ve had at GC. Because of the opportunities presented to me, I’ve felt like I’ve been able to have a wider impact across the team. That's not something I ever expected and it’s not something that I was used to in previous companies.
What motivates me is being able to make an impact on a bigger scale. As an Advisor, I was working directly with participants on the programme, and I could see the changes that we were making and the positive impact we were having.
Doing the right thing is something that we do well at GC. We're target based, we have to be compliant and we're a mandatory programme, but we'll always do the right thing for the customers and endeavour to focus on what is genuinely the best thing for them. Being able to encourage the wider team to work in this way is really what motivates me the most.
I would highly advise anyone to join GC. It’s as simple as that. It’s a great company with some great benefits. Simply by just being kept up-to-date with what’s going on across GC, I don’t just feel like a small cog in the wheel, I feel that I’m actually playing a great part in the bigger picture.