WYR Newsletter 1

NEWSLETTER Would You Recommend Autumn 2016

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Work ing toge ther to mak e KC S a grea t pla ce to w o rk

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WOULD YOU RECOMMEND

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In June we gave everyone the opportunity to come and find out what changes the Would You Recommend group has championed at KCS. We also asked you to let us know anything else that you think we could try and improve. We were really impressed with the large number of our colleagues from all departments that attended.

If you would like to join us then please email amy.churchman@kcs4education.co.uk and she will send you a invite to our up and coming meetings.

WORKING GROUPS We have combined all of the key issues raised and as a group we will be discussing how to move forward with these in our next meeting. We also have smaller working groups, headed up by KCS staff who come together to work on specific issues.

Victoria Stroud

TRAINING

Tarryn Kerr

REWARD & INCENTIVES

Clare Oliver-Jones

COMMUNICATION

Amy Churchman

CAREER PROGRESSION

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ACHIEVEMENTS

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• There is a Would You Recommend (WYR) noticeboard in the corridor outside the staffroom where everyone can keep up to date with the progress of the WYR group.

• A representative from the WYR group will present updates in the huddle.

• A “goodies” cupboard is being created to reward staff who have done something particularly well.

• There is now more of an emphasis on training opportunities for staff and there are now two new trainee supervisors in the Sales Office. A training questionnaire for all staff will be circulated and there will be people plans which will include training requirements and opportunities for internal and external training programmes for staff.

• There are computers in the staffroom for non office based staff to use to access their emails.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Staff are being actively encouraged to shadow colleagues in other departments so that they can learn more about what other jobs at KCS entail.

• All long serving staff at KCS will be offered a Commercial Service induction.

• KCS will have their own Christmas party.

• John Burr is currently reviewing the salary and rewards package.

• KCS has annual MD awards to reward employees who go the extra mile.

• There are now benches outside for staff to use during their leisure time.

• All staff can now receive discounted rates at Larkfield Leisure Centre.

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2 STAFF & 2KENT

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The Connect2Staff Education team are holding teacher open days, the next one is planned for the 1st September at Abbey Wood Road. Giving candidates the opportunity to speak with specialist consultants; meet other teaching professionals and register for work in September. Those that wish to attend should call or email Lucy Hubbard – 01622 237016; lucy.hubbard@connect2staff.co.uk Schools are also rewarded for their loyalty – for each recruit through Connect2Staff Education, schools receive one raffle ticket each day for every supply teacher they use. The more they use us, the higher chance of winning a £50 love2shop voucher!

Connect2Staff have recently launched a Nursery and Early Years recruitment desk, sourcing Qualified Level 2 & 3 Nursery Assistants. They are also offering a Recommend a Friend referral of £100 – talk to Jo McLellan for further information – 01622 236936; joanne.mclellan@connect2kent.co.uk Did you know we also supply a translation and interpreting service to support people in the community who are deaf, hard of hearing or whose first language is not English and cannot communicate effectively in English. For more details contact the team on 01622 236884; interpreter.bookings@connect2kent.co.uk

LASER AND LUMINA In June the Kent Digital Awards were held at Brands Hatch and Lumina Energy won the Gold Award for Best Business to Business website! This was a fantastic achievement for all involved with the project.

Lumina have also attended the North East B2B (Business to Business) exhibition which was held at Buckmore Park.

It was a great event with lots of networking opportunities and they even ran a compettion to encourage conversations with the delegates.

There has recently been an editorial feature about Lumina in the Birmingham Business Post and this was followed up by a successful mailing campaign. There will be another editorial released in September/October this year which will be featured in the James Cann Small Business Magazine.

LASER has been busy and recently launched their GEMSII system. This is a new version of their own in house bespoke energy management system.

In November they will be exhibiting at the Edukent event at Detling alongside the other Commercial Services divisions, they will be providing a greater awareness of the full range of services that Commercial Services can provide for its customers.

DIRECT SERVICES Despite the period of change there has been plenty going on throughout the division. In August, the division welcomed their new interim Divisional Director, Michael Butler, who will be managing all of the businesses in Direct Services.

In May, Commercial Services welcomed Head of Business Improvement Claire Jenden. Claire’s first project was to conduct a full review of the Direct Service businesses and also to lead on a new project for Direct Services, taking on KCC’s pothole programme. With the programme now fully up and running the pothole teams are out repairing and patching Kent’s roads. A mobile App has been developed for the team by CSIT. This allows the team to quickly respond to client requirements and very much contributed to the successful ‘go live’ of the project.

Landscape Services, Inspection Services and CTS Fleet have all conducted their annual customer care surveys with fantastic feedback all round. CS Waste Management has also been involved in a customer satisfaction survey where both sites achieved outstanding marks for a range of criteria including site cleanliness, visibility of staff, safety, politeness, knowledge, presentation and helpfulness.

CTS Fleet have gone national this year, after having their first UK wide advertisement printed in the Transport Managers Information Pack. They have also been pushing hard with a new affinity scheme after partnering up with leading vehicle leasing supplier ALD Automotive. The scheme was first launched into Commercial Services and the team are currently in talks with KCC about pushing this out to all KCC staff too – watch this space!

Throughout the year there have been plenty of awards and accreditations which highlight the fantastic work the teams are doing. Inspection Services’ PAT team were recently awarded NICEIC certification after undergoing a rigorous assessment process. Landscape Services has just been recognised as successful in the pursuit of ISO14001 accreditation. Some staff from CTS Engineering have successfully completed IOSH Managing Safely courses, some Landscapes Services’ staff have completed IOSH Managing Environmental Responsibilities courses and some of our Inspection Services’ engineers have successfully passed cross training exams to become multi-skilled in both FEMS and PEAT. During the year Direct Services has enjoyed a greater presence at business events, including the Invicta Chamber of Commerce B2B shows, Kent Vision Live and will attending the South East Business Show in September.

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KCS DRIVER

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A U RECO

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Everyone who works at KCS knows that our drivers are one of our most valued assets as they are the smiling faces that our customers see on a daily basis. In our first edition of the WYR newsletter, we thought it would be good to hear what an average day in the life of a KCS driver, Wayne Savoury, looks like.

"My day starts early in the morning and the first thing that I have to do when I walk into the

office is to make sure that all of the drivers get out of the yard in the vans. Once all of the drivers have started driving their routes for the day, I go out of the yard to my delivery area of Maidstone and deliver to my customers. I know most of my customers really well, so I know where they store their stock in the school. Often I will have access to gate codes and swipes to get around the schools, this enables me to deliver the boxes to the places that are most convenient for our customers. This means that the staff don't have to go looking for their orders and carry heavy boxes around, of which they are all very grateful, and this helps us to develop relationships built upon trust.

When I leave the school I then continue my round delivering parcels that have been routed for me by location. On occasion if I find that I have another parcel left in the van for a school I have already visited I will just phone the school and let them know. If I have time I return and drop it off at the end of the day but many are happy to wait until the following day for the parcel.

My day usually involves driving and delivering for roughly seven hours, however this can vary depending on the time of the year. During our busy period I might see 60 schools in a day and when we are quiet maybe 40. On a quieter day I will end up going further afield, so although my main delivery area is Maidstone, during the school holidays when it is quiet I will be travelling to areas including Sittingboure and Medway. So although I make less calls I cover a wider area. This is a nice change and it is good because I deliver into areas where I have been before so these customers remember me.

My favourite part of my job is interacting with the customers. I like meeting the customers and building up relationships with them, lots of our customers trust us at KCS and know we are reliable. We often have short conversations and really get to know our customers. I think that their favourite thing about KCS drivers is that we are always happy to see them and we are always helpful doing what we can to make their lives easier.

THANK YOU TO OUR KCS DRIVERS FOR THEIR CONTINUED HARDWORK!

DID YOU KNOW? KCS has introduced a nominate your driver initiative. This is a great way for our customers to tell us why they love our drivers and what things they have done to go the extra mile!

This is running until Friday 30th September and then the results will be announced by the management team in early October. 1st Prize for the winner with the most significant feedback or highest volume of nominations will be ÂŁ60 in shopping vouchers. 2nd Prize for the runner up will be ÂŁ40 in shopping vouchers. Good luck to all our drivers and keep up the great work!

MEET SALLY Why did you want to work for KCS? I wanted to work for KCS because when I first joined Commercial Services I was asked to conduct a review of KCS and look at the Sales Office. This was because after the very first Would You Recommend there was a lot of concerns coming from the Sales Office. Having spent lots of time with the staff in the sales office and then the other departments within KCS I absolutely fell in love with the people here. From the discussions that I had with the staff at KCS it was clear to see how comitted everyone is to working here and dedicated to making KCS better no matter what it takes.

KCS is an amazing place and I am excited about the potential the business has, we currently have a small market share and I believe that by just continuing to do the fantastic work that we do but in different geographical locations we can grow significantly larger than we are now. I had a meeting with John Burr six months ago and I told him that given the choice I would like to run KCS, it turns out six months down the line I have been lucky enough for this to be the opportunity I have been given.

What is your vision for KCS moving forward?

My vision is that at KCS we continue to be seen as experts in education whilst also broadening our horizons. The things that we do at KCS should not be limited to just education. By staying within the public sector there are still other public sector organisations that we can share our knowledge with and sell our products to. If we were to look at developing our product range this would also give us a much bigger market share and potential for growing the business.

However, I do not think that at this point we should spend lots of time diversifying our business because there is so much more that we can do with the knowledge and skills we already have. For example the expertise that we have in education particularly for primary schools we do not always use to approach other educational establishments such as higher education or private education. All these establishments have different needs but the principles and basics that they require are the same. If we take our furniture portfolio as an example at the moment we supply to schools, however all public sector offices can utilise these products too. So I would like to see us do exactly what we are doing now but to a far wider audience.

We currently hold just under 3% of the education market share and I would like to see KCS grow and acheive a far larger market share. At least within the next two years I would like to work towards doubling our share. I think that our new website is definately the way to achieve this. A digital approach to selling allows us to take on extra volumes of sales without us having to increase the cost of employing more people to input orders in the Sales Office. It is important that we support and nuture our customers to help the schools move over to a digital ordering process rather than staying with a manual one.

Where have you worked in the past? What was your background?

Before working at KCS I worked for a company called Descision Insight Information Group. They are an online business who supply searches relating to moving home to solicitors, this could include water and land registry searches and liasing with the local authorities and government bodies. I worked as the Quality and Service Director and was responsible for looking after about 92 staff. This included office based staff including an inbound sales team, telesales team, support team, manual processing team and also a field based team of 26 staff who would go into the local authority land charge offices and prepare reports if and when required. In addition to this I was also responsible for offices in Scotland and Ireland and managing the overall service including health & safety, legal and coaching members of the HR team.

Before that I worked as a consultant and helped set up a couple of new businesses, one of which is a business to business phone company and has now been sold to one of the major mobile phone companies. This involved literally sitting down with three men who had some money and with note pads and pens we divised how to set up the business. I helped to figure out everything from design to how to recruit someone. When I left I had recruited various staff for them to get the business started.

Before that I worked for General Electric for ten years and took on various roles. This included working as the Operations Director for 8 of their transport businesses which had 120 branches across the UK with just under 500 staff. We hired out trucks, tankers and big articulated trailers and my job was to make sure that it all kept running. I

introdued a 24 hour break down service which was similar to the AA and RAC which was based in Nuneaten. So it meant that if you had a hire vehicle and it broke down you were able to phone us 24 hours a day. It was during this time that I also qualified as a black belt in Six Sigma. For two years I worked solely on Six Sigma and that involves looking at things at a process level and seeing how they can be streamlined and improved. I led three integrations for them and my role was to bring the businesses together and to work out how best to enable them to work as one business. My final project involved taking apart two businesses and seperating them.

Before these roles I worked in various positions including sales and credit control. I do not have formal qualifications as I did not go onto further education. I left school wtih 4 CSEs and 2 O levels and actually started my career working in a petrol station. What really motivated me was when I looked at people who had degree level educations and I wanted to prove that I could be in the same jobs that they did even with my background. My career has been really diverse and I needed to work in lots of different roles so that I developed a wide skills set and experience to get the job that I wanted. Working at KCS in this role is my dream job and right now I am where I always wanted to be.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not at work?

Since I have started working at KCS I have not had lots of free time. But I recently got a new puppy and I love spending time with him. I am also an enthsuiastic gardener, I love planning what to do in it and then getting on and doing it. My garden is my masterpiece! I have only lived in Kent a year and before this I lived in Heathrow, but not at the airport! I planned never to move but about six years ago when I joined Decision Insight I was travelling everyday from Heathrow to Kings Hill and after doing that for five years I decided to move to Kent. My mum lived nearby and I had always thought when she got older she would come and live with me. So my mum retired and we brought a brand new house down here in Kent. I have never lived in a brand new house before and it scared me to death paying a deposit on a piece of mud it didn't even have a stick with my name in!

I love the farmers markets down here in Kent and at home we are having a go at growing our own vegetables. My mum has been having a go at growing her own but I just love to go to the markets. I am also an absolute film nutter.

It doesn't matter what genre of film I love to watch them all. I especially love watching things like Special Victims and Criminal Minds. Other than that I am a very organised person and I think everything has a place so it should be in it!

So I do spend a lot of my time making things organised and I enjoy doing that. I am also a mentor to two Commercial Services staff who work in Energy and Credit Control and I spend a bit of my time when I am at home thinking about how I can support them and equally how we can develop Commercial Services.

ASK SALLY

Is there something that you would like to know about Sally?

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Email your questions to jade.sekmen@kcs4education.co.uk

MANAGING DIRECTOR NOMINATIONS

Dont forget to nominate your colleagues and the teams that you think are deserving of winning the MD Awards to reward their exceptional achievements! The catagories are Excellence, Performance & Customer Service.

Nomination forms are avaliable from your Line Manager.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

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WEDDING BELLS Stefanie Manley, née Tyler, got married on 6th August. Congratulations to her and her new husband and from everyone at KCS we wish you many years of hapiness together!

A big thank you to Artur Gajewski for stepping in at the last minute as a stand in photographer when Stef's original photographer cancelled 9 days before the wedding!

BABY NEWS Stuart Tasker and his partner Laura's daughter Darcie was born on 7th August weighing 7lb 8oz.

Kayleigh Risbridger and Dave Fletcher's daughter Charlotte was born on 20th April weighing 5lb 12oz.

Congratulations to everyone on their bundles of joy!!

Darcie Tasker

If you have any news you want to share in the next newsletter i.e. new babies, weddings or charity events then please email full details and photos to: jade.sekmen@kcs4education.co.uk