Sonia Ranby
Change Readiness Manager
Operations
Started at StepChange in 2014

My average day...

I split my time between the office and home. I like to say ‘hi’ to my team as soon as I log on, or face to face if we’ve arranged to come into the office together. It’s important for me to have a routine when working from home, so I start the day by ‘mucking out’ my horses, then come home, have breakfast and get ready for work. I attend quite a lot of meetings so I always make time before and in between them to review emails and pick up on any actions / updates etc.

My first meeting today is with my team – we have a weekly one hour catch-up with a set agenda to review the week ahead. I update the team on any Charity wide updates and then we go ‘round the table’ to give an update on what we are all working on. We are responsible for the User Acceptance Testing for all of Operations so there are a lot of processes and technical elements to cover, whilst making sure we are aligned with the overall release plan.

After this I have a set 10am meeting with Technology Services to discuss any upcoming releases and to make sure we’re working collaboratively to deliver them on time. After this, it’s straight into another meeting with my peers to discuss how we can offer consistent support to our stakeholders and to review any service improvements that would help the Charity operate more effectively.

When I’m in the office I usually pop out for lunch with a colleague for a catch-up, or, when I’m at home I take the opportunity to take the dogs for a walk and do some household chores.

Another frequent piece of work is writing Operational Impact Assessments for projects that I’m working on. This is key because we need to understand any impacts, benefits and risks of any change, be it system, process or people related.

How did I get here?

Since joining the charity in 2014 I’ve had the opportunity to work in several roles. I joined s an Operations Development Manager, which involved writing Business Requirement documents and looking at continuous improvement with a team of seven.

I then obtained the role of Plan Activations Manager, being responsible for a service area of 120 colleagues. Then, in 2017 I was offered a secondment to a large-scale transformation project. Following this, I secured the position of Operational Risk Manager where I was accountable for the Quality Monitoring Team.

As part of an Operational re-design, I secured my new exciting position in Change Readiness. As I’ve said, I love Operations and I feel this role is another piece to the jig-saw of me being an all-rounded Operational Manager.

I am busy with...

My projects revolve around understanding the operational impacts and effectiveness across the operations directorate.

Each day is varied. Tomorrow I’m attending a meeting with Learning and Development Manager to understand the training plan for the roll out of some new regulatory requirements. After this I have a late Project Team meeting with one of our technical suppliers to review the implementation plan of a new system.

Things move quickly in change, and you need to be resilient and agile to keep up with the pace. There’s no time to get bored as there’s always something exciting in the pipeline.

I have a fantastic team that are very passionate and enthusiastic in everything they do – so managing my team keeps me very busy and motivated too.

I love it here because...

Put simply, it’s the people. There’s a fantastic culture of everyone wanting to do the right thing for our clients and help transform their lives. I have a brilliant relationship with my line manager who is extremely supportive and encourages me to lead on my own personal development. I also really love the Westfield Health Plan, which allows me to claim back for dental or optician appointments etc and that I can purchase additional annual leave.