At 18, I finished college with my A levels and a couple of NVQs and knew I wanted to use those to get into the workplace, rather than going to uni. I started applying for jobs and saw one in the Daily Echo for an Administrator (yes remember when we applied for jobs by cutting them out of the paper!) at a Housing Association called Swaythling Housing Society, as an administrator in one of the housing teams. It wasn’t too far from where I lived, and the work sounded interesting and varied. At that time, I really didn’t know anything about Housing Associations and what they did, there was a lot to learn!
After handwriting my application (yes, remember that too!), I got myself an interview and was successful in getting the job. I was always grateful for my boss at the time (the Area Housing Manager) for believing in me at 18, with no previous experience other than work experience via my NVQs and giving me a chance…. And so, my career in housing began.
That was over 21 years ago (Nov 2000), and I have been through the Windsor, Drum, Swaythling merger to become Radian, and now our Radian & Yarlington partnership to become Abri. I never set out for a career in housing, but here I am! At 18 I just wanted an administrative job in an interesting organisation, but it was so much more than that!
I administered our Housing Waiting List, seeing customers in reception and giving advice, I administered our Garage Waiting list, including inspecting, raising work, and doing lettings and I carried out all the fair rent registrations for the Solent area, as well as all the normal sort of admin functions you would expect – it was such a varied mix but gave me so much experience and a good foundation for my future career in housing. I soon became a Housing Assistant, getting out and about visiting customers and supporting with handovers of new schemes.
Then it was all change when a Customer Service Centre was set up in 2004 (this was a very new concept for us as a Housing Association – so much so we had an article in the local paper about it). I decided to apply for the role as a supervisor for the admin team that was being set up to do all the back-office functions within the CSC. I was successful and it was my first management role at the age of 21. Again, I was really grateful for the opportunity, it felt like quite a big responsibility at a young age because it was a brand-new team that I had to help set up and shape. We were responsible for things such as reception, all the incoming and outgoing post (before the days of Facilities), raising repairs, and various other things. We became a bit of a one stop shop for lots of staff queries too – often very random things! During this time, I was also given responsibility for managing our Housing Admin team.
It was decided to centralise our complaints service and create a Quality Assurance team responsible for complaints. I applied for the role to manage this team and was successful. As with my previous team, as it was brand new, I was able to set it up and shape it myself. I also had responsibility for the Customer Satisfaction Officer who managed our satisfaction surveys programme. I learnt a lot in this role, and it was a big step up in terms of responsibility and profile.
After my maternity leave, I applied for the role of Business Improvement Manager. I really enjoyed doing this as it focussed on all the things I’d wanted to do when I managed the team, but rarely had time to do because of the day-to-day challenges that came from complaints and people management. I was able to analyse complaints data and look at what the lessons we were learning from what customers were telling us.
As you can see, over 21 years, it’s been varied! I’ve been given some great opportunities in different roles, developed my skills and been able to become flexible and adaptable along the way. I’ve also benefited from having some great managers and a lot of what I’ve been able to achieve I need to give them credit for too. So from applying for that admin role at 18, and now turning 40 in March, I seem to have accidentally carved out a career in housing!
