In Your Shoes - Ashley Meston

Monday with Julie

After two relaxing weeks of family time, Julie, our Chief Compliance Officer is back at work. When we say family, we mostly mean looking after the latest addition, 6 week old Hamish the alpaca. The morning kicked off with a coffee and catch up with the team and touching base with key clients. The next few weeks are set to be busy - client visits to Arbroath, travel to meet new partners and audit season - Journeycall is in the thick of its annual PCI audit, with ISO audits for the Group kicking off next week, followed up by Cyber Essentials.

A proud milestone this week as Systex achieve PCI DSS v4 compliance for the first time ever!

By the end of August, we’ll have all of annual audit outcomes in hand, refreshed processes in place, and a clear plan of continuous improvement activities for the year ahead, supporting our commitment to operational excellence and business growth.

Tuesday with Russell

Russell had a few days off this week – our Head of Technology was doing his other job, volunteering with the Montrose Coast Guard team. They were providing water safety on behalf of the Tall Ships visit to Aberdeen Harbour. A busy few days with over 100,000 visitors per day – Russell and the team made sure everyone had a safe and pleasant visit – he even managed to get a few cheeky trips in the police speed boat!

Wednesday with Kerri

First up for Kerri our Chief Human Resources Officer was an early morning swim – 100 lengths in the bag! It’s a busy time for bid work with lots of exciting opportunities on the table, so working these to submission with the team takes up a good portion of her day – it’s a real team effort to get these over the line but so worth it when the wins come in. Kerri has also been busy supporting the internal audit work run by our Compliance team - reviewing and refreshing our Employee Handbook, policies and processes – with over 100 policies, it’s a big task. We’ve also been refreshing our building signage following an internal competition to redefine ESP, so Kerri had the chance to get the creative juices flowing working with our external partners on this – Engage Solve Partner has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?!

Thursday with Kira

We work flexibly at ESP Group and last week, Kira, our Head of Operations took the opportunity to work remotely. Normal day to day activities, but matched with beautiful weather, food and wine – definitely the best of both worlds. Kira is responsible for managing operations across both of our sites and she works closely with all departments. She leads our Support and Deputy Operations Manager teams. Achieving this, whilst being 1000 miles away from the office is no mean feat – but something Kira takes in her stride!

Her week consisted of overseeing daily department performance, attending and leading internal team meetings and hosting client calls, where we work through weekly performance, progress any actions and note any improvements required. As we have a number of clients, these calls can take up quite a bit of her week especially as we hit the end of the month.

One of the best jobs of the month for Kira this week – reviewing and announcing the winner of our monthly reward and recognition prize - £750 to each of our two top performers! Well done to Alex and Demi!!

A key responsibility of Kira’s is rolling out new features and functionality of our communications platform so time was spent planning the next phase – real attention to detail and a strong understanding of process is required to ensure this is successful.  

Kira’s now back in *not so* sunny Scotland, and back to the normality of sitting at her desk, instead of near the pool, but says she is looking forward to booking another trip asap!

Friday with Stacey

Chief Finance Officer Stacey runs a tight ship here at ESP to ensure we remain sustainable and deliver our forecasted growth. As we approach the end of our financial year there is lots happening to get us ready to close the accounts and go through our annual finance audits.   

Stacey has a few pieces of pricing to complete for the bids Kerri is overseeing and her team are making sure payroll is processed for our 450 + strong team so we all get paid come the end of the month! 

Stacey had a few days in Ireland meeting a new partner and touring their facilities. She was designated driver for the trip and expertly managed the manual gear box!

That's a wrap for Stacey, who is off on holiday, Oasis at Wembley and then on to Majorca!