Our Fantastic Apprentices

"We think Millie Thompson (aka The Milster) is amazing!!

Millie has been an indispensable member of the Graduate Accommodation Team. At the start of lock down Mille was only armed with an Ipad and a mobile phone. Therefore working with limited access to software packages and not being able to see shared drives was pretty hard going. Millie, cracked on, kept a cool head and eventually, she got a laptop. 

Whilst other departments were fully closed, Graduate Accommodation, remained open, tenants were still in residence and still had urgent maintenance requests that needed attending to. In addition Graduate Accommodation like other departments lost staff due to shielding and furlough, so Millie and the remaining members of the Graduate Accommodation team were required to bridge the gaps, picking up additional roles and responsibilities. Millie has really upped her game during lockdown, she steps in, takes ownership and is using her initiative. Millie is always willing to help. Her daily roles consists of picking up maintenance requests from the tenants via the help desk, raising orders and daily correspondence with Site Assistants and Contractors to ensure, works are completed in safe timely fashion.  On top of all of this, she’s trying to learn CAD from her kitchen table as her first module for her HNC. Myself and the Graduate Accommodation Team, think she is amazing."

   - Shelly Rand, Graduate Accommodation Clerk of Works 

"Millie has been an absolute star, going from working in the office and out on site to making things happen from her kitchen table.  The GA team have experienced a period of great uncertainty (as has the rest of the world), and changes in staffing and staff capacity.  Millie has really stepped up to take on additional responsibility and help out wherever she can.

She has been dealing directly with tenants on their maintenance issues, and making sure that precautionary measures are taken to allow work to take place safely.  The GA Office are really grateful for Millie’s assistance, she is a great asset to the team. "

   -  Sara Leniec, Graduate Accommodation Manager

What is your job role and Apprenticeship? How long have you been in it?

It’s been an adjustment since lockdown due to a lack of technology and also bringing in new and important procedures that all of our team need to adhere to.

Are you enjoying your new set up? Have there been many challenges?

So far, working from home has proved challenging but working as a team has always made it successful!

How has your Apprenticeship training changed?

All of my teaching has moved to webinars via google hangout. This has been difficult for me as I started mid lockdown meaning I have had to adapt to learning and working remotely.

What are you looking forward to most when things return to (the new) normal?

I’m looking forward to going back to the office and seeing my team. My job often requires me to go out to our sites which is something I enjoy about my apprenticeship.

Freya Cooke, Engineering Science

"When the lockdown began and our manager told us we all had to start working from home I was a bit worried as I had never had to do anything like this before. Luckily I have a desk in my room so I was able to bring my monitor, laptop, keyboard and mouse home, so I could keep things as normal as possible. At first it was quite a big change and a shock as our office was still very paper based. We quickly had to change the way we were working and have documents such as invoices and credit notes saved electronically on the shared drive so that we could all see them. As I work in a finance department I am quite lucky as most of the work I do is online and can be done from my home, the only real difference is not seeing my colleagues every day. Microsoft Teams has been a big help during this lockdown, being able to quickly ask my colleagues a question or have Team video calls to catch up. Teams has also enabled me to undertake some training that I would usually have to complete in a classroom with our training team. This was really useful as I needed to complete some training so I can help assist with journaling the credit card costs.

Although at first I wasn’t keen about working at home I think it has really helped me to become more organised, and appreciate the help I receive from everyone in my office.

I think that when things go back to normal it will be a ‘new normal’. We have discovered many things during this lockdown and have found ways of overcoming challenges that we never thought we would be able to do."

     - Freya Cooke, Apprentice Finance Assistant

Oscar Cherrill, Finance Division

"My experience working from home at central finance has been quite varied.

On one side I am continuing work as part of the payments team for two days of the week, where we have had to adapt to the constraints of remote working. Before lockdown happened, we relied heavily on using physical copies of everything, from receiving post to filing away documents. In the absence of this we have had to build a system of working that uses the shared drive to simulate our day-to-day roles, while allowing us to work seamlessly together as a fairly large team. While the quantity of work may have decreased over time, the challenge of approaching this new style of work has made many jobs take a lot longer.

On the other hand, I have been taking part in testing with the FSSC on the ‘Upgrade to SplashBI Reporting’ project for two days a week. In contrast this work is purely online, the lockdown has had no effect on the difficulty of work. The testing involves working alongside and communicating with only a handful of people, a lot of the time I am also working independently. Additionally, the total workload has been completely unaffected by Covid-19, the project has the same timeframe as before."