Foreword by the Chief Executive

Foreword

Kirsty Hunter | Chief Executive

Welcome to our annual report for 2019-20. It’s been another fantastic and action-packed year across every area of ANGUSalive. I’d like to say a big thank you first and foremost to my colleagues, the Board of Directors and the many volunteers who continue to work tirelessly to help bring our vision of ‘changing lives by inspiring healthy, active and creative lifestyle choices’ to life. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to deliver the range and quality of culture, sport and leisure services, events and activities that we are able to provide every year. To help ensure we are a sustainable, adaptable organisation and fit for purpose, 2019-20 saw the completion of our organisational review and the creation of a new structure across the charity. New roles were created to strengthen our programming, operations and customer service. In order to support our colleagues with this transition as well as improve their knowledge and skills, we ran a variety of training and development sessions working with many partners, including Angus Council, the NHS, Macmillan Cancer Support, Scottish Disability Sport and Police Scotland. Courses targeted a variety of areas where an opportunity to enhance our customer offering had been identified and covered, for example, Disability Inclusion & Autism Awareness, Violence & Aggression training, and Deaf & British Sign Language training. We helped improve services for people living with Parkinson’s Disease and cancer as well as learning ways to improve employees and members’ mental health.

In partnership with Alliance Leisure, we also delivered customer service training to help everyone working in our sports facility teams provide excellent customer service the ‘ANGUSalive way’. This investment in our people is also supported by improvements in digital services – to benefit both employees and customers. 2019-20 saw several digital developments including a new workforce management system; a Board Intelligence platform; the roll out of Windows 10 as well as a new website enabling, amongst many functions, the online booking of fitness classes. These digital improvements allowed us to streamline and automate business processes, create efficiencies and improve the customer experience. Despite the challenges ahead, the changes we’ve implemented to our structure, the investment made in our Renewal & Repair Fund and contributions to our Reserves since 2015, will stand us in good stead for the future. I’m looking forward to working with Dundee and Angus College to provide leadership training to our new Leadership Team; undertake further enhancements in digital with the roll out of a mobile app as well as the introduction of a new customer complaints system. The road ahead may be bumpy with additional challenges to overcome due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Our new normal will take time to emerge but I remain optimistic that whilst the future will almost certainly look different we can help to shape it. I am also confident our colleagues, our Board of Directors as well as our many partners and the local community, will continue to provide us with their dedication and support in the years ahead for the benefit of Angus.