Rachel is Chrome Telecom’s Operations Director. Her team works across every part of the business, looking for the places where a process, a handover or a system is costing time or money, and putting something better in place.
She also leads strategic planning and training and development at Chrome, from day-to-day skills for operational staff through to the management and leadership development programmes.
I’m the Operations Director at Chrome and I’ve been here for three years. I oversee the operations department, which touches every area of the business. That includes making the business run better day to day, improving internal processes, strategic planning, and training and development for staff, managers and leaders.
Our focus is improving how things work across the business. We look for the next step in any area, work out what’s causing a problem and put an improvement in place so it doesn’t keep happening.
Alongside that, we make sure we’re planning properly from a strategic point of view, and that everyone is developing their skills. That runs from operational staff all the way up to our management and leadership development programmes.
Very varied. Because we touch all areas of the business, one day I might be working with sales, the next with marketing, the next with technical support. What we’re looking for is anywhere the business can improve, and that changes day to day.
There’s also a lot of training going on all the time, whether that’s with operational staff or developing our managers to be the best they can be.
It varies from department to department. Sometimes it’s a customer service issue we need to get involved in. Sometimes it’s a process that’s putting a strain on people’s time and ultimately costing the business money. It’s about ironing out those issues whenever they arise.
We rely on people telling us what isn’t working. Straight, open feedback, including from new staff, matters to me. We don’t pretend we’ve got all the good ideas. If someone can see an improvement we could make, we want to hear it.
The people and the environment. It’s very different from anywhere I’ve worked before. Anyone who knows us or meets us will see quickly that it feels more like a family than a group of colleagues, and that makes it really special.
