Kate's story

After graduating from university, like many of my fellow students, I didn’t have a clear vision of what I wanted to do with my career. I had been to a few career fairs, which mainly consisted of large corporate firms that didn’t appeal to me. I knew I wanted to work within the third sector, but wasn’t sure of what opportunities were available to me. I decided to apply for the CharityWorks graduate scheme, where I found a position at Look Ahead for Customer Experience Administrator based at their head office. I successfully applied and joined the organisation in October 2018.

My role consisted of general admin and reporting for the Customer Experience team and supporting the co-ordination of our volunteering programmes. This was my very first full time office role so there was a lot to learn and take in, but I was given a lot of support from my colleagues which helped. What I noticed straight away was that there is a genuinely warm and welcoming culture here, one that I don’t think you’ll find in other sectors. Staff share the same core values and work together to give our customers the best support possible.

After a year in this role, there was a re-structure within the organisation and the position of Senior Co-production Officer was created. I was encouraged by my manager to apply for this position, which again highlights the support you receive from managers at Look Ahead to progress. In this role, you need to work with customers directly and they even had a group of customers taking part in various stages of the interview process. This showed me just how much Look Ahead involves customers with shaping the work we do, using their life experiences to help us create and even implement services.

"I strongly believe that having an open partnership with our customers helps us to do a better job. Their real-life experiences and perspectives are so much more informative than any statistics or data."

I strongly believe that having an open partnership with our customers helps us to do a better job. They have expertise and insight that staff do not, so it’s important that we work together. Their real-life experiences and perspectives are so much more informative than any statistics or data.

One of my favourite parts of my role now is co-producing our Experts by Experience (EBE) training programme with customers and staff with lived experience. These programmes give our staff insight into a range of topics that affect our customers, taught by people with first-hand experience. We recently launched an EBE course on mental health, which is taught by one of our support workers, and was drive by customer input at every step of the process. Hearing their stories is so inspiring and they have taught me so much.  It has impacted me hugely and has definitely changed the way that I see things.

My experience at Look Ahead has shown me that there are so many ways you can make a difference. There are opportunities within our Central Service teams that I never knew were possible, and the team around you will encourage your development and make you feel at home here.