Digital Systems Transformation Partner – Mel’s story

Giving back to Dorothy House

My relationship with Dorothy House began when I was 20 and my dad died under their care. When I was about 25 I wanted to do something to give back. So, I used to come up on a Sunday as a volunteer and cook for the people that were staying in IPU, or were visiting as a day patient. I did that for a couple of years but ended up having to work Sundays and it just didn't fit in with my lifestyle.

So then fast forward to 10 years ago, I was 37 and working down in Devon but wanted to come back to Bath. I saw a job advertised for Retail Area Manager and I thought ‘I could do that!’ as I love charity shops and have a background in Retail. I got the job and when I started I looked after 11 shops. I went all the way up to Malmesbury, across to Devizes, over to Bradford on Avon and right down to Salisbury.

I really enjoyed it and made some really good friends and started to understand how Dorothy House worked. But I’m a chatterbox, so I missed the company of people as I spent a lot of time driving. A job came up in the office as Retail Office Manager, essentially team leader. At the time the admin tasks were quite labour intensive but because I was used to working with big spreadsheets I was able to manipulate figures quite quickly, vastly speeding up the process.

A new start

After having a year off to have my eldest child, Retail had a bit of a restructure and my part time availability didn’t quite fit. However, my colleagues suggested my skills and knowledge would be best suited to the Information Management Team team because of my previous work with data and spreadsheets. My first project was to make sure all the tills were PCI compliant and get new contactless card readers set up, and I also supported with the new HR system, iTrent. Since coming back from maternity leave after having my second child, I have also supported with configuring the new PDR system on iTrent, which was once all paper-based, as well as the set-up of the volunteer Assemble system.

So I've gone from going round shops putting some more dresses out here and rearrange shop floors there, to helping configure huge tech systems and doing massive data imports as Digital Systems Transformation Partner. It's been a big change.

I have also taken on a Prince 2 Foundation course and I’ve done lots of in-house training for personal development, such as in SQL and Power BI dashboard. I’m also looking forward to Agile and Scrum training.  Working with Saiyada this year has really helped me hone some leadership skills.

All-round support and so much fun!

Dorothy House has been very supportive. Not just from a development point of view, but particularly when I had children. I was able to go part time and they've been very flexible when I’ve needed that. They're very good at supporting you to find your feet. They’ll push you in the right direction to reach your potential.

There are loads of opportunities to get involved. I’ve done so many things over the years. I’ve walked across hot coals, run the Bath Half marathon and done plenty of bucket shaking! I dressed up as a crab on social media last year! It's nice that you can get involved if you want to. Because it's close to my heart as DH looked after my dad, I will always be likely to help, long after I have stopped working here. The more you talk to people at Dorothy House, the more their passion rubs off on you. There’s so much happening here.