This is Session three of a three part workshop series.

We spoke to Saghar Missaghian-Cully, Managing Director at North West London Pathology, about her career and the experiences she has had managing large projects for the NHS. 

Saghar’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

Saghar’s Route to Leadership  

Having completed a Applied Human Biology degree, Saghar fell into biomedical science almost by accident after her Mother became ill after a cancer diagnosis. 

“While she was in the hospital, I was spending a lot of time in the hospital with her and people would come and go, doctors and oncologists included, and they would ask what I'm doing and where I want to go. At the start of my Mum being in the hospital, I was told there was a trainee biomedical scientist position coming up in Cytology by one of the oncologists. I didn’t get the job as others had applied with a more relevant degree and I would need a top-up. 

Six months later, Saghar’s Mother passed away and Saghar applied for a job in pathology in the Histology department at the hospital. 

“I wanted to stick around, I didn’t want my dad to be on his own. Rather than going back to London, I joined the trainee process and gets the wheels rolling on becoming a state registered biomedical scientist.” 

As part of that, Saghar needed to do a biomedical science top-up. So, while working, Saghar worked towards a master's degree in biomedical science. From there Saghar started work in that District General, but Saghar wanted to experience more and that meant applying for senior roles that were few and far between in Saghar’s District General.  

After some years of experience and waiting for the right opportunity, a position came up that would have Saghar moving back to London to take up a position as a Senior Biomedical Scientist and Training and Development Manager in a Teaching Hospital. 

“Training was one of the areas that I was quite interested in as well. So we had lots of trainees coming through because it was a big teaching hospital. And I was quite active with the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS), was the Chair for IBMS London Region and signed up to become an external assessor.. So that was really my first, I guess, a bit of activity that was not purely laboratory science-related, I was doing something which was managing portfolios for trainees and would go around doing assessments for other trainees at different hospitals.” 

After a restructuring at the hospital, she was working at, A number of new roles became available – one of which was a Quality and Governance Manager.  

“I was approached by the Head of Pathology, who came to me and said, You know, we've got this role, in an area that has not done well in assessments s with external bodies. And you know, you've got a lot of experience in this speciality. And you've done lots of training Do you think you'd like to apply? And I said, Well, I haven’t got a lot of experience in quality and governance. But actually, I thought, why not?” 

Diversifying Saghar’s portfolio of experiences, this role led her on to take new operational management opportunities that expanded her learning. Years and a few departmental management roles and divisional management roles later, Saghar went for her first MD role for a Joint Venture pathology in London, followed by a regional role at NHSI now an MD for North West London Pathology.    

“The opportunities are there, but actually taking those opportunities and sometimes being guided towards them, you know, by someone saying, why don't you do that? Is what it sometimes takes.” 

What is Pathology? 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the word ‘pathology’ has been a mainstay in the public zeitgeist. But what exactly is pathology?  

Essentially, pathology is the study of disease, and that is then split and broken down into disciplines. Pathology underpins every aspect of patient care, from diagnostic testing and treatment advice to using cutting-edge genetic technologies and preventing disease. 

“I like to describe pathology as the heart of healthcare because, without it, there’s a huge amount of knowledge and activity that can’t take place.” 

During the last decade, pathology services in England have undergone profound changes. In particular, the Carter review was published in 2006 and it highlighted the importance of pathology services, with an estimated 70–80% of all healthcare decisions affecting diagnosis or treatment being influenced by laboratory medicine results. 

"Most people have touched pathology in some way if they've ever accessed their GP or been to the hospital. So, we cover a whole range of specialties from Blood Sciences, cellular and tissue sciences to infectious diseases. The latter is where Virology sits which has been front and centre in the pandemic.” 

North West London Pathology (NWLP) 

Traditionally, pathology is a department within a hospital. In 2017, the NHS committed to the consolidation of pathology services in England by proposing 29 networks – based off of analysis showing unwarranted variation in how NHS pathology services are delivered to patients because of how they are organised. 

NWLP was formed by three trusts in northwest London coming together to create a joint venture.  

“They created an all-NHS joint venture pathology organisation, it is wholly owned by the three trusts. we are not a separate legal entity, we're very much hosted by one of the trusts and we are based and use the facilities of all seven trusts hospital sites on which we operate.” 

I Want to Set an Example for my Daughter 

Saghar, who has always had a passion and drive for her work, wasn’t going to slow down when she had her children. 

“I have lots of friends who have studied for many years and made the decision to reduce their hours. For me, that was never an option. It wasn’t something I would consider – it's not in my nature.” 

Being out there, working hard and achieving her goals was exactly the kind of example Saghar wanted to set to her daughter, who continued to benefit from the love of the family around her.  

“I have a son and a daughter, and I especially wanted to be the example for my daughter to show her that you can have a career and you can be a caring mother as well. Of course, it was hard going back and leaving them when they're little and putting them in full time childcare.”  

Commuting to London, Saghar was often leaving before her children were out of bed and coming back when they were tucked in. This was an incredibly difficult time for Saghar, but one she looks back on without regret because of the example she set for her daughter.  

“You are not human if sometimes you don’t feel guilty about it but I think it's good for her to see that her Mum works hard. She sometimes has lovely conversations with me about what I do and the importance of how it helps people.'” 

 

You Can’t Do it Alone 

For those who are looking to follow in Saghar’s footsteps, she has this advice: 

“It can be a very lonely place when you progress to a higher position. There are times that you have nobody else to talk to. But I think what you have to do is to surround yourself with good people that you trust. Creating the team that you trust and those that hold the same values related to the organisation that you work within would be the advice I would give anybody, and that could be at any level in any organisation, the people that you surround yourself with need to work as a single unit.” 

Speakers

Heidi Poole – Head of IM&T at University Hospital of North Midlands Charlotte English - Senior Improvement Lead at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Andrew Raynes – CIO at Royal Papworth Samantha Wood - Business Manager at Leicestershire Mental Health Trust

David McClay - CIO at Royal United Bath University Hospital Trust

Wendy Marshall - Programme Lead at South Central West CSU

Andrew Pope - IT Director at Royal Brompton Hospital

Colleen’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

With an educational background in Psychology and Criminology, Colleen started her career working with young offenders, before accepting a role with the police as a criminal intelligence analyst to follow her interest in offender profiling. Colleen then joined the NHS as a junior analyst, where she worked up through the analyst career path ladder and, after 6 years of leading the analytical and BI function, Colleen decided she needed to step outside of her comfort zone. 

“I really wanted to diversify and add some more interest to my CV.” 

Colleen got the opportunity to do just that when she moved into her Head of Service Delivery role. As those who have made a move from a role they’ve stayed in for quite some time, this isn’t easy.  

“I had worked in business intelligence for 15 years. I was an expert, and I was very confident in my abilities. But I knew that unless I diversified my options would be limited, I really had to think about what I wanted long term and realised I needed to broaden my experience to get that real breadth of knowledge that I admire in the leaders that have inspired me." 

I Never Wore A Dress to Meetings 

To get to where she’s wanted to be, Colleen has had to stick her head above the parapet many a time. As a result, Colleen has often found herself as the minority in many of the meetings she’s attended. A familiar situation for many of the people who have contributed to this series, we’re often all surprised by the length we go to, often subconsciously, to present ourselves in a certain way.  

“My husband commented on the fact I never wore a dress or skirt to work. . I always wore trousers and I wonder if subconsciously that was part of how I wanted to present myself.

“A lot of myths have been dispelled – like you have to work exactly 9-5, or you have to be able to travel if you want a leadership role. But now we’re seeing children running around in the background and the work is still getting done. I’m hoping this will level the playing field a bit more.” 

Imposter Syndrome Proves You’re on the Right Track 

One of the greatest barriers to moving outside your comfort zone is the fear that you’re an imposter, that you’re not worthy, that you couldn’t possibly be qualified to do whatever you’re aiming to do. It’s a fear that strikes many of us: impostor syndrome. 

For Colleen, it’s a feeling that everyone feels at some point in their life. A feeling that can be crippling if left unchecked. 

“Because it can be crippling if you're not careful. Really you are self-sabotaging , because you will be the only person thinking those thoughts about youand you can really sabotage your own success if you are unable to challenge your own negative thought processes.” 

But rather than viewing Imposter Syndrome as something to be hidden away or avoided entirely, Colleen believes that Imposter Syndrome has always been a positive indication that she has made the right decision.  

"I always think if I'm in a room of people that make me feel like that, then I'm in the right room. If you are always in your comfort zone, then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough, take it as  an opportunity to learn from other people and grow, rather than as something negative.” 

But acknowledging the feelings as being a sign of progress won’t always help you get over the symptoms. For that, Colleen turns to her support network.  

“A trusted network can help you challenge negative thoughts as well as pointing out blind spots in your own unconsciously biased thinking. I have a strong peer network, it is important to find and build your network as these people are invaluable."

Push Yourself 

For those looking to follow in Colleen’s footsteps and move towards a leadership position, Colleen has this advice:  

“Push yourself out of your comfort zone. The kind of portfolios you’re going to be managing at a senior level is dynamic and always changing. Ask for opportunities to broaden your remit I am always open to requests if someone asks to come and listen in on a meeting, or help out on a project – but these opportunities never land in your lap. You have to seek them out and push on the doors to get them.” 

Vicky’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Growing up on Teesside, Vicky went to Leeds University to study neuroscience and joined the NHS on the Graduate Management scheme in 2006. Starting with operational acute hospital management , Vicky went from a number of different roles including Business Management in Leeds, to managing the cancer services in Bradford where she was responsible for collection and reporting on cancer waiting times, and managing access to services, followed by operational management of elderly and intermediate care services at the same trust. 

When Vicky and her Husband had their little boy, Vicky had time to reflect on the work she was doing in an acute setting and its demands. With a need for increased job flexibility in mind, Vicky applied for a job as Head of Business Intelligence in Specialised Commisioning at NHS England in the North region and was successful.  

In what was her first move into BI, Vicky was very successful. Spending five years as the Head of BI in the North before moving into the National Specialised Commisioning Team as the Deputy Director of Information and Intelligence.  

Data and Curiosity  

Vicky had her heart set on being an Acute Operational Manager for a long time and the career moves she made supported her move up that ladder. That was until she reassessed her priorities and interests and found that she had always held a passion for data and analytics.  

“I was always very interested in analytics from an end user perspective. As a manager, I wanted to analyse data about my service. I found myself really being drawn into analysis of that raw data to support service development. 

As data is made available to more people within organizations, we’re seeing an increased emphasis on the importance of data literacy and data storytelling. Both of these data skills are essential to democratizing data and extracting value from your data investments. However, between these two skills sits another crucial ability that hasn’t received as much attention. Data curiosity is the connective tissue that ties these two key areas together. 

For Vicky, this curiosity is key. 

“I like to look at data and fiddle about with it, and not necessarily go at it with a particular question in mind. Sometimes, we want to use data to provide evidence for a particular theory, or to support a direction of travel. Equally, sometimes it's nice to explore the data with a more open mind, using data mining and visualisations to construct a story, and to guide the direction of the system. 

Data Needs to Support What People are Trying to Do 

Anyone who works in or within the digital scene will have noticed the increasingly common claims of agencies to be ‘data-driven’ and ‘insight-led’. Which is great, right? 

Since the start of the pandemic, data and dashboards have been on the lips of everyone thanks in no small part to the usage of it by the government in updates and briefings to the public. We’ve spoken to many data professionals on this series who have worked hard on the reporting functions that supported that effort.  

For Vicky and her team, every single resource they had at the start of the pandemic was diverted to support the COVID response and recovery. Vicky hopes that the progress they’ve made as a data-driven and support organisation will continue long after the pandemic.  

“If we can take any sort of positive out of what has been a really traumatic year is that so many of the bureaucratic barriers to collection and sharing of data have been circumvented, rightly so for a really, really strong benefit. And we need to be able to build on that going forward.”  

For Vicky, one of the large barriers that still remains is the way that the public understands how the NHS is structured.  

“There’s perhaps an assumption in the general public that if you’re giving your data to ‘the NHS’ that is shareable within the NHS. What is less transparent and more poorly understood is that the NHS is actually a lot of different organisations and sharing between those organisations is something I think the public expects to happen. We need to make progress with data sharing and interoperability, but still make sure we’re meeting our responsibilities with respect to information governance.”  

Collecting data is one thing, but what tangible results can you expect? For Vicky, there needs to be a balance between being data driven in your decision making and being aware of data’s supporting role in existing services.  

“Data can drive services development and delivery, and data can support those things.  It’s important for data and analytical skills to be brought into projects from the outset to help ‘forming’ a good understanding of the issues at hand.  It’s equally important for data and analytics to provide support to clinical services operationally to drive continual improvement.   Being data-driven is important, but our healthcare system needs data that is ‘joined up’ and providing intelligence and insight." 

Instead of looking at the data and trying to forge a direction from it, Vicky argues that sometimes it’s better to do what you know is the right thing from a patient perspective and use the data to support the journey towards that.  

Respecting our Lived Experience 

It’s key, for Vicky, to respect the experiences that we’ve been through and look past the rubber stamps and certificates as symbols of how far we’ve come.  

“Experience is really, really valuable but it is easy to overlook that.” 

Moving away from the day-to-day activities of a role can be challenging when you’ve done them for the past however many years, and that can feel like you’re diluting your own knowledge to some extent and that, in turn, can push you on to the next certificate, the next degree. 

“Certainly, in the past I have pursued qualifications over valuing my experience. Although I enjoy study and expanding my knowledge base, sometimes it is hopelessly at odds with the amount of time that I've got to do any of it. And in reality, actually, I don't necessarily need more ‘qualifications’. I've got enough lived experience to be able to make my way without it.” 

Remember what the NHS is here For 

For those looking to follow in Vicky’s footsteps and move into a technical leadership position within the NHS, Vicky has this advice:  

“Keep your mind on what the health service is here for. Because all too often, I think, particularly being in sort of more strategic policy and commissioning when at the national level, we're at risk of detaching ourselves from the ultimate goal, which is to provide excellent care, safe care, and value for taxpayers money, that's what we're here to do. And always being able to link back to that core purpose has been really, really important to me.” 

We spoke to Wendy Tindale OBE, Scientific and Innovation Director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to discuss her career, women in STEM and the importance of continual development.

Wendy’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Wendy is the first to admit that her route to her current position wasn’t a standard one.

With an initial drive to be a Clinical Psychologist, Wendy studied psychology at University which, she admits, was not the right subject for her. Inspired by a friend, Wendy considered making the change to Radiography. Visiting a Radiography Department at one of the local hospitals, Wendy met the Professor of Medical Physics who had a vacancy open. Jumping at the opportunity, Wendy joined the Medical Physics Department as a Junior  Technician.

“I didn’t finish my psychology degree, I went straight into medical physics.”

After a little while, Wendy could feel herself getting disillusioned. She was the most junior technician in the laboratory and was, pretty much, dedicated to routine and repetitive tasks. Rather than packing it in, Wendy applied for a day release and worked towards a higher national certificate in applied physics at Sheffield Polytechnic.

“I was with lots of lads from the steelworks. I was the only one in my field, it was a great experience, interesting and fun. And I was awarded a Distinction on the course, which meant that I was straightaway offered a place at Leeds University, studying part time doing a master's degree in Medical Physics.”

Working throughout this process, Wendy combined new knowledge with practical hospital experience. After finishing her master’s degree, Wendy was offered a research job by the new Head of Medical Physics in which she was part of a specialist team looking at the development of artificial heart valves.

“It was a very niche field. It led to national and international recognition. Our team was small but our network was massive and it was a real stepping stone for me. But the funding was always on a short-term basis and I needed a bit more stability.”

Coming back to the NHS, Wendy took a position in the Medical Imaging area, leading the research, but also gaining management and leadership experience. Again, this afforded Wendy national recognition and, as a result, she was offered a place on a number of committees, given the opportunity to represent professional bodies and even offered her own editorial role on a national bulletin.

When an opportunity came up to become Scientific Director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals , Wendy leapt at the opportunity. She has combined this role with with an Honorary Professorship at the University of Sheffield. . More recently her role has expanded to include additional responsibilities as Director of Innovation at the Trust.

“The scientific director is focused on leadership in medical physics and clinical engineering, as well as having a scientific role in medical imaging. And the innovation role is a more of a corporate role, , about leading innovation on behalf of the organisation.”

Dr. W Tindale

During this series, I have spoken to many highly qualified women who are often in the minority when they sit down at a meeting.

For Wendy, who has earned acclaim for her scientific roles and often sat down at tables dominated by the opposite gender, her reaction largely depends on the circumstance.

“I’ve been in situations where everybody was friendly, people didn't differentiate, but equally, I have been in situations where the opposite is true. It's just the subtleties in the dynamics of that meeting.”

Spending her entire career in scientific circles, Wendy has seen both sides of the coin. In her early career, Wendy used to send her initial correspondence out as Dr W. Tindale to avoid any initial prejudice.

“What I wanted to do was to get to the situation that by the time people had corresponded with me, and then met me, and they'd already got an assessment of what I was capable of and that was independent of my sex.”

Although a shame that it came to this, it certainly stands as a testament to both the time that Wendy was working in and also her resourcefulness. Hilariously, it even resulted in some occasions where people struggled to contain their surprise the W stood for Wendy and not William - much to Wendy’samusement.

Fortunately, Wendy is seeing a growing number of women entering Healthcare through STEM Subjects.

“We are seeing a lot of our trainees that are coming through the medical physics and engineering routes now being female. I’m sure they have very bright futures ahead of them”

Continual Learning and Development

Continual learning and development of self is a common theme throughout the careers of those I speak to through this series.

For Wendy, whose career moves seem to be motivated by self-development, that ‘never-stop-learning’ mentality is key to her success.

“I think when you’re in a scientific or technical role, you have to make sure that you’re keeping up to date with developments because the world changes so much in our area.”

In technology, and in science, the next best thing is always around the corner. Continual learning is part and parcel but, for Wendy, that needs to be balanced with a drive to create the best possible impression.

“You need to maintain your credibility. I like to prepare as best as I can so I can create a good impression and be sure that people see me as knowledgeable, credible and an ambassador for my field.”

Although perhaps more applicable to scientific circles, there are lessons here for everyone who wants to work towards business change and development.

Since moving into an information role at Bolton Hospital in 2003, Paul has always aspired to be a leader within the BI Informatics space. Working a number of roles across the Northwest, from assistant analyst in Bolton’s information team to supporting the specialised commissioning team in Cumbria and Lancashire, Paul moved towards leadership at Blackpool PCTas the Information Manager and later Head of Informatics.  

“I was covering how information is managed across both commissioning and provision of services.” 

That progression led Paul into the BI space as head of BI at Royal Liverpool where he remained for the next 4 years.  

“That's where I really developed a passion for data driven analysis, business intelligence, and how an organisation can really use its data to inform its decisions, and to inform the services it's providing.”  

From Liverpool, Paul moved to Bolton CCG where he took the position of Associate Director of Informatics. A big step for Paul, he had to change his focus , which gave him a lot more exposure to the IT side as opposed to just Data and BI.  

Paul's move to Alder Hey placed him back in data and BI with heaps of experience of leading an IT function under his belt.  

With 22 years in the NHS, Paul has had a long and decorated career. Now responsible for all things data at Alder Hey, Paul leads a number of different teams from analytics, BI and Clinical coding to achieve the Trust’s data goals and support service. 

A Pragmatic Leader 

The last 12 months have been incredibly challenging for everyone. For those leading teams who have had to adjust to new working conditions, it’s been a real test of leadership methodologies. For Paul, who considers himself a pragmatic leader, who has spent his life coaching others and being coached himself – it's been a learning curve.  

“If I had to put my leadership style down on paper I'd probably put ‘coach’.” 

With Paul’s team quickly adopting MS Teams, communication is as seamless as ever – but for tactile leaders like Paul, who like to knuckle down and hash out problems, it’s been a transitionary period.  

“I like to draw things on notepads and then like to scribble things over and red pen, if you know, and that kind of thing. You can't really do that over MS teams. So, it's been a challenge. But I think because we've all been working this way for nearly 12 months, people are beginning to see it as a normal way of working.” 

Add to that the fact that Paul is a relatively new starter to the team at Alder Hey and you’ve got a tricky remit – join a new team, get up to speed, make an impact and do it all while working remote. A saving grace, for Paul, was the fact that he was already well versed in the technical challenges they were facing thanks to his technical background. This firm technical foundation meant he could easily build relationships across the trust.   

“A lot of the challenges we’ve faced in these past few weeks have been challenges we’ve been able to quickly overcome because the terminology and the way things are done are familiar to me.” 

That technical background has been a useful tool for building solid foundations and relationships with the other technical people across the trust. 

The NHS’ Data Drive 

Data is the oil of a digital age. How many times have we heard that? Despite becoming a bit of a caricature, Data is a massive industry that is only going in one direction: up. And despite the pandemic putting the brakes on many industries growth plans, data, on the other hand, has only had its importance highlighted with smart, remote working becoming mainstream. 

Almost 71 years ago the NHS was built on the guiding principles of belonging to all and providing free high-quality care at the point of need. With the advent of data-driven technologies, the opportunity to continue to ensure that the NHS remains one of the leading healthcare systems in the world is something the organisation is embracing.  

Through professionals like Paul and his team, the NHS are realising the data potential of the NHS. 

“There is a lot of desire to use data to garner benefits and drive individual organisations and the NHS forwards. We have so much data at our fingertips.” 

But data alone isn’t going to help transform the workings of an organisation. Data accountability and representation at the highest level of the NHS to ensure that this data is turned into the vital insights that can transform the way the NHS delivers care.  

“It's not just about providing data, any organisation can extract data, transform it and stick it into some charts and provide information through to their operational teams and clinicians. But we've got to go a step further than that. Namely, we need to be providing what people are asking for.”  

Of course, it isn’t all on the people above. Paul puts an emphasis on the individual Analyst – they should continue to push the boundaries of data and information. 

“As analysts, we should be utilising our skills to find new lines of insights and feed things back to our operational colleagues, clinicians, Corporate Services, the executive team, that they might not have asked for, but does impact our organisation. Everybody within an analytical team needs to be a leader. They need to be gaining insight into data and finding pockets of brilliance even when no one is looking.” 

Go For It 

For those looking to follow in Paul’s footsteps and find a technical leadership role within the NHS, Paul has this advice: 

“If you see an opportunity, always go for it, don't hold back and think I'm not quite ready for that. Just try and go for it. Then try and learn what type of leader or manager you want to be and try and find people around you who are like that, who you can learn from.” 

Samantha’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

Being raised in a military family, Samantha’s childhood was in constant motion.  Samantha, who had her heart set on joining the Airforce, started her career as an Aircraft Engineer. After suffering an injury that prevented her from working on the aircraft, Samantha had to re-evaluate what she wanted from her career. That’s when she joined the NHS. 

“I never thought about it as a career before but I absolutely loved it.” 

Deciding to go to University part time to get her Bachelors in Business Management, Sam moved to Leicester in 2008 where she picked up a role in Patient Engagement. Here, Sam worked her way up and, when she finished her degree, was able to move into a position as Business Manager. Her key areas of focus are mental health in adults and older people, while supporting all aspects of the business management for that Directorate. 

“I love the breadth of experience you get. You really get to be involved in every single part of the organisation and it’s different every day.” 

It’s like a family you never lose sight of 

The bonds Sam forged while working for the Royal Air Force are ones that have stood the test of time.  

“It’s like a family that you never lose sight of.” 

Samantha traces a lot of her success in her business management career to the lessons she learnt in her early days in the cadets and the start of her career in the Royal Airforce where her resilience was truly put to the test.  

" I remember doing my gas-mask training and I remember it was most horrific experience. And whenever I hit a challenge now always look back and think, well, if I could do that I can overcome anything.” 

Sam’s role at the Royal Airforce had her housed and when her time came to move on from the Airforce after injury, Sam found herself having to move back to her family – a move that she admits was incredibly tough after spending so much time being independent and would be closely followed by starting a completely new career.  

“I had to take that leap. I was moving into a new role, spending time in a big city after living in a sleepy town in Yorkshire.  If I hadn't done it, I don't know what I'd be doing now, to be honest.” 

Imposter Syndrome 

Demonstrating resilience and drive across her career in the NHS and RAF, Sam has worked in incredibly high-pressure environments.  

Being resilient, in theory, seems sound - but applying it is another story altogether. Elements of doubt begin to creep in as you climb the career ladder. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. For Sam, it’s a daily battle.  

“It’s like a ticker-tape in my head. A constant reel of ‘can you do it?’ ‘have you bitten off more than you  can chew?’ ‘Have you got the skills?’” 

It’s something that 100% of the women I’ve spoken to throughout the course of this series have experienced – myself included. Through this series, it’s also come to be something I now understand to be almost a fact of being ambitious.  

“The more I kind of pushed myself out of my comfort zone, the more I realised that there's not much that you're not going to be able to overcome. That it’s ok to fail. Sometimes you just got to take the leap and be prepared to fail because I think you learn quite a bit from the things that don't work so well.” 

Returning from Maternity 

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to many courageous women on the course of this series. Women who have juggled full-time jobs while raising children and continued to go from strength to strength.  

As a Mother myself, I’m filled with pride to listen to these stories but also reminded of my own challenges around returning to work.  

For Samantha, the first time she went back to work after maternity leave didn’t pose as many challenges as the second time when she came back to a completely reshuffled team and organisation.  

“Not only was I dealing with this sort of new anxiety, but I remember feeling really disconnected and quite isolated and quite lonely. It was probably the hardest sort of six months of my working career.” 

Coming close to changing her job and reducing her hours, Sam realised she was just running from her problems and not standing up for herself. With support from her Husband, Sam found allies at the new look work she returned to and built her confidence back up over a period of time.  

“Peer support is absolutely crucial in those situations, people that you can talk quite honestly to can make a massive difference.” 

Don’t Be Afraid to Let Others be the Experts

Driving Business Development for her Directorate, Sam is going from strength to strength. For those looking to follow in her footsteps, Sam has this advice:  

“Don’t be afraid to let the people in your team be the experts. Don't think you have to be a tech expert to lead in tech. You're bringing your leadership skills, not necessarily your technical expertise. But absolutely make sure you’re getting excited by technical developments out there.” 

We spoke to Ayesha Rahim Chief Clinical Information Officer Deputy Medical Director - Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust to discuss the role of CCIO, taking a leap of faith and why Clinicians should never rule themselves out of transformation projects.  

Ayesha’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

Nobody Goes to Medical School Wanting to be a Health Technologist. 

After training as a psychiatrist and starting her career within that practice, Ayesha quickly set her sights on progression into medical management. When a job came up for a Deputy Medical Director, with a CCI role tied to it, Ayesha found herself taking a leap of faith.  

“Nobody goes to medical school wanting to be a health technologist. I had no idea what a CCIO was.” 

From the Job Description, Ayesha realised that she was already doing a lot in the transformation space and already had a passion for making systems work for clinicians and not the other way around.  

“Technology in the NHS was frustrating. So, whenever the organisation had gone out to request input from clinicians to improve the clinical systems,  I'd always put my hand up, born out of a frustration, really, that the tech didn't work so well for me as a practising clinician. So when I saw the deputy medical director job come up, and also the fact that there was a technology role attached to that, I thought, well, that's great. That sounds right up my street.” 

Without any technical training, Ayesha took her seven years of consultant psychologist experience and leapt into the unknown. Four years later and Ayesha was well and truly landed on her feet, with the majority of her time spent working in the digital health space while still practicing as a psychiatrist one day a week.  

“It's been such a revelation to find a niche that really speaks to me, at the same time is being able to maintain my clinical practice. " 

As CCIO at Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, Ayesha is the clinical lead for technology in her organisation. 

Taking a Leap of Faith 

Moving roles after almost 7 years in the previous position will be a daunting prospect for anyone. Moving disciplines completely is an even more daunting prospect and that’s exactly what Ayesha did when she took her leap of faith into the Deputy Medical Director role which led to the CCIO responsibilities.  

“My career changed when I decided to apply for that position. It took a leap of faith because I think there is a difference in the way Women and Men look at Job Descriptions and Specs.” 

Rather than focusing on the parts of a Job that Ayesha could do, her natural instinct was to focus on the bits that she couldn’t do, or the bits she felt less confident doing.  

Of course, Ayesha overcame her reservations and was successful in her application – but it isn’t always as simple as going for it.  

“Sometimes it’s a personality thing. I’m never short of an opinion and I have always had a passion for making things better. I’m not one to sit back when I see something that is running inefficiently. For me, this passion overrode any reservations I had.” 

Another point for Ayesha is role-modelling. Seeing someone succeed, or even fail, in a position that, in your head, looks unreachable can do a lot for people’s confidence.  

“You can’t be what you can’t see. This is particularly true for Women and people of colour. I want to get  my message out there that you can aspire to those things and you can achieve those things. And so much of the time, it's a psychological thing, it's not a deficit in skills, it's a confidence thing that you have to sort of get yourself over. And so that's I really encourage people to make that leap of faith, look around, because there are people there aren't many there, but we're growing in number." 

 

The CCIO Role Isn’t a Technical One 

While it is clear that the role of the CCIO (Chief Clinical Information Officer) in the secondary care sector is relatively well-defined, there is as yet no formal definition of the role of the CCIO in the new Clinical Commissioning Groups. I’ve spoken to a few CCIO’s on the course of this series and my discussions with them reinforce that previous statement.  

For Ayesha, who is constantly improving and evolving her technical understanding and knowledge, the role of CCIO exists on a spectrum.  

“You've got clinicians working in digital health who are very technical. They can code and enjoy the technical side of things. And then you have at the other end of the spectrum, people, I suppose more like myself whose interest is primarily around transformation.” 

With the vehicle of transformation being digital, the technical side of things is always in a CCIO’s mind but it’s not always at the forefront.  

"So, when I started, my interest was in service improvement, quality improvement, transforming services to provide better care for patients. And that's the lens through which I do my job. Because in my view, the CCIO role isn't really a technical role. It's a transformation and leadership role that uses technology as its vehicle to undertake that transformation. “ 

Having a high-level understanding of jargon, terminology and the challenges involved in the technical side of transformation will, of course, make communication between all the stakeholders involved in the transformation projects easier.  

Since starting, however, Ayesha has undertaken some qualifications. A Master’s degree in Digital Health Leadership puts the emphasis on the leadership side of transformation projects – how you can lead projects, manage change and help bring people along on that journey and embed that change.  

“So that's my qualification, but it still isn't a technical qualification. But I don't see that as a barrier at all to working effectively in this industry.” 
 

Clinically Led, Technically Supported 

Digital transformation as a phrase has become a bit of a buzzword. It’s easy to forget that the process of transformation, especially when it’s within an institution like the NHS, is a challenging one that draws in many different stakeholders at varying levels of seniority.  

When it comes to Health Technology, stakeholders aren’t just sitting in a boardroom – they're also sitting in a doctor’s office and working on the front-lines of healthcare.  

“Digital Transformation should be clinically led, operationally informed, and technically supported. It’s really important that the systems we put into place work for patients, because patient care is what we’re doing at the end of the day.” 

Ayesha, early in her career in digital transformation, has come up against solutions that look, at first glance, to be fantastic but are later revealed to be ineffective when deployed on the front-lines. For Ayesha, scrutinising solutions is one of the important responsibilities a CCIO has.  

“We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to get this solution right, first time. We need to make sure that the systems that we implement meet a genuine need that exists. You start with a problem, not the solution and the best way of doing that is to involve patients and clinicians” 

Clincians, who see the problems and challenges during the day-to-day operation of the NHS, are well placed to report on the most pressing of needs because they’re interacting with patients every single day.  

“That's your true north. That's your guiding principle, you're not going to go too far wrong if you stick to that principle.” 

 

Clinicians: Don’t Rule Yourself Out of Transformation 

For Clinicians who want to follow in Ayesha’s footsteps and move into the digital transformation space Ayesha has some words of encouragement. 

“Don’t rule yourself out because you can’t code or can’t build an app. Neither can I, but it hasn’t stopped me. Transformation is crying out for more clinical expertise because you know the workflow better than anyone else.” 

It's always a challenge keeping a team of Software Engineers motivated. But if you want to bring that big project in on time, motivated is what your developers and programmers have to be. So how do you do it? How do you motivate a software engineering team? 

We reached out to Software Engineering Managers to discuss how they keep their teams on track and motivated to deliver their best possible work.  

Mate Varga, Vice President of Engineering at Patients Know Best 

Mate Varga is the Vice President of Engineering at electronic personal health records company, Patients Know Best. With a rapidly growing Engineering team spread across a distributed geography, PKB has been working with organisations such as the NHS since 2008. Given the growth and complexity of the engineering projects PKB are working on, Mate has made the wellbeing of his engineering team a top priority.  

Before the Pandemic, Mate used to meet his team – which is distributed across Europe – in person at least once every other week. For Mate, this interaction was important and is something that – during travel restrictions – his team misses.  

“Remote Developers interact mostly through code. It’s easy to forget that there is a person behind that code.” 

Working in healthcare technology, Mate and his team must adhere to strict regulation and, as a rule, must peer review any code before it goes into production. This can create difficult situations where members of the team are looking for problems in each other's code.  

Mate has been working hard on creating a working environment and culture that encourages and motivates his Engineers.   

Measure Outcomes, Not Proxy Signals.  

How you measure a team sets how a team behaves and how well it performs. A team will naturally optimise themselves around achieving the targets they set.  

Too often, teams will focus on tracking the number of tickets handled or time spent in the office and not the results in terms of satisfied customers, retention of key clients, or profitability. Not only does this produce skewed performance measures but it also breeds a finger-pointing culture.  

For Mate, addressing the way his team is measured was key to motivating his engineers – especially when working remotely.  

“ The real achievement of a Software Developer is to solve customers' problems. It’s often convenient to simply look at the developer's screen and see how much time they spent on their computer instead of focusing on how they really contributed to business outcomes. 

 When you move to managing a remote team, you lose the ability to measure in that way.” 

Rather than measuring on an entirely granular scale, Mate ties the measurement of his team to the greater context of the company mission.  

The skill of evaluating actual business impact instead of ‘busy work’ is extremely valuable even when teams return to the office. 

Handling Conflict In Remote Teams 

It is impossible to avoid conflict in the workplace. But managing it gets very tricky when you take team members out of the office. Add that to the strain of staying productive during a pandemic, and you’ve got a recipe for potential disaster. One wrongly phrased Slack message could be all it takes to turn a team meeting into a virtual brawl. Without the option of a face to face reconciliation, how can you manage conflict in virtual teams? 

Rule one in the conflict resolution rulebook is usually to handle it face-to-face. Without that option, newly remote managers can sometimes feel like they’re on an up-hill struggle when it comes to keeping the peace. For Mate’s team, who regularly peer review each other's code, handling conflict starts with following a few simple rules to ensure everyone is treated with respect.  

The first and most important rule is that reviewers need to prioritise their feedback, highest value first: functional correctness, then code quality, then test coverage, then code style. If the reviewer does not have the time or focus to evaluate the most important aspects, they should not comment on the less important ones. This is the most useful and respectful way of approaching other people's work. 

Secondly, to make up for the fact that they’re missing out on the queues that body language can give us during a conversation, Mate believes it’s important to indicate your intention when raising potentially controversial topics: sometimes you are strongly suggesting something, sometimes you are just "thinking out loud" in writing. 

Thirdly, if in doubt, pick up the phone. 

Early and Challenging Projects Will Build Confidence 

For Mate, the baseline that every engineering team should have is clear documentation on their coding standards and about how to get started. This enables a new starter or a newly qualified remote engineer to hit the ground running and get stuck into projects quickly.  

“We’ve seen people make code changes just five hours after they’ve joined because we’ve streamlined our documentation and provisioning of the development environment.” 

Giving new engineers projects that they can make an immediate impact on is key to motivating them and keeping them engaged. It gives them something to celebrate early and can help ramp up their confidence as they progress through projects.  

Handing over challenging tasks to new hires in their first few weeks may sound like throwing them in the deep end, but it can be an important step in helping engineers succeed. Even if they struggle, you and your team will see how they react to that. Do they look for support? If not, it’s a teaching moment that will ensure the new hire knows where their support networks are.  

For Mate, doing the opposite and giving your new engineering hires tasks that are below their skill level will do more harm than good. 

"Some of the worst outcomes I've seen, they were mostly associated with giving people tasks that are far too easy.” 

Kevin Marzec, Head of Software Development at TRI - Triumph Research Intelligence, The Risk-Based Monitoring Company 

Kevin Marzec is Head of Software Development at Triumph Research Intelligence. Joining his first start-up in 1998, Kevin grew that development team to 25 before the dotcom bubble burst, taking the start-up with it. From there, Kevin has been running development teams ever since.  

With over 15 years of experience in Software, we were keen to discuss with Kevin his thoughts on leading development teams and what his thoughts are on how we can best motivate them.  

It’s not all about the Money 

For Kevin, the key to motivating developers, especially at the highest level, isn’t always about money.  

“Working on fun and challenging projects that involve bits they need to figure out while bringing them into the architecture is key. Basically, they don’t want to feel like cogs in the machine.” 

It’s a sales maxim that believing in the value of your product or service is essential. Logic dictates you should believe in what you sell. If you didn’t, sales would become a process of unethical manipulation in which you convinced customers to make decisions they would regret later. 

Zig Ziglar, the most famous salesperson and sales trainer of all time, took confidence in your product a step farther when he said, “If you believe your product or service can fulfill a true need, it’s your moral obligation to sell it.”. 

Kevin believes the same applies to developers building products.  

“I think they have to believe in the product they're building. That's probably the number one thing: they have to be excited about what they're building. They should want to make it the best possible product they can.” 

Avoid Silos Within Your Team 

Most of Kevin’s experience leading technical teams comes in a distributed context with many of the start-ups he’s worked for drawing talent from a variety of backgrounds. In his current position, Kevin works within a completely remote company with 45 staff.  

We were keen to get Kevin’s thoughts on leading distributed teams and what leaders can do to continue to motivate and encourage team members who may be working in unfamiliar conditions.  

“I think regular communication is key.” 

Kevin has regular one on ones with each member of the development team as well as daily stand ups where we're all chatting - which can generally last up to an hour and gives everyone a chance to talk about their days, challenges and more. Kevin and his team also do group code reviews where everyone pushes through their developments for discussion. 

“It's kind of like a competition. Everybody's like: I want to be pushing through as much as possible.” 

This plays into a larger strategy that Kevin believes is key to running a remote development team effectively.  

“You want to avoid developing silos within your team where developers feel ownership of certain parts of a product. It can lead to an atmosphere where people are hesitant to touch other people’s work and create a bit of a finger-pointing culture.” 

Having an open team culture where everyone understands the objectives of the business and how their work fits into the bigger team picture will help break down these silos and avoid the challenges Kevin has experienced in the past with previous teams.  

We spoke to Kay Lee, Head of Continual Improvement at Arden and GEM CSU about her career, WannaCry and raising young children while working. 

Kay's story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

Leaving University in the early 90s with a Network Management Degree, Kay joined the NHS as an apprentice and almost immediately got work within an operational role. Hitting the ground running, Kay quickly set up a service desk, server infrastructure and active directories. This initial involvement very much set the tone for the rest of Kay’s career within the NHS where she stayed in technical and infrastructure roles.  

As the years went on the teams and departments around Kay grew to contain new teams, Kay has stayed within infrastructure – managing teams and professionals up until 2 years ago when Kay moved into the Continual Improvement role she remains in.  

Leaving A 30 Year Career Behind 

On this series, I get to talk to professionals who are obsessed with change and transformation. The challenges they face while delivering process and technology improvements at scale while keeping up with the day-to-day work within the NHS always makes for interesting listening.  Likewise, the careers of these individuals also make for interesting listening as many come to realise their passion for technology later in their career.  

For Kay, who’s technical portfolio and experience speaks for themselves, it was quite the opposite.  

“I knew I was leaving my beloved infrastructure career behind me. That was a career I had put 30 years of my life in to. It was difficult but I know that I love what I'm doing right now.” 

These incredibly difficult decisions are ones that people will consider for months, maybe years. For Kay, who believed that her skills and experiences would add value to other service lines, extra motivation for making the move away from her technical-focused career was found within the team she was leading at the time.  

“Succession planning was hard. I felt like I was blocking progression for people by just sitting there. So by me making that move, it’s allowed everyone to take on new roles and new challenges. I could’ve sat there for years and year and years, but I would’ve just lost talent because they’ve got nowhere to go.” 

WannaCry and Having Young Children 

Studying Network Management in the early 90’s and launching her technical career from there, Kay has very much been emersed in what many would call a ‘man’s world’. Despite this, Kay has only ever overtly felt like she’s been in the minority at one occasion in her career.  

The WannaCry incident was a worldwide ransomware attack that disrupted many of the NHS’ crucial systems and infrastructure in 2017. Kay was working full-time during that period, but was also raising her young children who were at Nursery.  

“This was the biggest cyber-attack known to man. People were turning up at work and never leaving as they tried to protect NHS data from being encrypted. But I had to go at 4PM each day because my kids needed picking up from Nursery.” 

I’ve spoken to many women throughout the course of this series. Many of them are Mothers and many of them find it challenging to find a balance between the two sides of their life. Even when a balance is found, difficulties remain in the form of guilt.  

“There's this kind of mixture of feelings. There's a feeling of guilt, that you've got to go, there's a feeling of jealousy, that you can't stay. There's a feeling of guilt that if you do stay then you've left your child at nursery And I'm not saying males don't struggle because they’re obviously parents too, and have the same kind of commitments, but I've struggled with that a little bit. But I think that's been the only struggle.” 

You Have to Specialise 

For those looking to follow in Kay’s footsteps towards a technical leadership role within the NHS, Kay has this advice: 

“I don’t think you can just be a generalist anymore. I think you’ve got to become a subject matter expert, perhaps in cloud or project management or infrastructure, become the subject matter expert, become that person and then from there on, become the manager of that team and, you know, set yourself career path of where you want to be maybe in sort of five years time or 10 years, and then work backwards. But, crucially, make sure it’s an area you enjoy.” 

We spoke to Claire Liddy, Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children's Hospital to discuss the importance of innovation, the skills needed to be a technical leader and advice for future leaders.

Claire’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

What is the Innovation Centre? 

As the Managing Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Claire is driving digital transformation strategies with the eye to helping professionals find their entrepreneurial spirit.

Claire, who has always wanted to work in Healthcare, started her career in the clinical space with a degree in orthopaedics. It was here that Claire found her love for the more strategic side of healthcare. After joining the NHS’s finance graduate scheme, Claire would go on to enjoy a long and successful career in the NHS as an accountant.  

Now with 6 years at Alder Hey, 4 of which were spent as Operational Director of Finance, Claire is approaching her third year as Managing Director of Innovation - a big leap from the world of finance. 

“The Chief Executive at the time thought the Innovation Centre needed a bit more of a business mind so I stepped up.”

The Innovation Centre, which is made up of 14 staff with dedicated time for innovation. That includes clinical, medical, commercial and research staff who - with the exception of clinical staff - many worked in a startup setting prior to their work with the Innovation Centre. They’re looking at bringing the very best experience from the industry into Healthcare. 

“So my job very much as the Managing director of innovation is to drive the innovation strategy and forward. What we want to do is bring the most innovative technologies into health care to find new healthcare use cases that have impact, and benefit patients and families. And if we can bring them into Alder Hey, and have benefit, hopefully, we can spread and scale that impact to other health care systems, both nationally and even globally.”

 

“You’ve Got to be Curious”

Tasked with bringing the business strategy to the continued innovation of the trust, Claire’s position is rather niche but, following the core principles of digital transformations, we asked Claire what skills she believes are important to driving change in large organisations. 

Following Alder Hey’s ‘Open Innovation’ principle, the teams at the Innovation Centre never start with a technical solution, but rather with a real world problem. 

“So you’ve got to be open-minded and curious by nature.”

Claire, who manages individuals who are smart and inquisitive by nature, believes in giving her team as much autonomy as possible - something that isn’t traditional in an NHS setting. 

“What I bring is freedom and safety for people to go out and discover new technologies and to try new things."

This flat structure, which enables curiosity and exploration of options without fear of a strict framework, is key to the continued success of the Innovation Centre and is something that Claire is working on maintaining and improving every day - while protecting the brand and it’s commercial position. 

“We want people to be entrepreneurial and creative, but at the same time, we have got a job to do in protecting the brand, and also protecting our commercial position. So we have a real balance in the team, and me being able to kind of almost help the team know who needs to be on what projects and we've got the right ingredient."

“I Felt Like an Actress for the First Year”

For Claire, who moved from Finance to managing creatives, the first 12 months were a bit of a culture shock. 

“Finance is quite prudent and very traditional in nature - so it is at odds with creativity in some regard. For the first 12 months it felt like I was an actress in a movie purely because the approach was entirely different.”

Despite Claire and the commercial team around her proving to be a successful ying to the creative’s yang time and time again, imposter syndrome was a reality in the early days. 

“Over time you normalise. It’s challenging but you get there.”

 

“There are so many Healthcare Providers who can’t get out of the Starting Blocks”

Public Healthcare, an industry with high regulation, strict processes and high levels of accountability, is notoriously resistant to rapid change. With COVID providing a stimulus to digital transformation through necessity, Claire and the Innovation Centre are looking at developing a culture of innovation across the NHS. 

“The reason healthcare can't get out of the starting blocks is because of capability, resources and funding, because they don't have the person who's going to drive the agenda forward. There isn't a textbook on how you innovate in healthcare. And I think I'd really like to help others and in the region, or potentially, across the UK.”

Robotic Process Automation is the technology that allows anyone today to configure computer software, or a “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process. RPA robots utilize the user interface to capture data and manipulate applications just like humans do. They interpret, trigger responses and communicate with other systems in order to perform on a vast variety of repetitive tasks - without the need for a break.  

Applications for RPA within a healthcare setting are numerous. For the NHS, who are really starting to build up momentum into this nascent technology, it’s been revolutionary. Most recently, trusts are using robots to register COVID-19 antibody testing, which has helped to save over 82,000 hours of time. 

To understand the potential of RPA, and the scale of the challenge facing those implementing it, we brought together a handful of leading voices in the space to discuss.  

The Benefits of RPA 
  

We spoke to Rob Child and Richard Moyes from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.  

Rob, who has spent his entire career in the NHS, is the Programme Manager in the Digital IT team. Heading up the project delivery office, Rob leads a team of 19 Project Managers,  Assistant Project Managers & the Project Delivery Office function across a portfolio of 20 plus digital projects.  

Richard, a former RAF fast jet pilot, joined the NHS in 2017 after a brief stint in the private sector. Now the General Manager for Outpatients at Leeds Teaching, Richard has about 600,000 patients per annum that he and his team are responsible for across a number of departments, with the Trust seeing about 1.3 million patients per year.  

After hearing about RPA from a colleague who attended a conference, Rob started to conceptualise what RPA might look like at Leeds Teaching. Focusing on using it to integrate legacy systems, Rob built the business case with help from external experts who could demonstrate the value through existing RPA systems. With Richard’s arrival at Leeds Teaching, Rob was able to demonstrate the benefits of RPA in a live project. Between Rob and Richard we can see the full lifecycle of an RPA implementation from ideation to implementation.  

RPA Can Bring Together All The Moving Parts 

 Rob’s mind while building a business case for RPA was always firmly focused on using RPA to integrate lots of different legacy systems.  

Like most large organisations, the NHS has a lot of moving parts and systems that rely on manual entry. Unlike other large organisations, however, the NHS has systems that interface directly with the care of patients.  

One of the key arenas for RPA and Automation within the NHS is the patient journey. Not all the systems within the NHS are agile enough to cope with the changing needs of patients. Cancelling and rebooking appointments is just one example where a seemingly simple task will involve many different systems and manual input from many parties.  

With a career in technology spanning 20 years, Kevin Bell (Strategic Technology, AI & Automation Advisor at Alder Hey’s Children Hospital) has built up a wide and varied portfolio including business intelligence, data and automation across a number of industries, predominately healthcare. More recently, Kevin has been focused on leadership, strategy, and how to take organisations forward using technology and has been using RPA in a similar way to Rob. 

“RPA plays a massive role in joining those systems and activities together seamlessly. You can then go one step further and create a better patient experience by incorporating something like Blue Prism Cloud that allows for automated interaction with the patient.” 

It’s this seamless interaction with the patient and the back office that Kevin is most excited by. Bridging the gap for different departments and creating a single flow of patient interaction would be a massive achievement.  

“It would release time to care for consultants. It would cut down all those conversations and make sure that people that using their time more effectively.” 
 

It Was A Light in the Darkness 

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything. For the NHS, it was and still is, a significant strain with almost all roles within the NHS feeling the pressure. For Rob, Richard and the team at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, RPA was somewhat of saving grace.  

“It was a light in the darkness, something else to concentrate on, releasing staff time to care for our patients.” 

With implementation starting in Summer last year, Blue Prism Cloud was procured for the first programme which promised to be a large one. With Blue Prism’s support, Richard was able to accelerate the implementation and ensure that they got what they wanted from the programme. 

“We wanted a return on investment, but not a financial one. We wanted to enable our colleagues and our patients to have a better experience. So the first programme we wrote was to support GP routine referrals.” 

When the GP refers a patient to the Trust, the bots pick that up and do several checks across the systems at Leeds Teaching and pull any data that's missing in terms of demographics before putting the patients onto the waiting list in the relevant clinic.  

A process that, on average, can take up to 15 minutes each depending on the complexity of the referral. With the number of these referrals averaging at about 300 a day, it’s easy to understand why automation is needed here. With the automated processes in place, robots handle the 300 daily requests quicker and more effectively giving the team back 172 weeks in their 12-month working period.  

“It is not about redundancy. It is not about that kind of ethos. It's about allowing colleagues more time to focus on the important things.” 

We Can Have a 24/7 Working Remit 

Jaki Allen-Free is Health Records & Transcription Digital Programme Manager at Alder Hey Children's Hospital. Currently working on a programme that involves using a mix of digital solutions including Blue Prism Cloud RPA to automate the dictation and then transcription of clinical letters.  

The opportunity that technology like RPA represents is part of a vision of a truly integrated and ‘always on’ NHS that Jaki has held since she started her career with the NHS.  

“What I envisaged years ago was for a patient to receive an appointment, decline that appointment and then be offered a new appointment by a bot. While all that is working, the bot is then looking for someone else to take the appointment that was just declined.” 

Taking enough of the load off the people who are normally tasked with these very time-consuming requests means that more time can be put into care and move one step closer to a service that is accessible at all times. 

“If we can release enough time for our clinical colleagues to be able to, you know, undertake that type of activity. It means we truly have a 24 seven working remit.” 

The Challenges Facing RPA 

As with all transformation projects, there will be bumps in the road and obstacles to overcome. We were keen to dive into the issues facing those working on these programmes.  

The Fear Factor 

As Kevin Bell, Strategic Advisor to AIHQ, which is a dedicated AI & Automation team within Innovation  at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital agrees, there is a certain amount of anxiety involved in discussions around automation and robotics.  

A technologist through and through, Kevin is confident that the technical side of implementing RPA won’t pose much of a challenge.  As difficult as it might be to get every system connected and functioning, while maintaining business as usual, this challenge pales in comparison to the cultural and ethical challenges that come into any kind of robotics or automation debate.  

“This is a source of anxiety for some people. But this isn’t about replacing jobs, it’s about aiding people and allowing them to fully focus on what they do best, which in our case is caregiving or thinking through problems and not manually adding data to a system.” 

For Rob, who did a significant amount of foundation laying for his business case, it’s about addressing the perceptions around robotics instead of trying to hide from them. As part of his initial foundation laying, Rob socialised the idea across the trust and got the workers Union involved from day one.  

“RPA is helping us be patient-centric. It’s taking time away from the mundane and allowing our teams to release that time into the patient care that truly matters. It’s helping us stay true to our values – which is key.” 

The strong work Rob and Richard have done socialising and educating at all levels of the Trust has paid back in dividends with the teams not only embracing the solutions provided but even going to so far as to give personalities to the bots and, in an effort to humanise the new members of the team, decided to ask the department to name them.  

“We've got six bots, one bot who takes care of back-office developments and five on the front line. We wanted buy in from the teams and for them to accept the bots. We got all sorts of responses back; however, we settled on naming them after the cast of Friends.” 

Before we get Output, There has to be Input 

Kerry Morgan, RPA Programme Manager at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, is in the process of setting up and rolling out an RPA programme across Alder Hey while developing an RPA team structure and governance to ensure that RPA programmes are rolled out safely.  

Currently, Kerry has two main RPA focuses. Firstly, looking at automating referrals received via the electronic referral system to help the booking and scheduling team. And they spend a lot of time processing referrals that come in. Secondly, Kerry is also looking at HR processes.  

“We're trying to automate contract changes that come in and update the electronic staff record automatically.” 

Identifying a process that needs automation is usually done it from a strategic point of view. The person or people who are currently maintaining that time consuming process are key stakeholders in the process as their input can be the difference between a system that works and a system that is rejected. 

For Kerry, this is one of the key challenges facing effective RPA integration. 

“If you want to improve something for someone, you need their help but they’re so busy. You do have to put the time in in the first place to reap the benefits in the long run.” 

The Future and Potential of RPA 

With the Foundation laid, Rob and Richard have a team of 3 with Richard as the Head of RPA to carry on the transformation projects. With 2 programmers who are double hatted as project managers who completed the Blue Prism Training, Richard is looking to the future with a positive and optimistic outlook.  

“We have already started writing additions to our first process. We’re expanding into urgent GP referrals and then we’ll expand it further into fast-track. This will use the same process but in a slightly different model.” 

Applications across the Trust are also on the table with Leeds Dental Institute signalling their interest in RPA solutions  – a move Richard is supporting.  

“We could say; ‘Oh, just go and get an external programmer.’ But how do you get the funding for one? How do you bring them in effectively? And how do you grow the expertise of your team?” 

Richard is also looking outside of his Trust for applications of RPA. Previously at Yorkshire Ambulance Service, he’s had conversations about using RPA to automate the assurance process to confirm that a vehicle has a valid tax and MOT, which is normally a massively laborious task involving manually inputting registration numbers into the DVLA website.  

The Sky’s the Limit 

Rob and Richard have a clear pipeline for the continued development and support of the RPA solutions they’ve introduced. Outside of that, the sky is very much the limit.  

“Everywhere you turn there’s another opportunity for automation. They don’t have to be big automations, they could be smart ones that work when no one else will.” 

Louise Wall, Owner and Director of e18 Consulting. Louise has been working with clients from the public sector to help maximise the value of new technology solutions. She has noticed an increased interest from her NHS customers in RPA solutions and has been working to identify areas where RPA can benefit the organisation, staff and their patients. Louise has been working closely with the Automation team at The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust to increase adoption across the NHS and share best practice throughout the NHS community.  

“The Blue Prism Cloud platform is the clear market leader in the NHS with a large number of NHS processes already embedded and working in over 50+ Trusts. The power of the community that has been created and the level of knowledge and expertise around specific clinical systems puts them as the preferred supplier in most cases” 

For her, some of the most exciting applications of RPA that she has seen are the ones that really push the boundaries of what people In the NHS thought was possible. 

“I am most excited about the NHS specific processes that have not been automated before. All of the core processes developed for the NHS are great and deliver a solid return on investment, but it is the ones that push the boundaries which are the most exciting. I have been working with Jaki Allen Free at (Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust) and Darren Atkins (CTO at The Royal Free Innovation and Intelligent Automation Centre of Excellence) on a market first Transcription Process – working alongside experts in their field and exploring the art of the possible is something that is very exciting.” 

Louise is also an advocate for the Women in RPA group. The Women in RPA (WIRPA) initiative exists not only to celebrate the contributions of women at Blue Prism, but also women who are succeeding in Robotic Process Automation and the wider technology industry. 

From it’s inception at the hands of the person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin has grown tremendously and has evolved into a prevailing investment made by famous billionaire investors, institutions, and retail investors alike. 

Although its usage has increased all around the world, spurred on by the fact that it was one of the world’s first examples of blockchain in use, digital currency like Bitcoin has yet to be approved by all financial authorities. 

Despite this, Bitcoin - which was traded around $4,000 in March 2020 - has exceeded the $50,000 mark in the first days of the new year. Michael Saylor the CEO of Microstrategy, a New York based technology company converted his company’s cash on the balance sheet of $450m in August 2020. This is now worth over $2.25Bn and he has since bought an extra $1.5Bn issuing over $1Bn in convertible bonds just last week. 

The question on everyone’s lips is this: what does the future look like for Bitcoin and digital currency? We brought together a few Crypto Currency afficionados to discuss their history with Blockchain and Cryptocurrency and their predictions for the future. 

Stefano Paluello, Lead Software Engineer, Elsevier 

Stefano’s interest in cryptocurrency came after hearing news about the Silk Road bust, his technical interest, however, would come later when he moved to London in 2014 and attended Cryptocurrency meetups and groups discussing Bitcoin and Ethereum. After months of meetings, Stefano was offered a position at BTL, one of the world’s first blockchain tech companies.  

“We started a brainchild of those meetings about how to use bitcoin. We created the backbone of remittance platform – a way to send money abroad to countries like Africa, South America or Asia. So when people come to the UK from those countries and they want to send money back to their families, we used Bitcoin underneath as a backbone to send money and achieve a better rate and a faster process.“ 

Having since joined Information Analytics Company Elsevier, Stefano is still following the blockchain and Cryptocurrency narrative. For him, one of the big benefits of the recent explosion of cryptocurrency is in how it will continue to push forward the Cryptography field.  

“A lot of people are missing the fact that cryptocurrency is pushing cryptography research and applications forward and this is a very strong point for the future of cryptocurrency.” 

This Isn’t a Game For Outcasts Anymore 

We work a lot in the digital transformation and business change space. One of the common threads that come out of discussions around digital transformation is that, due to the fact that It’s often tech that is driving the change, technology professionals have really been brought to the forefront of companies whereas, 25 years ago, they were left in the basement.  

For Stefano, the same is happening with Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. For every Elon Musk shifting 10% of their balance sheet into cryptocurrency, there are 100’s of other technologists driving serious blockchain and cryptocurrency conversations within their institutions.  

“This isn’t a game for outcasts, cyberpunks and hackers anymore. There are academics involved doing serious studies into applications.” 

Christian Decker is widely known for writing the worlds’ first Bitcoin PhD Thesis. The goal of his research is to improve the understanding of the underlying consensus mechanisms and to enable the network to scale with increasing demands. 

Stefano was able to attend one of the workshops run by Christian.  

“It was quite a high level but it was about pushing the envelope on encryption on a technical and mathematical level.” 

Although just one example, it’s certainly a flag in the ground for Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies’ place in the wider zeitgeist. Since then, modules on cryptocurrency have cropped up in economics degrees across the UK – most notably the London School of Economics. 

Elon Is Good, But Scary  

Tesla took both the corporate world and the cryptocurrency space by storm when it announced this month it had put $1.5 billion of cash into Bitcoin. That prompted a surge in Bitcoin’s price and has fueled talk about the risks and benefits of adding cryptocurrencies to corporate balance sheets. 

For Stefano, this move was a bit of a double-edged sword for the cryptocurrency market. On the one hand, large investments are what the platform needs to secure more investments. On the other hand, it’ll put existing infrastructure under increased scrutiny.  

“We still need to grow and develop an infrastructure. Maybe this interest comes a bit too early.” 

Slumps and crashes have plagued Bitcoin in recent years, casting a shadow of doubt over the maturity of the cryptocurrencies’ infrastructure.  

In a survey conducted in early February, Gartner Finance, a unit of leading research and advisory provider Gartner, Inc., found that ninety-five percent of the respondents have no plans to purchase Bitcoin this year. 

Despite this, curiosity is still growing.  

Gartner conducted the survey because it was getting inquiries about Bitcoin from its clients. "CFOs said they were fielding questions about Bitcoin from their boards and investors, and needed to get smarter a lot quicker than they thought they did," says Alexander Bant, Gartner Finance's chief of research. "They asked us to provide definitions for the terms involving Bitcoin and Blockchain, so they could better explain Bitcoin's workings." 

For Stefano, the work being done in this space is encouraging.  

“It’s unbelievable the amount of work and research that are building up on Bitcoin. The evolution is this second layer of exchange on top of bitcoin.” 

Josh Vázquez Rendo, CTO at ClubView 

Josh first encountered Blockchain and Crypto when he started work in Front-end development roles. When he moved to working on full-stack, he started to learn more and more about the technology behind Crypto. For the last few years, Josh has been actively buying crypto while also working on multiple projects with a big potential for the use of  blockchain.  

“Using the blockchain directly has a big overhead for some projects and developers. The latest project that I’ve been working on provides an abstraction layer to accomplish complex workflows with a few API calls. The system works on top of Bitcoin SV, used mainly to store data in the transactions.” 

Bitcoin is the easy use-case of the Blockchain. 

When Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity is still unknown, released the whitepaper Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System in 2008 that described a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” known as Bitcoin, blockchain technology made its public debut. Blockchain, the technology that runs Bitcoin, has developed over the last decade into one of today’s biggest ground-breaking technologies with potential to impact every industry from financial to manufacturing to educational institutions. 

For Josh, cryptocurrencies are a side effect of Blockchain technology, and companies can benefit greatly from it.  

“Bitcoin is great but the true power of blockchain comes on the ecosystem around it and the tools  to use it for different purposes”  

Blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system. 

A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain. Each block in the chain contains a number of transactions, and every time a new transaction occurs on the blockchain, a record of that transaction is added to every participant’s ledger. The decentralised database managed by multiple participants is known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are constantly and continually growing as blocks are being added to the chain, which significantly adds to the security of the ledger. Josh argues that the Ether, Bitcoin’s little crypto-brother, has more potential and is better for development.  

“Ethereum is designed as a platform for building on top of the blockchain using ‘smart contracts'. Allows to easily set up private networks and offers a developer-friendly environment.” 

Instead of focusing on the cryptocurrencies, Josh is excited about the applications of Blockchain moving forwards. 

“The blockchain itself is really useful for anything that has to do with tracking something that happened in real life. Blockchain allows to store immutable data encrypted, and verifiable. At Clubview we plan on using it for traceability, security and accountability in the finance side of sports industry” 

What’s Next? 

Elon is perhaps one of the most high-profile individuals to invest into Bitcoin, but he certainly isn’t the first. Josh, through his work with Club View, knows a few companies who have already put money into Bit and continues to back it as a good place to put company money.  

After a turbulent 2020 which saw BTC value jump from 5k to 50k many forecast more growth as more mainstream players follow in the footsteps of Elon. For Miodrag Stajic - Lead Game Developer @ Falcon Interactive, It’s just the start of a domino effect. 

“My expectations for this year, is to see the price move up to 200k, simply based on all the economic factors and its demand. More ordinary people will also start converting to BTC and start paying this way, it will circulate in economy like never. “ 

Critics say Bitcoin isn’t tangible, it is just a bubble that will go to nothing in a similar manner to the Tulip Mania of the early 1600s when Tulip bulbs had a meteoric rise to $100,000 in today's money.  By the end of 1637, the bubble had burst. Paradoxically, Bitcoin at its current price of $50,000 means Bitcoin’s market cap of 1 Trillion Dollars is higher than the GDP of Holland. Exciting times for the space and let’s see what the future brings. 

We spoke to Julia Wilkins, Head of Data and Analytics at Health Economics Unit to discuss returning from maternity, board-level imposter syndrome and advice for future NHS tech leaders.

Julia’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Starting out as a biochemist, Julia worked in medical oncology for a time before deciding to leave behind life in the labs. With more of a keen interest in the data and analytics side of the role, Julia went after a role in the Pharmaceutical industry in a sales and marketing position. In what turned out to be a very formative experience in her career, Julia was sponsored to do a part time MBA over three years. After 2 years of that, the unexpected struck.

“I was pregnant with a baby daughter. So I decided to finish when I had the time. That was 25 years ago and I still haven’t found the time!”

Instead, Julia would move up to more senior roles within the pharmaceutical industry. It’s here she would discuss her passion for uplifting ideas and implementing change. To progress in this industry, Julia felt like she would have to move nearer to London.

“I decided that I had too much responsibility with my family to move - I was a single parent after all. Also, I didn't feel like my ideas were being taken on board by senior managers”

This sentiment was echoed by a friend of Julia’s and it wasn’t something either of them were going to take lightly. Over the course of a number of weeks and months, they decided to set up their own company - a data driven agency.

“We both gave up pretty secure jobs. It felt like a massive risk but I had a massive support network behind me.”

That Agency ran for 10 years, with it growing to 20 people in an office in the northwest with their book growing every year with new NHS and Pharma clients.

This attracted the attention of a global communications company that wanted to buy the company. 

“Neither of us thought about that. We were just having a good time, being our own bosses.”

The company would sell in 2012 and Julia remained working there for the next 5 years before Julia grew tired of corporate life and large company politics. Crucially, she felt like she wasn’t learning or growing as much as she was before. For that reason, Julia moved on to the NHS.

Joining the Imperial College Health Partners Business Intelligence Team, Julia took on responsibility for building the analytics team. 

“I had a lot to learn, it was a very, very steep learning curve, it was a very, different culture to what I was used to. And I had to really change the way that I worked and thought about things. “

After 2 years Julia realised that she wanted to focus more on the generation of evidence that would contribute to the adoption of innovation within the NHS.

“We decided that we would set up what would later be called the Health Economics Unit. It's a specialist agency within the NHS, that works with NHS partners, charities, academia, etc. Our team of specialist economists, econometricians, and analysts have extensive experience within the NHS and industry, we use this experience to develop models and evaluations, and to generate evidence from integrated, real-world datasets to inform complex health decisions.”

The ultimate aim of the Health Economics Unit is to create insights that will lead to positive change for patients.

The Temptation is to Feel Inferior 

Now 3 months into her position with the Health Economics Unit, Julia is on the very cutting edge of data-driven change initiatives.

Reflecting on her career, Julia remembers an issue many of the professionals we’ve spoken to on this series share - the juggling act. 

For Julia, putting her Masters on hold is a bit of a sticking point. 

“I was trying to do everything. A job, a Masters and a Mum. I wasn’t really giving either one my all. So now, when I look at my peers who have masters and PhDs - the temptation is to feel inferior.”

Formal qualifications are the culmination of hard work. As transformative as they are, the focus is almost entirely on the outcome and not the journey. For Julia, who stills plans on finishing her Masters, achievements are plentiful across her career. She believes that no one should be apologetic for their lack of qualification when their career speaks for itself. 

“I’ve set up a company. That company has been bought. I have all of this amazing experience. So when we do start to go around the table listing achievements, I don’t let myself apologise for the fact I haven’t got that Masters yet!”

Handling Stressful Situations

Julia’s career can be defined as a relentless pursuit of the next challenge. From setting up her own company to creating a division on the cutting edge of data-driven change, Julia has had her fair share of stress in between.

One particularly stressful situation came when Julia, operating her data-driven agency, suddenly found all of her data from NHS Digital suspended. 

“The strategies I had to deal with those fears and anxieties I had at the time, the people I had around me - they all helped me through it.”

Outside of your immediate network, Julia also recommends keeping your outlook positive in the face of crushing circumstances.

“It won't last forever. You’ll learn from it and positives will come from it. I say this to the people who work for me: sometimes you just have to reward yourself for getting through the day. Brush off the negatives and focus on the positives.”

You’ve Got To Be A Bit Cheeky

After taking the leap to set up the Health Economics Unit during COVID-19 Julia is driving digital transformation at the very top. For those looking to follow in Julia’s footsteps, she has this advice: 

“Don’t be afraid to ask people how they did it. Even out of the blue because you’ve got to be a bit cheeky. There’s so many people out there who are willing to help - it’s about having no fear and reaching out.”

In today’s climate, the security sector is undergoing a number of changes and is growing at an incredible rate. While the demand for employees is present, there are a number of roles that are struggling to find suitable applicants. This is, in part, owing to the security skills gap - when individuals working in or applying for roles lack particular skills necessary for those roles.

In the following article, we chat to several leading figures in the security industry to hear what they have to say about this gap, how it affects them, and the practical steps we can take to address it. 

Andrew Rose - CISO @ Proofpoint

Andrew Rose is the Resident CISO at Proofpoint, a company that delivers effective cybersecurity and compliance solutions to protect people across multiple channels, including the web, e-mail, the cloud, social media, and mobile messaging - helping firms across every industry.

When asked about the skills gap in the UK security industry, Andrew stated that he had been blessed with a relatively stable team for years but he had found difficulty in recruiting for certain key roles, of very differing seniority levels.

“It’s become clear there are certain roles that are more difficult to fill, those that require a niche set of skills – or those that are broad, but require leadership experience”. He elaborated, “typically it’s tough to find technical employees - those who do vulnerability management or act as security architects. These roles are in high demand and you can find firms paying high salaries to candidates with only some of the skills or experience they really want ”

In addition, as is a common point raised by those in the sector, he noted that it’s also hard to recruit for senior roles: “It’s difficult to find people who can talk competently about technology but also be able to work on a corporate level and face board members. They have to have a technical understanding and a sense of business savvy, and there’s a gap in this section right now.”

Exploring the reasoning behind this, the conversation moved on to the role of human resources in exacerbating this gap. One issue raised is the complexity and over extension of requirements listed in job adverts. “I saw a post on Linkedin the other day”, Andrew told me, “a job advert had been posted that required 10 years of experience with a certain technology - to which someone had replied, ‘that’ll be difficult given I only invented that tech six years ago!’”

Andrew highlighted how job adverts are too often a wish list of what they dream about in an employee. While that’s fine, “it’s unlikely one person could meet all of them and it dissuade great candidates from applying as they think “I can only do 30% of this!”” Andrew also noted  that it puts an additional strain on the gender gap as research suggests that women are less likely to apply for a role if they don’t feel that meet all of the requirements asked for. “Overall,” Andrew reasoned, “job specifications need to be more realistic and take into account competencies, skills and potential rather than specific existing knowledge  - recruiting ‘talent’ rather than ‘finished items’ can help reduce the skills gap.”

Bence Horvath - Director, Technology Consulting - Security @ Ernst & Young

With a long career in technology, Bence Horvath today works as the Director of Technology Consulting, specialising in security at Ernst & Young, a multinational professional services firm. 

For Bench Horvath, the key problem with the skills gap in the security industry is that we just don’t have enough people fullstop. He reasoned, “the industry has been increasing at a breakneck speed and the amount of people we need in this area (demand) is rising faster than supply.”

Addressing why demand is raising, Bence spoke of the “increasing digitisation of the world”. In fact, as a result of COVID, he believed that in the last 6-9 months we have seen as much growth in demand as there was over the past 3 years. And, with digitisation comes a number of security risks and the need to recognise and handle cybersecurity issues that, in turn, require an increasing number of professionals. 

Demand, though, is just one problem, Bence also addressed problems when it comes to the UK’s focus on supplying talent. Though the UK “have a great lot of focus placed on training cyber talent and have established dedicated programs in the government and in academia, it’s still not enough.” He argued, “we need to start bringing the possibility of cybersecurity as a career option at an earlier age too - showing people you don’t necessarily need to be a top hacker to be valuable in this field, we need a bit of a reality check to make the field more open, more attractive, and more diverse.”

University isn’t necessarily the answer either though. “Realistically, security moves so fast that it’s hard to get an accurate picture on a static university program. When we hire new graduates, I try to include them in as many projects as I can so they not only get experience but the client can benefit from their new way of thinking, being digital natives.” 

Richard Norman - Head of Information and Cyber Security @ A UK Retail Bank

Moving on, Richard Norman also offered a valuable insight on the issue. Richard has worked in security for as long as he can remember, in fact, before the industry even really gained the title ‘security’! “It’s just something that good administrators did”, he told us. Today, however, he works as head of Information and Cyber Security at a UK retail bank. 

“The problem”, Richard reasoned, “is that people gravitate towards the technical aspect of security”, yet there are few people drawn to “the governance and risk aspect of security as well as fully understanding the human factors”.  He does not believe this problem will last though - “I think this problem will start to sort itself out though as more organisations move to the cloud and technical challenges will be dealt with by specialists like Microsoft and Amazon.” Companies, meanwhile, “will have to deal with the cultural shift in managing the challenges associated with corporate governance of information risk in this environment - that’s why the gap is so important and needs to be solved.”

Talking about how to address this gap, Richard answered “as a nation, we need more awareness and more publication of the fact there’s a skill shortage.” On a government level, “perhaps it would be useful to have tax breaks or something to encourage organisations to develop skills themselves.”

Like Bence Hovarth, he believed this issue may not necessarily be fixed by sending people to university - companies can “take people in, even if they’re unskilled, and compensate by having a greater number of people and work on building up their knowledge.” Recently, for example, he had someone moving in from another sector of the business. “She never used to be interested in security, but having seen what we do, she’s found it really interesting and is really good at it. Ultimately, I think we need to look for talent and nurture it, wherever it may be, and work on retaining it for the future.”

Steve Donachie - Director Global Security Operations @ Aegon

Steve Donachie is Head of Security at Aegon, one of the world’s largest financial service organisations that provides life insurance, pensions, and asset management. It also boasts a global security operation center which is where Steve works. 

Steve touched on many of the issues addressed in previous interviews, reiterating their importance. Like Andrew Rose, Steve argued that it’s difficult to find people with a “blend of technical skills as well as an understanding of how organisations work, what expectations are, and some of the more non-technical skills.” He reasoned, “yes it’s helpful if they know science but I also want someone I would like to put in front of others in the business, capable of building relationships, and able to get information across in the right format.” 

Aegon is working on a way to address this gap and Steve told us all about it - “We’ve partnered with a local university to create an undergraduate program. The first year of the four year course is more generic business training, not necessarily focused on security but rather business operations and then they’ll typically gain the foundational security knowledge through on-the-job experience. They do one day of university a week, and four days working for us.” It seems a great way to combat the issues of a university education put forth by Richard Norman and Bench Hovarth. 

Overall, the issue with security is that it’s just not being talked about enough. On the plus side though, Steve sees this changing - “I’ve got a teenage daughter who is just becoming aware of what I do for a living. They’ve been doing coding exercises at school which is quite impressive, and they do talk about cybersecurity. However, at the moment, it’s more about from a social network point of view and regarding personal safety rather than the idea that there’s a career in this and you can study it. So yes, younger and younger people are learning about security but not as much as we need them to, given they are going to be in the workplace in the next four years.” 

So what now?

Ultimately, it’s clear from these industry leaders that the security industry is facing a supply problem - there is too much demand for certain skills and not enough people to fill the roles. Most of them agreed this can be attributed to the lack of information available out there on careers in security as well as recruiting companies expecting too much rather than focusing on the potential a person may have! These should be easy problems to fix but will it be too little, too late? 

We spoke to Abigail Harrison, Chief of Digital and Innovation and CIO at North West Ambulance Service l to discuss the importance of innovation, the skills needed to be a technical leader and advice for future leaders.

Abigail’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Obsessed With Innovation 

As the Chief of Digital and Innovation and CIO at North West Ambulance Service, Abigail is driving change at the highest level of the NHS - an organisation she has spent her entire career in. 

Starting in data quality and analytics, Abigail joined the NHS straight out of college and stayed there while she went to university. Working in Salford, Abigail worked with an improvement and innovation agency called Halo while leading the measurement and analytics function at the Trust. 

“During that time I got really interested in the interface between digital and technology and improvement of care because any kind of digital solutions seemed to slow everything down. But that wasn’t how it looked anywhere else.”

With that, Abigail started to look for digital-focused jobs and found a role specifically designed as an improvement and innovation role for someone who would do both innovation and information governance.

“I was really kind of obsessed with the idea of ‘we must be able to do this better’. And I wanted to get close to the action and close to the teams and really figure out how we get really, really good at the rapid implementation of digital solutions in healthcare. So that's why that's what I'm here to do.”

The Best Opportunities Seemed to Come When I Was Pregnant

Abigail, who has two young children, echoes the sentiment of many female professionals who struggle to find the balance between their career and their family aspirations. 

For Abigail, the biggest impact was around her ability to make decisions around the future of her career. 

“The best opportunities, like travelling with work and seeing the world, seemed to come at a point when I was too pregnant, to make that kind of journey. So you definitely miss opportunities, no matter what anyone says or how supportive the environment is.”

For Abigail, the biggest impact was around her ability to make decisions around the future of her career. 

A transition like no other, returning to work after parental leave is hard. You’ve been out of the flow of the office for weeks or months, and you’re returning as a different person with new priorities and concerns. (Not to mention the stress and strain of endless new logistics.) It’s jarring and often overwhelming.

“There's no way that you can be functioning at the same level that you were before you went off because you've not worked for six months and you’re knackered and you've got a million other things to think about.” 

Outside of the added responsibility, there is a certain level of guilt. We’ve spoken to a few ladies who have felt they have missed out of aspects of work and parenthood by trying to balance the two. 

“People worry for you and question your decisions in a supportive way but that just puts pressure on you. I don’t think anyone would ever ask my husband if he’s sure he wants to take on a job after becoming a parent.”

Abigail, who is currently going through this period of transition herself, believes confidence is key to coming out the other side stronger. 

“My little boy gets Croup a lot and I’ve had to take time out for that, which naturally has a knock-on effect. But it happens and It doesn’t matter because I’m still the right person for this organisation.”

With that confidence and support from her organisation, Abigail has been able to work incredibly flexible. 

“I think a lot of people would look at my role and think, ‘Well, you can't do that role and work flexibly.’ Actually, you can. I think it’s such a shame when women don’t put themselves forward for things because of that. We just need to keep going”

My Role is About Clarity of Focus

Led by curiosity, Abigail works towards the creation of a culture and environment that encourages innovation and excellence. Whereas bringing together the skills, people and environments to make things happen can be challenging, the actual function of Abigail’s role is deceptively simple.

“It's about having a real clarity of focus. So what are the things that we need to achieve? Let’s be incredibly clear and precise on the solution and work hard on making it intuitive. My background in improvement methodologies means we’re always looking for better, simpler and faster.” 

Take Time for Understand Your Value 

For those looking to step into a technical leadership role within the NHS but aren’t sure how they’ll fair without high levels of clinical understanding, Abigail has plenty of advice to share. 

“Take the time to kind of understand yourself the value that you bring and really own that. When you speak to people, tell them the value you bring. The more you say it, the more you really start to own it and that will give you everything you need to go forward without pretending.”

A registered occupational therapist and a Clinician, Melissa has a lot of experience working in different areas of practice from acute, ward-based practice to occupational therapy from out of her front room.

In 2013, Melissa had her first opportunity as a clinician to get involved with a project that sought to develop an app that allowed integration with electronic patient records.

“They were looking for clinicians to run some workshops and spend time with software engineers to think about how this solution could be developed in a way that supported our way of working.”

This was Melissa’s first opportunity to look at how technology could be used to enable smarter, more efficient working.

“I think what really grabbed my attention was when we started to think about the digital tools we were using in our personal lives but weren't necessarily having that same experience in our professional lives. It was a very exciting opportunity to learn a lot about project management, design and user experience.” 

That experience served as the catalyst for Melissa’s passion for digital transformation at the highest levels of healthcare. From there, Melissa volunteered to be involved with as many digital transformation projects as possible from electronic patient record systems to just generally working more closely with IT teams around systems. 

At the time there was a bit of a working renaissance happening in London. Many digital health networking groups, that specialised in the merging of clinical practice and digital technology, were cropping up and Melissa was keen to find time to be a part of them all.

“It was through the networks that actually learnt a lot and met new people, and gave me different ideas about as a clinician, what could I do to invest in my career to have different opportunities. And that's where I learned about the digital health summer school.” 

Melissa explains that digital health summer schools are a fantastic place to learn and network with like-minded colleagues.  Everyone with a range of challenges and how that affects digital health. While there, Melissa was also exposed and inspired by the CCIO role, a role she would later step in to

Now at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Melissa wears many different hats including the Associate Director of Digital Health Transformation, Associate CCIO and Clinical Safety Officer for Digital Tools and Developments.

There Needs to be a Clinical Voice in Transformation Projects

How many projects have failed because they have been unable, or unwilling, to take into account the voices of end-users? Melissa, who has worked at the clinical level, this is an all too familiar experience. 

“When solutions don’t land the way you want them to, or there is little uptake, it’s usually down to the fact that the people designing it isn’t living and breathing the experience of the problem.”

Under the motto of ‘people before technology’ Surrey and Borders has pushed for a ‘human-first’ approach to digital transformation and has pioneered the development of in-house design teams that can work in conjunction with experts who live the problems that need solving.

“We need to understand your needs, we need to research that with you and develop together.” 

For Melissa, who has been through the process of putting herself forward to be part of these digital health projects for the last 8 years, believes there is still more to be done to get clinical leadership involved at the highest level of change. 

“This can’t be a tokenistic role, we need to think about the product, the process and even the language you use. We’re very familiar with concepts of co-design and co-development. Volunteering and demonstrating on these projects has proven that there is value for everyone in these projects when we all work together.”

Understanding Your Strengths

Melissa, who was sponsored by Surrey and Borders to take part in a Womens Digital Leaders programme , understands the power of knowing your own strengths and that of the people around you. An incredibly empowering experience, going through these processes didn’t just enable Melissa to recognise her strengths, but also helped fuel her up for continual development. 

“It put the fire back into my belly.”

The programme uses the Clifton Strengths tool, which breaks down your top 5 strengths from a possible 34, it has been helping teams understand what makes each other tick for many years now. For Melissa, it was a breakthrough moment that helped her connect with leaders regardless of discipline.

“I see projects through multiple lenses, I still see it through the clinical end-user needs and I see it from the transformation perspective around new ways of working and how we embed that what we need to do, I also can bring to the table now thinking around the safety options of using technology, in healthcare. And with my experience, I'm also thinking now around what does that mean for you know, information and security.” 

Although it’s never easy to recognise your own strength and experiences, it’s certainly been a key factor in Melissa’s discovery of her voice. 

Building A Diverse Team

Melissa is the fourth member of her team to have gone through the Digital Health Academy helping the team understand they can’t survive or thrive as a digital team if they don’t invest in the breadth of knowledge, experiences and skills in the digital health space. 

“There is absolute merit in different voices, different disciplines, different backgrounds. I think that's what makes us unique and different, as a digital Directorate for an organisation”

Embracing the diversity of thought in their team has done more than elevate the standards of work produced, it has also created a space where everyone feels welcome and can benefit from the vast amounts of experience and knowledge.

“Today our Chief Digital Information Officer, Toby Avery was talking to us about the role of ethics in our decision making.. We’ve appointed a Chief Digital Data Ethics Officer, but what does that mean? How can we champion ethics in our clinical records, practices and processes? How can we develop technology to support that? These are really exciting conversations that we have really tried to create space for in our leadership team.”

Lifelong Learning

For those looking to follow in Melissa’s footsteps and carve out a career in the transformation space, Melissa has this advice: 

“It’s lifelong learning. We need to keep our knowledge and skills sharp so we can adapt quickly. So, it’s about finding the right learning opportunities for yourself. For me, that was investing in some leadership skills that helped me be comfortable with who I am and what I can bring.”

As the Executive IT Director at Arden and GEM CSU, Nigel sits on the board of the CSU and manages the full spectrum of IT Services for both corporate IT support and GP IT Support from service desk all the way through to infrastructure. 

We were keen to speak to Nigel about the growing role of IT and informatics within the NHS, digital transformation and building diverse teams. 

The Biggest Change is the Culture Change

For many, Digital transformation has become a bit of a buzzword. With full-scale home working just a button’s click away for most, it’s easy to forget that larger, more monolithic organisations’ transformation projects can take years, sometimes decades. 

In the NHS, one of the world’s largest employers, decades worth of transformation has happened over a matter of months due, in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic. Transformation that has seen many thousands of NHS staff moved out of hospitals and traditional settings and into their homes. 

Nigel, who took his role just three months before COVID struck, reflects on those early days as being a period of massive culture change.

“At the time it was just another major incident. So within days and weeks, we provisioned for home working for all of our staff and supported our customers. And the technology behind it was relatively straightforward. The big change is the cultural change, the business change that goes with sitting in your dining room, or your spare bedroom, or wherever you happen to be.”

Working from his Motorhome on his driveway, Nigel has perhaps one of the most interesting remote work set ups we’ve seen. Regardless, it should stand as a testament to the sheer range of different working situations people found themselves in almost overnight. 

“The biggest journey and change we've seen is not the provision of technology but how we now support our staff and our customer base in using that technology and making the most of it; staying together as a unit and a team to deliver to our customers. That's been the hardest challenge.”

IT Was a Support Function

While COVID was stimulating a remote working renaissance, it was also quietly turning the spotlight towards Informatics and highlighting its role as a transformer as well as a supporter. 

“Historically, IT was seen as a support, back-office function. It’s now rapidly changing.” 

More and more, technology is not just being seen as a means to an end but as a transformative stimulant that can unearth inefficiencies and unlock new potential.

“IT has to be an enabler to change. The transformation brought about by the adoption of technology can support new pathways; it’s where we can get efficiencies within systems.”

The role of CIO has been key for many organisations in their pursuit of digital transformation. Having that champion at the highest level is key, but for the NHS - which seems to struggle for CIO representation at the highest level - it is perhaps even more important to have someone with the ability to articulate the benefits of new developments when, at the bottom line, it’s patient care that truly matters. 

“a CIO needs to sell that, you know, it doesn't happen by chance. You've got to articulate the benefits in any given setting and quantify that to have that all-important seat at the table, to influence how an organisation functions.”

Just Delivering a Good Service Isn’t Enough Anymore

Change is happening rapidly in the NHS. Over the last 10 months, we have seen greater acceleration than the previous four or five years prior to that. This, although partly borne out of the necessity to move at pace and mobilise a service that would provide care in a new context, has been driven by an understanding that the NHS needs to address nuances and subtleties around care and digital health.

“Traditionally, it’s been a  transactional service and we’re great at delivering to a transactional need. It's no longer the case that just delivering very well to those services will give the customers what they need. In a GP setting, for example, we need to truly understand the clinical user interface and patient needs in order to maximise the  online consultation experience and benefit.”

Crucially, for Nigel, it’s about forming a partnership with the various parts of the NHS rather than falling into the trap of investing in teams only to silo them away from the services they’re there to support.

“We need to support our customers who have an in-house digital or IT team; to walk alongside them and work for hand in hand with them on that digital journey.” 

The Best Meetings Are The Ones Where Someone Throws In Something Unexpected

Creating change in this space would be a difficult task without the firm foundations of a progressive culture. 

For those who have been following my posts on Linkedin and Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been proactively seeking out advocates for diversity within the NHS.

Nigel, who has been very mindful of addressing unconscious bias, believes it’s about finding a balance. 

“I'm going through consultation and restructure right now; the blend of individuals you get in a team and the ideas generation that comes from diversity in a team is really powerful and really important. Otherwise, you'll just get what you've always had before and that won't take you forward in any way. So it is something we discuss in my management team meetings in terms of how we adapt and how we approach recruitment. It's something we all continually have to be mindful of as we go forward.”

Finding this balance and addressing the roadblocks to creating a team that thinks differently is key to innovation and for what Nigel hopes for the future of technology in the NHS.

“The best meetings I have are where someone throws something in that changes the way we look at a situation. When that happens you know you've got it right, because the strength of what we do here comes from the breadth, depth and diversity of the people that we work with.”

Team South-West has taken the permanent IT recruitment world by storm. Like for everyone, there have been ups and downs throughout the pandemic but they have worked incredibly hard to ensure their clients and candidates still received exceptional service, whilst everyone was adapting to new ways of working. They have supported each other every step of the way and as a result, every single team member achieved promotion in 2020. It’s no surprise that they were crowned Team of the Year 2020 in our annual awards earlier this month.

Who are Team South-West?

Let’s start with recently promoted Divisional Manager and ‘Manager of the Year 2020,’ James Dyson. James joined Evolution almost 9 years ago as a graduate with a bit of sales experience and he has been here ever since! James is an exceptional recruiter and has built exemplary relationships with his clients over the years which has enabled him be successful consistently. He is a prime example of how Evolution can help you to realise your potential with our ongoing training and clearly defined structure for progression. Now part of the senior management team, he has his sights firmly set on his next goal, which will make him a Director within the business.

Just over 2 years ago, James was ready to start building a team and hired Scott Bridges to join him. Scott served in the military and then pursued a successful career in sales at Tesco Mobile prior to joining Evolution. 4 promotions later, Scott is now a Principal Consultant and has been instrumental in supporting James with coaching and mentoring as the team has continued to expand.

Next came Oli Stockford who joined us from a sales role at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. In 18 months; Oli has achieved 4 promotions, broken the record of the top permanent billings ever achieved at Evolution, bagged himself 3 awards and both Oli and Scott will be going on a once in a lifetime trip (when we can travel again, of course!)

Aimee Clemson was the next member of the dream team and came from a sales background selling print solutions. Aimee joined us during a tricky time caused by the pandemic but that didn’t stop her from achieving promotion in just a few months!

Rachel Connolly also joined us from Enterprise and followed suit – a couple of months into the role and she has achieved a promotion with her sights firmly set on the next and this is despite the challenges we are all currently facing.

The newest member of the team is Luke Vickers who joined us at the start of this year from a background in financial services, followed by a successful career in sales at Enterprise. With Luke’s drive and attitude, combined with the success around him we are confident Luke will be a great addition!

What’s made them so successful?

Team South-West have a high-performance culture where they all hold each other accountable for their activity and performance. Everyone is seen as equal and they work very collaboratively both as a team and with the wider business, sharing leads and also successes and failures in order to instil best practice and learn from each other’s mistakes.

Whilst video calls are the ‘norm’ now, they weren’t always. James, Scott and Oli pioneered this prior to COVID and had huge success in nurturing relationships with both clients and candidates. As a result of this, they were ahead of the curve when the pandemic hit and whilst competitors were still figuring things out, they were fine-tuning their process to make it even better.

Finally, the last point to mention is the healthy competition within the team. Whilst everyone is supportive, everyone is definitely looking to beat each other which drives standards and morale.

James and his team have done a fantastic job and we look forward to seeing what’s next for them. There are so many other examples of success across the business that demonstrate how we can support people to realise their potential. If you’re not sure you can achieve your goals where you are now, then contact me for an informal chat about how we can help.

With COVID-19 requiring social distancing measures, metaphorical jet-boosters have been strapped to the back of many companies’ remote working policies. 

In the scramble to get everyone efficiently working outside of the office environment, many will have overlooked the security challenges that come along with this new set up. 

We reached out to cybersecurity leaders to discuss the scale of the challenge and what businesses can do to secure their remote teams. 

This article is part of a two-part series where we talk to security leaders about securing a distributed team. Read part one here. 

Michael Trevett / Director UK & Ireland / Mandiant 

Michael Trevett is the Director for UK & Ireland at Mandiant. Michael has taken up a number of CISO and Director roles across a range of different industries, from Government to Finance and Consultancy. 

He has seen the role of CISO evolve over the last 15 years and now, in his role at Mandiant (the consulting and services part of the FireEye business) has three main responsibilities: incident response and threat hunting, proactive services (threat intelligence-led Red Teaming and attack simulations) and strategic services (helping organisations build resilience and be prepared for attacks).

Were Companies Prepared for WFH?

Working across those three pillars, Michael has seen the full spectrum of responses through his clients. For the most part, companies have needed to react very quickly to suddenly having a remote workforce and have, for the most part, been successful in doing so.

“Pre-Covid, individuals have tended to be clustered together into offices or common workspace, where they can join directly to the corporate backbone for the use of their technology. With the pandemic, businesses were forced to scale some of the solutions they already had, and in some cases, implement solutions that they didn't have previously to allow their teams to work remotely and their businesses continue to operate. Generally, I think a lot of organisations did a really good job of that.”

Necessity, it would seem, is the mother of invention. With that in mind, there were always going to be some challenges because of how diverse our workforce is. Changes happened quickly, and at scale but more still needs to be done to ensure we remain safe while working from home.

Starting Earlier, Staying Later 

Working from home comes with all sorts of benefits, the most important being the increased levels of flexibility afforded to the individuals.

While true remote working cuts out the commute, it doesn’t automatically mean that time becomes free. In fact, it requires high levels of discipline, usually developed over years of remote working, to stick to a routine and make that extra time work for you.

As a result, many of us will agree that we’re starting work earlier and finishing later during this time. This, for Michael, is an added complication for security teams everywhere. 

“It’s too easy for everything to blend into one big blur. People are tired, and when people are tired, consciously or not, they look for shortcuts.”

Whereas before you might get up and go and talk to IT or Finance to find an answer to a particular problem, remote working can present barriers to some individuals that lead them to bend or break important processes. 

“We’ve encouraged clients to put psychological ‘firebreaks’ in place to avoid the burnout that can have a big effect on security. These can be as simple as an informal team call at the end of the week to just touch base with people and separate the working week from the weekend.”

VPNs and Two-Factor Authentication

Moving to remote working at scale means a lot of data that would normally be protected by the ‘castle walls’ of your perimeter are now outside of your environment. This means that the way your team connects to core systems and networks has to be at least as secure, if not more secure, than when they were connecting while in the office. 

For Michael, the best place to start is with VPNs and Two-Factor Authentication for devices.

“That stuff (remote working solutions) you might normally want to plan over  18 weeks or 18 months, you now need to stand up in 18 days.”

It’s also important that you’re aware of the divide in devices. Corporate devices, that have a connection to the network from the get-go, can be centrally managed and updated with minimal interaction needed from the user. 

“If you can only apply patches when the devices are connected to the VPN, you need to make certain that your teams know that. And if all the patches come out on a Saturday, they need to leave the machines plugged in and switched on and connected to the VPN on Saturday, whatever it's going to be, because otherwise, you risk creating a vulnerability.”

Companies that operate a bring your own device (BYOD) policy have a slightly different remit with devices that come with their whole own set of challenges. 

“If there were an incident and you want to take someone’s BYOD device away and run a whole bunch of forensics -  is someone going to let you have their personal iPad? It sounds like a trivial example. But it’s only trivial until you say, “I need you to give me your device for an investigation” and someone says “No”. Or if it's stolen, and it contains corporate data, do you have the right to do a remote wipe? Have you got the capability and the right to do that? All of these kinds of things (and many more) need to be really thought through with bringing your own device. Yeah, it's fine that there are ways to manage BYOD successfully. But  it needs to be carefully considered.”

Rob Horne Principal Consultant / Commissum

Rob Horne is a Principal Consultant at Commissum and leads the Advisory Service. After falling into computers and networks in the mid 90’s, Rob has worked a number of cybersecurity roles over his career from consultancy to IT security manager. 

Although Commission has traditionally been focused on pen testing, Rob, who joined Commissum in July 2018, has been growing the consultancy side of the business through the Advisory Service. 

“We’re continually looking at ways we can improve the traditional approach to consultancy, We see our role very much as a partner; there to continuously help our clients deal with their problems and reduce their overall risk, not just produce one-off reports with long lists of recommendations.”
 

Changing and Revising Policies

Having worked in security and dealt with numerous breaches for the best part of 15 years, Rob has seen it all when it comes to attacks;. nothing Rob is seeing now from his wide portfolio of clients is a surprise, but the new way of working means there are new factors to consider and new attack vectors.

A combination of high-profile breaches, like the recent cyber attack on Manchester United Football Club, and security now increasingly being seen as a board-level issue, has brought about a shift in perceptions. In many organisations, security is no longer being seen as an afterthought and is being addressed closer to the start of development lifecycles. 

It’s that changing of perception and perspective that has led many organisations to change their practices; this is certainly a step in the right direction, but if it isn’t supported with revised policies that help people in the new normal - they will show diminishing returns. 

“We’ve heard of people using the ironing board as a desk. This is an uncomfortable situation, you're going to get distracted. And you're going to take shortcuts. If we do carry on like this we will need to see formal recognition of these issues and the risks they introduce  to better reflect the new working conditions.”

There’s Education to be Done

At the top of any security agenda for Rob is security awareness. So often overlooked, the education piece can be incredibly powerful when supported by a wider business model and commitment to security culture.

“Security is not throwing money at things, it's behaving in a certain way. You can improve security by creating the right policies and procedures, and instilling a culture within the business that says we take this seriously.” 

This can be a bit of a tough line to walk with many viewing the security department as corporate enforcers of the rules. Nine times out of ten, however, it’s simply down to a lack of awareness of what security does and how it enables the organisation to achieve better results. 

“I’ve dealt with people who don’t see the value. Then you sit down with them and take them through it: ‘if we don't do this, that could happen.’ You can see a light go on and they’ll then go on to convince their colleagues of the value.”

Refocus on the Basics

As far as actions businesses can take right now to make their teams more secure while working remotely, Rob recommends focusing on the basics that have been made even more important due to the change of environment. 

“It comes down to what's different in the home to the office. Don't do anything you wouldn't in the office. For example, think about your home network, who else is on that network? Have you given the Wi-Fi password to your next-door neighbours? It’s all about looking at what’s different,  making people aware of what’s changed, and providing the support needed to ensure new risks are dealt with.”

Gavin Solomon / Senior Consultant & Penetrations Tester/ Crossword Cybersecurity

Gavin Solomon is a Senior Consultant and Penetration Tester at Crossword Cybersecurity. Gavin entered Cybersecurity from a career in development after highlighting security risks in the systems he was working with. After learning the ropes of penetration testing himself and developing a passion for security in general, Gavin moved to Crossword in 2019 and hasn’t looked back.

“At Crossword I've got the support of other people who've worked in security for quite a long time. But also, I'm not just focusing on one technology. In my last firm, they just used a limited range of platforms. And obviously, I had the advantage of familiarity, having developed some of their apps myself or had a hand in them. At Crossword, we dip into and out of a whole wide range of different technologies from all our clients. So I get much more variety now than I ever had before.” 

Crossword is divided into two parts, Crossword Cybersecurity itself and Crossword Consulting. Gavin works for the consulting division and perform IT security audits, penetration testing and more. Crossword also has a number of products that help organisations on their cybersecurity journey. One such product, Rizikon, looks at supplier assurance which is often one of the biggest weaknesses in organisations. 

People are the Targets

While Gavin hasn’t seen an increase in attacks that target technical vulnerabilities during the Covid period, he has seen an increase in social-engineering attacks that target people and the changes they are currently going through.

“I think it's targeted more towards the way people work. You know, people receive emails on something that seems perfectly plausible in the current climate, and they're persuaded to do various things. There have been attacks that have taken advantage of the way people think and the way they are having to work. Attackers have manipulated that.”

Keep Equipment Patched and Updated

For Gavin, it is also crucial that security teams build robust processes for ensuring machines are kept up to date. Hard work done on ensuring the initial protection is in place can be undone by devices and networks that are not kept topped up with the latest patches.

“Make sure that employees who are using company equipment off-site are applying the latest patches, keeping their machines updated with the latest fixes, not just the operating system patches, but also keeping applications up to date.” 

We spoke to Liz Ashall-Payne, Chief Executive Officer at ORCHA to discuss her career in the NHS, imposter syndrome and being yourself.

Liz’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Founding ORCHA

Starting her career as a speech-language therapist within the NHS, Liz developed her specialism in complex paediatric care and became a clinician. With a strong passion for helping as many people as she can, this move to clinician came with some frustration for Liz.

“I could only see one patient at a time and the waiting list was just growing every day. I got a bit obsessed with trying to cut out waste so I could see more patients in the time I had in the day.”

Managing to get her own capacity from six to ten patients in a day, Liz turned her transformative powers to the service as a whole. It was here that Liz realised the inefficiencies in the service and that if change doesn’t happen, then care will never reach everyone who needs it. 

With digital health technologies becoming standard practice towards the start of Liz’s new venture with the Academic Health Science Network, Liz had the opportunity to transform service at scale with access to new tools, but the tools came with their own set of challenges. 

“We had all these amazing technologies that nobody knew about nobody would use because they didn't trust them. And so I was back to being reduced by my own capacity, I was then back to having to try and convince people to use these tools. And I thought this is ridiculous, we need to have a systematic approach to getting people to know which tools can be trusted, and therefore promoted to patients.” 

Liz never intended to set up a company and build a product, but her obsession with finding solutions to providing care at scale necessitated it. 

Now the Founding Chief Executive of the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA), Liz and the team are reviewing and approving digital technologies for healthcare organisations. Liz’s vision may have given life to an entire organisation but, at its core remains the same passion for providing care to as many people as possible.

“Reviewing the technology is just a means to an end, our mission is to get high-quality digital health tools to people who need them.”

Leaping Into The Unknown - Twice!

Liz, who spent over 20 years in the NHS, attributes her long tenure to her commitment to service transformation and system leadership. Starting as a Clinician and moving into system leadership on both a national and international standing, Liz has seen the NHS from many different perspectives. This, combined with her own penchant for fixing and finding solutions, has enabled her to provide solutions that truly connect with the needs of the people it serves. 

Looking back on your own career, or looking at someone’s like we’re doing now, it’s easy to forget the weight of the decisions we made in the past. For Liz, leaving her clinical role to take on more transformation work was a massive leap into the unknown. 

“It was a massive part of my identity and when I was struggling to keep up with my clinical time for revalidation I had to make a decision:  Am I just going to keep my toe dipped in the clinical water? Or am I going to really properly invest in what I actually want to do now? So that was a difficult decision.” 

It’s a decision we all have to make at some point in our career. Stepping out of our comfort zones and committing to something new is never easy, and should never be something we take lightly. For Liz, the jump was the scariest part and everything that followed was perfectly manageable and exciting. 

Making this leap once in a career is hard enough, but to do it twice is unheard of - unless you’re Liz, of course, who left a full-time job to found ORCHA with a family to think of. 

“I remember writing down how much money I needed to maintain my life in a very practical way. I literally costed the move-out and worked backwards from that sum and made sure I had that much money every month.”

With ORCHA not making any money at the beginning, Liz worked as a consultant while her partner continued to work and provide some financial stability. For Liz, who has always been an incredibly independent person, this was a bit of a shock to the system.  

“If I'm honest, the day after I left my full-time job I woke up thinking: Oh my gosh, what have I done? What have I done? And part of that was because my parents were saying, What are you doing? You're walking away from nearly 20 years worth of employment and a pension.” 

Getting through this period, for Liz, was about perseverance and a commitment to the same passions that really drove her to this decision. With this in mind, Liz quickly developed a pragmatic mindset that has helped her in her new venture. 

“I started to take it one day at a time. What's the next thing I need to do? Get up tomorrow? What am I going to do today? I was breaking everything down into tiny steps and honestly, it's the best thing I've ever done.”

A Learning Opportunity

In a recent report, PR agency Tyto announced the most influential people in the UK Tech scene in 2020. Behind Matt Hancock and Richard Branson was Liz.

“I was laughing my head off, reading this while eating my breakfast.” 

Imposter Syndrome is something we all suffer from. For Liz, questions like ‘how did I get here’ are a daily occurrence. Overcoming it isn’t a simple matter but Liz believes that focusing on learning and development is one way to keep yourself level headed. 

“And I've got so much more I need to learn from and it's a learning privilege for me more than anything, a continuous learning opportunity, about the sector, about myself about how I do things, how I shouldn't do things.” 

Be Yourself

For those looking to follow in Liz’s footsteps by either making a change to their career or by starting one, Liz has this advice; 

“Be yourself. It sounds so basic but it took me 20 years to learn to be myself and be the best version of myself. To do it, you have to show a level of vulnerability and then understand that you don’t need to be an expert on everything.”

Reflecting on the leaps she’s made in her career, Liz also believes it’s important for people to focus on doing what they believe in. 

“Passion is so important because when it gets hard, it's that passion that will get you up in the morning and get you back onto it. And it's interesting for me at the moment, and you know, I've got a 15-year-old son, and he's going through career options. He’s talking about A-Level Maths because it’s a great skill to have. I'm saying, Do you love it? Because if you don't, don't do it, do what you love and you will find a way through because it's that passion that will absolutely get you wherever you want to get to.”

For a long time, degrees have been a hallmark of a candidate's commitment to a field and their excellence in that subject. In tech, it’s no different, with many job specs still listing a degree as a requirement for consideration.

But according to the HackerRank 2020 Developer Skills Report, the dial is moving on education and tech. Their report, which featured over 116,000 developers from 162 countries, revealed that a third of hiring managers have hired a developer who has learned their skills purely from Bootcamp software and other sites like YouTube. 

We spoke to a few developers and tech leaders on their route into technology, the importance of a degree in technical fields and advice for those who might be looking to break into tech with or without a degree.

James Conroy, Chief Technology Officer at NOWCE LIMITED

James Conroy is the Chief Technology Officer at NOWCE Limited. Now responsible for the advancement of technology solutions at NOWCE, James looks back on the early stages of his career - which avoided formal education - with fondness. 

“I was at a crossroads in my life. All of my family had gone into further education and I hadn’t. After messing around for a few years, I met someone who just happened to have a software development company. He was adamant that what I wanted to achieve could be done without further education and he offered to take me on and train me up.”

What James lacked in formal qualifications he made up for with passion for his work. Before joining the software development company that gave him his first break, James was working on a number of projects that taught he a lot about control structures, conditional statements and loops - to name just a few. 

“This all derived from my interest in video games and creating mods for games like Doom and Quake. That gave me a bit of a head start.”

The idea was to take James’ existing skillset and throw him in at the deep end. Day one, he was working on production work for clients with everything he’s learned, being learned on the job while working in a professional capacity.

You Can’t Gauge Capability From a Degree

James, who has worked with developers for his entire career, has seen the full spectrum of capabilities and believes that using a degree as the benchmark for capability in a development position is ill-advised. 

“As far as being able to gauge whether someone's going to be capable or not just based on whether they've got a potential degree, I think is absolutely impossible. I've taught guys that have got degrees and they’ve been useless.”

Some people will make their decision to go into studying a degree based on the fact that it may well help them in their future career and may help them dispel some nervousness around their reason for being part of a particularly difficult project. For James, however, this anxiety is something a developer will need to overcome degree or not.

“I was there, on top of this huge mountain and you feel like you could drop at any moment. But I think one of the good qualities a programmer needs to have is a little bit of hubris. So I reminded myself of that, and said, You know, people are doing this everyday all around the world, so why can’t I?”

My Nine-Year-Old Daughter Goes to Code Camp

Working with clients in the Eastern Region of the UK, which includes the city of Cambridge as a major hub, I find myself regularly coming up against difficult briefs to find highly educated professionals with minimum requirements sometimes being a redbrick education. 

For James, who works out of Cambridge, there is a degree of snobbery around candidate criteria which has been exacerbated by the micro-climate in Oxbridge. 

Often times, the market itself becomes a bit of a self-fullfilling prophecy. Candidates go for degrees because they know that they need a degree to be accepted to interview, then they go on to set the entry criteria itself when they come into a hiring position.

“A lot of the older guys have come from that formal education background. So you know, maybe there is a little bit of bias towards their selection as well. Having said that, I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

However, the market itself is changing. As mentioned at the start of the article, there is a growing number of disrupters entering the market who can provide degree-level education from your bedroom. Similarly, at the secondary level, more emphasis is being put on to careers in technology as we hurtle our way towards a more digital future. 

“My nine-year-old daughter goes to Code Camp while she's in school. So you know, that the market is changing a little bit in that it's getting more saturated at the lower end.”

Theoretically, this could lead to more opportunities at the lower end of the education scale which schemes to get kids into technology careers before university is even considered. 

Don’t Have A Degree? Just Take A Leap

For James, who launched his career in technology off the back of his passion for development, if you want a career in technology, but don’t want to get a degree, it’s a case of knocking on people’s doors.

“If there's an opportunity, you should sell yourself. And if you can play the right game and get the right people listening and put yourself forward with the right value, I think there is an opportunity for people to just jump in with a company with no experience at all, just like I did. I think you’d be surprised how many companies would be amenable to that.”
 

Jakub Michalewski, Chief Technology Officer at Not A CV

Jakub Michalewski is Chief Technology Officer at Not A CV. An experienced technologist, Jakub’s degree is in Business Management. His methodology, when it comes to education and qualification, is a sound one. 

“I don’t believe you need a specific qualification to become successful in your journey to becoming a good developer or being good at anything in that case. All I believe you need is a willingness to spend time learning new skills and accepting new challenges.”

In an incredibly saturated market, Jakub has performed many interviews and he has never seen a direct correlation between high levels of education and high levels of skill. This isn’t to say people with degrees aren’t good, but it certainly isn’t a guarantee of skill. 

“My team are passionate about the things that they are doing. Some of them have been to University and have done the programming course, some of them haven’t. And I still see the same potential in those guys. And I employed them because they have that passion and willingness to learn.”

 

University Is Still A Good Investment Of Time - But There are Alternatives

A thought shared by many of the professionals I talk to about this topic is the idea that the true value of university lies in the community and culture it builds around it core subjects. 

“At University, you’re in a community of people who share similar knowledge or who want to work towards something similar.”

The old adage, ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ rings true here. University, while coming under fire for what it teaches and how it prepares students for working life, is a great place to meet people who will later go on to be not only great friends but also great professional connections. 

To name just a few; Facebook, Reddit, WordPress were all founded out of University by students. 

“If you want to go to University, you're definitely going to have all the tools in your hands to make a successful career when you leave. But it's not definitive that people that completed uni will have more knowledge than the people that didn't, because it's a very personal experience.”

Just as the Unversity experience is very individual, so too is the way that people learn in general. For some, the theoretical study may be challenging. For others, getting hands-on with a product may leave them scratching their head, wondering where to start. 

The former is hard to replicate in a workplace and the latter is hard to replicate in a university. 

For Jakub, it’s a case of matching the learning styles of those on the team to provide an experience they enjoy - which, for his team, happens to be Pluralsight and Udemy. 

Tom Ridges/Co-founder, CTO/Lumilinks - Attitude Trumps Technical Knowledge

Tom Ridges is the Co-Founder and CTO at Lumilinks. His stance on the degree’s in a tech career is that they’re not as important as people may initially make them out to be. 

“I’ve run a couple of different teams within different organisations and it always comes down to attitude. Attitude usually trumps technical knowledge.”

Tom has worked with both ends of the scale; some who have studied Computer Science at Cambridge and others who have never set foot inside a University. For him, the difference can be inconsequential. 

For Tom, a degree is a good indicator of a candidates base level skill and knowledge. Likewise, a few years working on different projects as a hobby will give you a good technical benchmark. 

“If I look across my team, i’ve got people who’ve got degrees and people who haven't. If you were to run through one of our statistical models, you wouldn’t notice a difference in performance between anyone.”

Considering degree’s to be a bit of an archaic measure on the ability of a candidate, Tom always looks for the correct mindset - one that can think through problems and push harder to find solutions - over the right qualification criteria. 

There are Disconnects Between What’s Taught and What’s Needed 

Education in general comes under fire for not teaching students valuable life skills.

Instead of learning critical life skills on how to manage money, how to negotiate, or how to communicate, kids are mostly taught to memorize information. This is helpful to learn, but not at the cost of not learning critical life skills.

When it comes to advanced education, a similar logic applies with many employers believing degree level education does a poor job of preparing students for their next step: the workplace. 

Taking this one step further, many argue that a curriculum will always be one step behind the working world because the process of breaking down information into a curriculum takes time - time enough for the world to move on.

“I studied network and Communications at uni. So computer network, satellite networks, you know, all those things. I left Uni and the world was already moving on. I still had the principles nailed down, but it’s almost impossible to keep up.”

Instead of university curriculums, and by extension students, would be better off focusing on topics more in line with software development in a business setting. Topics like behaviour-driven development and other skills that help a developer speak to a business and learn what they require.

For the average student, there may be better more agile alternatives to university to pick up these basic principles of development. 

“You can pick up a lot of those skill on the job learning or through online courses that are out there.”

We spoke to Kelly Lockwood, ICE Domain Lead at CliniSys to discuss technical leadership, being raised without restrictions and handling imposter syndrome.

Kelly’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within Healthcare. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Kelly left school without direction. Having recently finished her A-Levels, she joined a laboratory as a medical laboratory assistant. Enjoying this position, Kelly would spend a few years getting laboratory experience which would later prove critical to her career development before starting a Biomedical Sciences Degree.

“This route meant It took me longer to get into that position, but I had experience graduates didn’t.”

After finishing her degree, Kelly would make the move to working in different hospitals from tertiary referral centres to teaching hospitals. As she experienced the spectrum of what a career in healthcare has to offer, Kelly started to gravitate towards LIMS systems. This culminated in leading work on a laboratory system that was received incredibly well with other sites wanting the same. 

This led to the start of Kelly’s relationship with CliniSys. Her first position at the company was a Product Specialist. In this role, Kelly would work with Hospitals to understand their workflows and try to mould that with the product CliniSys provided by using her WinPath knowledge and experience.

After that, Kelly got the opportunity to help shape the future of the WinPath system going forward with the Blood Sciences Domain Lead post.

“We deploy something called the master build, which is where we take the best practices from our experience  and  understanding of  the best way of working with WinPath and we build a baseline system which we take to new customers - we then tailor it to them from there.”

After that, a Solution Manager role came up that Kelly was motivated to go for. In what was a very technical role, Kelly would work with the trusts to embed the entire package of what Clinisys offered. This role required incredible domain knowledge. 

From there, Kelly moved into her current role which presents a massive challenge and opportunity for Kelly who has the luxury of an amazing team around her. 

The ICE team, which implements new systems for clients by understanding their requirements, is on the leading edge of healthtech. 

“I have a very experienced ICE team that have been pivotal in a number of deliveries in lots of different ways. There are lots of times I rely on them for technical support because they know that I know I don’t know everything. We’re focused on growing together and building products and systems we’re proud of”

Luck Only Gets You So Far

Kelly, whose career has taken many twists and turns, is the first to admit that she’s had her fair share of frustrations but also that she’s been somewhat fortunate with the relationships she’s built. 

“I totally admit that there has been a case of right place, right time, right people in my career but you can only go so far on luck.”

Capitalising on the opportunities she’s had, Kelly has entered into each position strongly despite any existing relationship. This, she believes, is key to success in technical roles. 

“I think you have to go in strongly to any environment and I think you need to know your subject and have the confidence in your knowledge to really go for it as opposed to just saying: ‘I’ll get through this’.”

We Were Encouraged to Play Rugby

A topic that we cover heavily on this series is role models and mentors. Although many of the individuals we talk to highlight mentors throughout their career, we very rarely look at influence outside of the workplace. 

Kelly, who went to an all-girls school that broke free of traditional gender binaries, has been raised without restrictions.

“We didn’t conform. We played rugby, did woodwork and computer studies. Of course, we had homemaking - nobody starved but it was never the focus. I don’t think any of us left with any preconceived notion of what we can and can’t do.”

This mentality carried through into Kelly’s career where she continues to surround herself with a network that uplifts one and other. 

“I’ve had a lot of strong female role models and, at CliniSys, we promote people to do what they’re good at. At a domain lead level, we’re 50% female now. One of our previous CEOs is female as well and I think that has had a huge impact on all of our mentalities here.”

I’m Not Afraid to Say I Don’t Know

Over the course of this series, we’ve interviewed many technical leaders. This has given me the chance to understand the vox populi on what it takes to be a technical leader - specifically, what level of technical knowledge you need to truly get the job done. 

Echoing the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of leaders I’ve spoken to, Kelly believes technical leadership is about knowing your own limitations and then building a team that can fill the gaps. 

“I was always brought up to know that you can’t know everything. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and, for a leader, one of your strengths should be knowing what everyone else's are.”

Building a culture that encourages people to step forward when they have a problem they can’t solve alone isn’t easy, but it’s one of Kelly’s main priorities as she looks to pioneer the ICE product. It’s here that she is trying to find the balance. 

“If you don’t know - ask. We all learn together. But we can’t live in total democracy, my team knows what I expect from them and I know what they expect from me.”

Believe In Yourself

Now working towards one of CliniSys’ biggest projects, Kelly is on the leading edge of Healthtech. Kelly’s journey, which has been filled with learnings and frustrations, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for Clinisys.

For those at the start of their career, Kelly has this advice: 

“Believe in yourself. If you’re in a role with some decision making responsibility, you’re not there by accident. You’re there because you’re good at what you do. Trust yourself and don’t be afraid of change.”

Being able to speak to both the technologists driving change within the NHS and the exciting talent vying to join them - I’m in a rather privileged position. 

The number of exciting developments happening right now within the NHS is astronomical. Video consultations and video calling for isolated patients are just two of the more popular examples of how technology is being deployed to transform the NHS.

Less known to those looking from the outside in, however, is the silent revolution of Clinical Communications. Pagers, or beepers, have been a staple of clinical communications within the NHS for the past 30 years. 

But that’s all set to change. 

Hancock announced in February 2019 that he was going to war with pagers.

NHS trusts will be required to phase out pagers by the end of 2021, with all hospitals expected to have plans and infrastructure in place to ensure this is possible by the end of September 2020.

Staff are expected to use modern alternatives, such as mobile phones and apps supported through frameworks such as Vocera - to name just one.

I spoke to the technologists and project managers responsible for this project to see how they’re fairing in their pursuit of the ‘purging of the pager’ and gain a few insights into the project scope. In this article there are insights for anyone concerned with change management.

There is no one size fits all in the NHS. Whereas one trust will have one solution, differences in infrastructure and funding will mean that solution might be applicable for all. 

I spoke to two different project managers in two different trusts to get an idea of the challenge. 

I spoke to Bela Haria, Senior Project Manager at Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust and Matthew Hutton, Project Manager at Northampton General Hospital

Purging The Pager

Having worked for the RNOH for over a decade, Bela has played a pivotal role in the rolling out, deploying and designing of a number of digital initiatives including single sign on for clinical platforms and, most recently, clinical communications through Vocera.

Although ‘purging the pager’ was a large part of the strategy, it was the final part. Prior to that final phase, Bela has been working on rolling out Vocera as part of a new build of technology that they are implementing with four brand new wards. 

For Matthew, who left his previous role in the Charity sector earlier this year to join the NHS, this change initiative is different. Working at Northampton General Hospital - an acute NHS trust undergoing rapid infrastructure expansion - and in a new partnership with nearby Kettering, Matthew is looking at alternative solutions to meet the mandate set by NHS Digital. 

What exactly was wrong with the old pager system?

Change for the sake of change is never a good enough reason when it comes to change initiatives. That begs the question: what exactly was wrong with the old pager system that clinical staff were using to communicate? For Bela, the problems start with old, outdated technology.

“The Pagers are reliant on legacy tech that don’t have back-up plans. If the pager system goes down, or they enter a black spot where messages can’t be received, then we’d effectively have no means of communication.”

Other than the fact that some of these pagers being held together by sticky tape, there are more complicated matters that a move away from pagers and towards a more advanced system would solve.

“There’s no transparency around who has a pager, whether they’re using it or whether it is actually working. There’s also no audit trail for communications, so we won’t know if a doctor responds or doesn’t respond to a call. It’s also not instantaneous communication - which, in healthcare, is a must.”

Matthew echoes those sentiments and finds that the vast amounts of bleeps being sent out through these dated systems have contributed to what he calls an ‘alert fatigue’.

“There's a lot of evidence around alert fatigue. So we send out 500,000, bleeps a year to our staff on 500 pagers, that's a hell of a lot. This can create cognitive dissonance, which can create a problem with people's ability to respond to a request.”

Matthew’s solution involves filtering the messages people receive so the most important emergencies surface to the top quickly, allowing people to make better use of their time.

What Are the Proposed Solutions? 

Bela is rolling out a solution called Vocera.

Effectively a walkie-talkie system, the Vocera ‘badge’ can be pinned to your collar or hung around your neck. Small enough to be kept safe and discreet, it allows the healthcare practitioner to call people.

Crucially, it’s all voice-activated. All a Nurse would need to do is say call ‘Doctor on call’ to be put in touch with the Doctor on call. 

“This is great for shift work, when you don’t always know who is on call. It’s also has aspects of machine learning to help the device pick up the nuances in people's accents and nationalities.”

As previously mentioned, the devices are also trackable and plug into a larger system that can give stakeholders and decision-makers data and insights to make more informed decisions with. Data as simple as whether calls are being picked up can unlock a variety of insights into care support like whether there are particular bottlenecks that need addressing during the shift, for example. 

Matthew, who works in a Trust with an infrastructure that is changing fast, is adopting more of a hybrid solution that allows the Trust to get rid of the majority of their pagers and adopt mobile apps to replace. 

“We've decided to go for what we call an all in one system. 485 pages can be ditched and we can give people an app which they can either put on a trust device or their own mobile phone. The pagers we do keep are more modern. So they have a way of responding to a page rather than it being simply one way. Instead of phoning someone back, you could hit accept or reject on the actual pager itself.” 

The Challenges Facing the New Solutions

For Matthew and the rollout at Northampton, the challenge is ensuring that each stakeholder group within the Trust are getting their requirements filled. 

“We are absolutely committed to getting each stakeholder group, who will have very different requirements from this final system to get what they need out of it the most. And the more they do that, the more lives we can save.”

How Important Was Clinicial Engagement to this Project?

Like with most change initiatives, end-user engagement is key. If the people you want to use the new initiative aren’t engaged or involved, you face an uphill struggle when you do come to rollout. 

For Matthew, it’s absolutely everything.

“I don't see this as a technology project. I see it as a business change project. That means you can't just rock up and give them an app and say get on with it. There's a lot of work to do to make sure it runs how the clinicians and how the site managers want it to.”

For Bela, Clinician Engagement was paramount for a few reasons. For one, these are high-pressure environments that sometimes deal in moments where technology can be the difference between life and death. Furthermore, the systems facing change are ones that have been part of practice for over 2 decades - whether it’s a good solution or not, it’s certainly part of their habits and changing habits is a job in and of itself.  

“With a pager you have very little set up. You just hand it over. With Vocera, there is a bit more set up and onboarding required.”

Getting the end-users involved early was high on Bela’s priority list because this wasn’t as simple as handing over new devices. Bela was looking at their communication processes and flows so they could best replicate that in the Vocera environment. 

“We needed trainers and product champions to assist people in the onboarding process. It helped with the acceptance of the product itself and helped us create a watertight process.”

Advice for those running change initiatives

For those embarking on change initiatives, Bela has this advice: 

“It’s really important to get your stakeholders involved. It’s also key you invest in a strong backup plan should anything go wrong. We invested in walkie-talkies if anything happened to the WIFI or Vocera.”

Similarly, Matthew trusts in a focus on the stakeholders:

“Get in there with your clinicians and your stakeholders. Don't think that this is just a matter of replacing an old piece of kit with a new piece of kit. Be out there trying to understand what people are currently using them for what they need from the future.” 

We spoke to Andy Callow Group Chief Digital Information Officer at Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust

about his recent research into CIO representation in the NHS at board level, digital acceleration and the responsibility of innovation. 

When Andy Callow, Group Chief Digital Information Officer at Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust, heard about some exciting developments happening at a neighbouring Trust he was keen to reach out and collaborate.

Following his initiative and passion for transforming processes for the improvement of patient care, Andy was disappointed to find roadblocks.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t locate a CIO to start a conversation with and there was no information available to help point him in the right direction. 

From that initial disappointment, a large research project was started. After reaching out to others across the NHS who had had similar experiences, Andy decided to focus his research on CIO representation on NHS Trust Boards. 

“I was motivated by conversations with some other folk in the NHS and contrasting the experience I have as a Board member compared to theirs, where it seemed much harder to bang the drum about ways of working and approaches necessary in the internet era.”

 

The Approach and Findings

The findings details that 22% of the 226 English NHS Trusts who were researched in the study have CIO representation at Board level. 

Andy’s research drew links between the low representation of Trust CIOs in social media to their representation on Trust Boards. His hypothesis was that if CIOs are not publicly visible, how visible these CIOs are in the organisation. 

An initial alarming discovery was the fact that, of the 226 Trusts, Andy was only able to find the names of 169 senior tech people. For the purpose of the research, Andy grouped many senior tech roles into the CIO job title but admits that, in reality, there are many differences between roles. 

“People who are operating like Directors of IT from 10 years ago do not have the skills and approaches needed for the coming years. So if you’ve got an old-fashioned Director of IT, reporting to the Board via the Director of Finance, then I’d suggest that the Board are going to simply view technology as an overhead to be managed down, not a crucial transformational tool to change the whole way our organisations work.” 

This could go some way towards explaining why CIO’s continue to remain underrepresented at the board level.

“So if the most senior technology lead in the Trust is not agitating for this approach and not setting out a compelling case for the future, then I can see why Boards are content not to have CIOs around the table.”

 

Keeping Up With the Pace of Change

Change, it would seem, is something many of us are getting used to. From our daily routines to the way we communicate with our team - everything is different and nothing is the same. While we adjust to the new set of quickly established standards, other, more monolithic organisations are carefully gripping the opportunity for change. 

For the NHS, one the world’s biggest employers, funded by the public themselves, change isn’t as simple as flicking a switch. Between fighting the pandemic, mobilising full-scale homeworking and keeping the country running, digital transformation has gathered momentum within the NHS. With the wind very much in their sails, it’s now up to the NHS to keep up with the pace of change. 

For Andy, the key for keeping up with the rate of change lies in an openness both personally and professionally. 

“I think we continually need to be open to learning both personally but also by creating that environment in our teams where continual learning and horizon scanning is the norm. I find social media; Twitter in particular a rich source of learning about what is happening and the deeper conversations that spring from a generous exchange of comments. We need to expect to change and therefore take decisions that don’t lock us into long contracts, or services that become irrelevant.” 

The death of agility, in the case of the NHS, is tied closely to the fact that it is a public sector institution. Implementation challenges, local hosting and supporting uptake in addition to procurement overhead of changing systems in the Public Sector can all contribute to an aversion to change and risk. 

This is something Andy is keen to address so that significant progress can be made in the digital space. 

“All these costs can incentivise an attitude to award longer contracts, which impacts our ability to change. I’m hopeful that as we move to more and more cloud-based subscription services, that offers increased flexibility.”

Innovation is an Attitude More Than a Role

Over the past few years, we have seen a growing number of Innovation roles develop. A welcome change, a step in the right direction and an important role at the senior level - but, somewhat beside the point. 

“I think it is an important function and some Trusts are more ready for it than others. I think it is more about an attitude that spreads across the organisation than assigning it to a single portfolio. So being prepared to take some risks is a key factor. That’s where the agile methodology can help, by seeking to test assumptions early, do the smallest thing possible, to experiment, to be prepared to fail. I like the Dan Ward FIST approach - Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny.”

Diversification At The Highest Level

My series, Female Leaders in NHS Tech, although not a formal study has certainly shined a light on the lack of female representation at the highest level of the NHS. Andy’s research adds to that concerning picture. 

“My research found that of the 22% of CIOs on Boards, only a quarter of those are women and there appears to be only 2 BAME Board CIOs (based on very basic research involving viewing LinkedIn profiles), so there’s a lot to do in terms of diversity in the CIO community.” 

Research on the psychological contract shows that people want to work for employers with good employment practices. They also want to feel valued at work.

To be competitive, organisations need everyone who works for them to make their best contribution. Increasingly, employers recognise the importance of diversity and inclusion in recruiting and retaining the skills and talent they need.

A diverse workforce can help to inform the development of new or enhanced products or services, open new market opportunities, improve market share and broaden an organisation’s customer base. However, people need to feel they have a voice in the organisation to allow their different perspectives to be heard.

Andy, who only made his move into the public sector because of the environment of excellence created by a former boss and colleague Carol Brown, is a massive believer in cognitive diversity and it’s effects on improved decision making of organisations. 

“I’ve been fortunate to have worked for some excellent women in my career. I was a bit wary making my first move into the public sector and it was down to the environment of striving for excellence created by Carol Brown at Derbyshire County Council that led me to take a plunge I’ve never looked back from and for Wendy Clark at NHS Digital, who was inspirational, and able to bring a more rounded human approach to an organisation that can be quite mechanical. I’ve got some brilliant women working in my teams currently who have the potential to be CIO material if they choose to do so. I was very impacted by reading Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed in 2020 and the importance of cognitive diversity to improve the decision making of organisations.”

Having recently recruited for his senior leadership team in Kettering and offering roles to applicants from a diverse range of background, Andy is keen to carry that momentum into 2021.

“I’ll be doing more recruitment in Northampton and Kettering in 2021 and I’m going to be more deliberate in seeking applicants from unrepresented groups, for example by seeking help from the Shuri network. I’ll also be drawing on the help from the BAME networks at Kettering and Northampton to be part of the selection process for those posts. You can’t be passive about the disparity we see across the industry, it requires deliberate effort.

We spoke to Laura Hughes, Associate Director of Business Intelligence at Arden & GEM CSU to discuss her career, leading technical teams and formal qualifications.

Laura’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

After accidentally wiping her entire computing coursework from the floppy disks they were stored on, Laura’s plans to go to her preferred university were scuppered. Instead, Laura joined the NHS in Hertfordshire. Brought on to do basic office admin, Laura was quickly recognised as being process-driven and passionate about information - which led her towards working with clinical information systems. 

Taking a position as Second Line IT Support, Laura got to know her colleagues in the technical teams round the trust. After learning SQL and UNIX from her peers, Laura took a programming role. In this role, Laura was again recognised for another one of her skills. 

“I was quite personable and I was noticed by a training manager who wanted to take me ‘out of the basement’ and into a training role.”

Now a Training Supervisor, Laura was building and managing training databases, setting up training plans and managing the ECDL test centres.

“I absolutely adored that job because it really took me out of my comfort zone - which was just sat there in front of a computer playing with numbers - to dealing with a whole raft of people. “

After a successful few years, the training role was growing. Before long, Laura was supporting the NHS ‘Connecting for Health’ programme. When the money for that scheme ran out, Laura was redeployed into HR to implement the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Unfortunately, Laura found herself without a team for this role.

Without that team around her, Laura felt motivated to make the switch to the Midlands where she would commit to the same role, but take on extra responsibilities for Workforce Analysis, Workforce Planning and System Management so she could manage a team. 

“For me, that was a perfect role because it balanced the people side and the technology side. I managed to build that team in a way that it managed itself on a day to day basis.That afforded me some really good opportunities to get involved in projects and work outside of my normal area.”

One of these ‘extra-curricular’ projects that Laura got to work on involved working with the CIO at the time around safe staffing levels. This set Laura up nicely to take the Head of Information role when it came up - a post Laura was at for 5 years before joining Arden & GEM in her Associate Director role. 

Do You Need to Be Technical?

Leadership, regardless of the industry, requires a smorgasbord of complementary skills and experiences that can take decades to define and hone. Leadership in technical circles is no different.

For some, one of the non-negotiables for leading technical teams is a technical background. 

For Laura, it’s not as simple as that.

“You don’t need to be a technical guru, but what you do need is to be able to talk the language and have a high level understanding of the challenges and barriers that technical teams have.”

With this knowledge, you have enough to understand who you need in your team. The less tangible aspects of what makes a good leader then come into play. How do you motivate that team? How do you learn to let go and trust them? These are important questions you’ll need to answer if you want to lead a technical team. 

“These are the people who are going to deliver the vision. I suppose what I found more important than the technical part of it is understanding how that technical strategy fits into the wider organisational strategy and vice versa. It's really important to be able to sell comprehensive visions to other leaders in a way that helps them to understand your tactics without getting bogged down by that jargon, and completely switching off.”

 

Overcoming Conference Jitters

One of the topics we’re very keen to discuss on this series is around STEM careers and, more specifically, the readiness of people from all walks of life to approach STEM subjects as a solid career option. 

My Daughter, who is currently in primary school, is part of the Science Squad - one of the school’s extra-curricular activities. We encouraged her to go for it, and so did many of her teachers. 

With growing encouragement for young minds, the diversification of leadership at the highest level will only go one way: up. For Laura, however, who explored STEM subjects many years ago, encouragement, support and motivation was almost non-existent.

“I was the only female on my computing course, which was horrible. I spent a lot of time on my own during that time.”

Despite support and encouragement for minorities growing in education, lack of representation at the highest level almost always results in feelings of doubt which can quickly turn into a sense of inferiority. 

For Laura, who lacked a senior female role model, conferences were a particular area of anxiety. 

“It's a lot of men in suits. And it's quite daunting. You don’t know anyone and you don’t have a network. I found it very difficult and would often sit in the corner by myself and make myself scarce.”

Growing in confidence and experience over the years, Laura quickly realised that there were many who felt the same - this realisation helped her cope with conference jitters.

“I'd actually look for the guy who was sitting in the corner by himself with a coffee looking a bit awkward and might just pop over and strike up a conversation. Nine times out of ten, everyone's feeling exactly the same.”

“I Always Had a Long List of Reasons Why I Wasn’t Good Enough”

We’ve asked every contributor to this series the same question: do you believe you’ve experienced imposter syndrome? Almost all of the contributors believed they’ve experienced it in some way. More alarming, however, is the number of people who felt the feelings but didn’t know the name to attribute to it. 

The simple fact of the matter is feelings of doubt and inferiority transcend our careers. For Laura, who has experienced doubt from a very early age, imposter syndrome can be debilitating. 

“I always had a whole list of reasons why I wasn't good enough. And it started from a really young age.”

Laura’s lack of university education and the fact that she was very young when she came to manage people both cast long shadows of doubt over her career that took a long time to shake. This led to her creating what she calls her ‘Professional Persona’ to help get around the anxiety of imposter syndrome. 

“I basically hid behind that persona for a good three years. It was always to remain calm, over prepare for everything and describe problems and difficulties as challenges - instead of admitting you feel overwhelmed or simply asking for support  .” 

It was only until Laura was called out by one of her previous Managers that she actually realised that her persona was damaging.

“He asked ‘why can’t you just be yourself?’ and that was a big turning point for me. I gave myself a good talking to and I went back to basics and reassessed my personal values so I could accept myself for being me.”

“Surround Yourself With People Your Trust”

For Laura, who has a very successful career in digital transformation and informatics, the key to succeeding in a technical leadership role within the NHS starts with surrounding yourself with peers. 

“They don’t need to be people in your area of expertise, and sometimes it helps to have people who aren’t because they see it from a layman’s point of view.”

From there, it’s key that technology leaders can bring technology to life and carry people on a journey with it.

“I've always said technology is ones and zeros and a bunch of plastic and metal. And you need to make it tangible. You need to bring it to life and you need to give it a bit of a personality that people can take away and sign up to.”

We spoke to Ella Worsdale, Head of Information at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust to discuss sticking through trying times, the influencing power of technology and putting yourself out there. 

Ella’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

After studying communication at University, Ella decided to take a gap year and went travelling around the world. It was on this gap year that Ella was able to bring herself out of her shell and set herself on her path to leadership. 

Her first role in IT was at Lloyd’s Bank, where she worked on security support while the big merger with Lloyd’s and TSB happened. After a few temporary roles in the finance sector, Ella decided that banking wasn’t for her. 

It was around this time that Ella saw an advert for a Data Quality Assistant in the NHS. After applying, but not being selected, Ella had her heart set on a career in the NHS and joined Pennine Care soon after where she has remained 16 years later. 

Her first major task at Pennine Care involved implementing a Patient Administration system for the trust. This involved testing, configuration and implementing the PAS system. During this time, Ella was exposed to lots of different parts of the NHS ecosphere and also discovered her own passion for systems, transformation and implementation. 

“It was like discovering a secret about myself. I thought: ‘I could do this. I can really do this.’”

After successfully implementing that system, Ella moved into system administration - which didn’t excite nearly as much as her previous role. With that behind her, Ella moved into the Information Service. Here she climbed the ladder, achieving senior analyst positions and team leadership responsibilities until finally arriving at her current position as Head of Information. 

“I was very keen to take charge and stick my head above the parapet. I had some bad managers in my early days which really showed me how I didn’t want to manage people.”

As Head of Information, Ella manages a team of analysts and developers who are responsible for the data and reporting needs of the organisation - from data warehousing through to report creation and analysis.

Ella has been instrumental in the organisation’s adoption of Tableau at their main BI technology. 

“We release insight and dashboards to allow decision-makers to use the data in any way they want to operationally.”

Sticking It Out

Not many can say they’ve given almost 20 years to the same organisation. For Ella, who has given 16 years of her career to Pennine Care, it’s this commitment that has allowed her to be successful in her role while the organisation around her changes. 

“This was a very different department 16 years ago. There was silence in the office - it wasn’t the nicest place to work and a lot of the team moved on. I, on the other hand, stuck to it.”

Although it was tough, Ella believes she learned a lot from the experience and that it influenced the management style she now has. 

“I could have walked away and who knows what would have happened and it could be in a completely different place. But I stayed and I took a lot from it - both positive and negative that have contributed to who I am today.”

Communication is Key

One of the amazing parts of doing a series like this is the sheer range of people I get to talk to on a daily basis. Despite the changes in their expertise and experiences, they’re all leading teams at the highest level of the NHS. 

With that in mind, I’m always keen to hear what our contributor’s thoughts are on what skills are needed when it comes to leading technical teams - specifically, how important technical knowledge is to the leading and management of technical professionals.

For Ella, who has 16 years working at the highest level of information services in the NHS, it’s not an easy question to answer. 

“You need to understand what people are saying because you’re responsible for going to other people and influencing and explaining things.”

Many will relish the opportunity to pick up more technical knowledge, but for some, the thought of anything technical might inspire fear rather than confidence. For Ella, it’s about breaking it down into simpler terms. 

“You’ve got to sell the developments your team is working on. You’ve got to tell them how it will make their life easier. So you need to be able to translate what your team is doing into their language.”

That is a starting point. Instead of obsessing over knowing everything, it may be more prudent to obsess over asking the right questions to get a firm understanding. Asking questions is one thing, getting the right answers is another. Another key skills for those who lead technical teams is being able to find the right expertise. 

“I’ve seen managers be blinded by the technical aspects of a role. They see all this code, think it’s amazing but they neither could communicate what was happening.”

This is one area that Ella believes has significantly changed over the years - the idea that communication, for both manager and contributor, is almost more important than anything else. 

Learning to Trust 

Hands-on managers can be a bit of a double-edged sword. These managers are generally able to intervene before things get out of hand and possess enough granular knowledge to offer insightful suggestions, but they often reduce empowerment by stifling initiative and consuming a lot of employees’ energy by asking for too much follow-up.

After seeing the good side and the bad side to management during her career, Ella was keen to lead with trust. 

But it’s not always easy when you’re so used to having your hands on the technical aspects of the role you’re managing. 

This was the case at Pennine Care, where significant investment has been made into the senior leadership at the trust meaning most have a tech background or data background. 

“When you’ve done it for so long, it can be hard to trust in anyone but yourself.”

The solution, for Ella, lies in staying positive and sticking to processes you know work that can empower the experts on your team.

Put Yourself Out There

For those who are looking to achieve similar success at the highest level, Ella has this advice:

“Put yourself out there. Find a mentor, someone to talk to about your career. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to share advice and open up.”

Starting off as a software developer for British Aerospace, John went into financial services where he would spend the next 20 years of his software development career. Going down the traditional software development route of managing people to deadlines, John’s break would come in the form of admission to the Management Development Programme at the CO-OP.

“This was career-changing for me. It was when I really started to understand what self-development looks like and how important it was for me and my colleagues around me.”

Gaining significant experience in managing stakeholders and running projects, John also gained the confidence to look outside of the industry he had been in for the past 20 years.  As a result, John took an operations role in the Insurance sector. Here he was instrumental in creating lean technology teams while looking after technology for all of the organisations call centres.

“I hadn’t been in change delivery for 15 years so to be on the side that actually implemented change was a real eye-opener.”

After that, John went for a non-exec director role at a Hospital in Liverpool where his Father had just had a quadruple heart bypass that resulted in 10 years extra life. By way of giving back to the community, John joined the hospital that had continually underinvested in IT for the past 6 years, as the Associate IT Director.

“The national programme was supposedly kicking off and they were supposed to be delivering all this wonderful IT but it hasn’t happened. You had a crumbling infrastructure and no software that supported business level clinical process. They were a long was behind the rest of the world in terms of IT delivery.”

Having been in Healthcare every since, John attributes this role – where he was first exposed to the overwhelming levels of purpose involved in a healthcare position – to his long tenure in the industry.

“The first day, I had been to the canteen and sat down with a coffee next to a guy with a drip in his arm. I thought: ‘wow. 20 years in financial services, you never get this kind of interaction.’. This really brought it home to me about what I was there for.”

Staying within Healthcare, John took various different programme director and IT Director type roles before taking his permanent position at Arden and Gem where he is building a technical team that can realise the tremendous ambition of a modern NHS.

“Transformation changes more than technology. We need to look at people, process and technology. None of those three things work unless you look at culture, unless you turn the lens inwards towards operational effectiveness. That's how these things come together. And that's what I’m doing at Gem.”

What Qualities Do You Need to be a Technology Leader in the NHS?

Leadership, regardless of the industry, requires a smorgasbord of complementary skills that can take decades to define and hone. For John, who has worked towards change initiatives everywhere he’s been, the qualities that define a technology leader within the NHS aren’t unique to the organisation. 

“You need to be resilient because success, in some cases, can be as simple as not stopping. You also need to care about the people around you and that means taking a genuine interest in the community.”

Vision, an important skill for leaders, will help you guide the people on your team towards success for both the business and the individual. But vision, as John states, is nothing without challenge. 

“It’s so important that you’re strong enough to challenge people constructively to bring out the best in people.”

These Issues Don’t Right Themselves, They Require Action

 As John mentioned above, all the change he wants to create in this space would be nothing without the firm foundations of a progressive culture. 

For those who have been following my posts on Linkedin, you’ll know that i’ve been proactively seeking out advocates for diversity within the NHS.

John fully supports the great work being undertaken across AGEM to develop opportunities for minorities and personally promotes networks for women within IT, and is the first to admit that across his career.

“There have been plenty of occasions when we’ve advertised jobs and ended up with a room full of young, white, middle-aged blokes. Right now, we’re trying to encourage people, regardless of background, to consider a career with us.”

John’s Wife, who is a passionate speaker on this topic, is all too familiar with the statistics around job applications from underrepresented groups. 

The statistic John is referring to comes from Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean which states: men apply for positions if they meet just 60% of the requirements, while women only apply if they meet 100% of them. 

“These issues don’t right themselves, they require action. Right now, it’s about amplifying the voices of underrepresented networks and celebrating their successes.” 

Advice for Leaders

Now leading digital transformation at his trust, John is using his experience to nurture a progressive culture. For those with leadership aspirations, John has this advice:

“Don’t expect opportunities to be thrust upon you. We need to own our careers. One thing I learned from my career is to not be afraid to take side steps to get more experience. Find secondments that give you what you need to go to the next level. I don’t think this happens nearly enough in the NHS. Take every opportunity to learn something new and the promotions will just come.”

For a long time, degrees have been a hallmark of a candidate's commitment to a field and their excellence in that subject. In tech, it’s no different, with many job specs still listing a degree as a requirement for consideration.

But according to the HackerRank 2020 Developer Skills Report, the dial is moving on education and tech. Their report, which featured over 116,000 developers from 162 countries, revealed that a third of hiring managers have hired a developer who has learned their skills purely from bootcamp software and other sites like YouTube. 

We spoke to a few developers and tech leaders on their route into technology, the importance of a degree in technical fields and advice for those who might be looking to break into tech with or without a degree.

Dom Davis, CTO & Co-Founder at Tech Marionette

Dom Davis is the CTO at data aggregation and analysis startup, Tech Marionette. Dom attended university but, for health reasons, had to drop out without completing his Computer Science degree. 

Choosing instead to follow his own path, Dom - who has had a lifelong technology passion - was able to get back in touch with his co-founder who invited Dom to join an Investment Bank as a developer. Holding this position for 13 years, Dom went from strength to strength, achieving things few do. Regardless, he still found resistance when the time came for him to move on. 

“Even with that experience, I was turned down for some job interviews because I didn’t have a degree.”

Citing the ridiculous job descriptions that find their way on to the market that ask for 5 years plus experience in a nascent language or framework for little to no remuneration, Dom believes there are several fundamental problems with degrees designed to tool developers or technology professionals up for the world of work.

University Students Have to Unlearn Things

A guest lecturer at the UEA and a hiring manager who has dealt with newly graduated candidates, Dom has hands-on experience with the current standard of curriculum. Oftentimes, Dom finds candidates are not only missing out on important lessons in real-world software development, but they’re also stuck in bad habits because of the way university courses are structured. 

“In University you have fixed time. A six week project takes six weeks. So you spend the first 2 weeks planning, then you execute. But then they come to us and are expecting this whole trajectory but that isn’t realistic in a modern, agile business.”

Students, fresh out of a computer science degree are computer scientists. Unfortunately, that’s not what tech companies like Tech Marionette need. 

“Computer science is a lovely topic. There’s lots of very interesting stuff but it makes no difference whatsoever to delivering a good product.”

Instead, Dom suggests, university curriculums, and by extension students, would be better off focusing on topics more in line with software development in a business setting. Topics like behavior driven development and other skills that help a developer speak to a business and learn what they require. 

“You need to be taught how to react to change, and then basic skills like being able to use git. They won’t know everything, but it’s about getting into the mindset of work.”

 

Degrees show Commitment - But Is That Important Anymore?

One of the main arguments for educational requirements are around the fact that completed degrees show a level of commitment hard to demonstrate at a junior age. However, it doesn’t stretch belief to argue that commitment is becoming less of a factor in the modern search for talent.

Take a handful of tech CVs now and compare them to tech CVs from 20 years ago and you’ll likely find one major difference - the amount of time candidates spend at companies. The simple fact of the matter is tech candidates who remain in the same place for too long miss out. As a 20-year-old tech recruitment agency, we have seen this first hand. A sentiment Dom echoes.

“I would not be concerned if someone CV had two years at every single job. If you stand still, you're falling behind. So you need to learn new stuff. Yeah. Unless you're lucky enough to be in a job that is also introducing you to new stuff.”

We’re Going to See More Contenders - But Not Soon

The growing number of alternative routes into technology shows signs that perceptions around education are shifting. But it’s going to be a while before they can really disrupt educational standards.

“So this whole sentiment about degrees is not changing anytime soon. Yeah. Now, I would say to candidates, students, go to university not necessarily for the degree but to actually experience the fun parts.”

Despite having reservations over the standards of the courses, Dom does still believe going to University is an invaluable experience for young people and will, at least for now, hinder your job search.

“(not having a degree) is definitely going to hinder you. And that's going to be true for a long time. I would wholeheartedly agree on going just from the amount of people you meet and contacts you make.”

Giulio Trimarco, Senior Software Manager at Graphcore

Giulio Trimarco is the Senior Software Manager at Graphcore. A self-taught developer, Giulio has no formal education that pertains to his career having left school to go straight into military service. 

After that, Giulio had very basic programming on his CV and a passion for technology borne out of his relationship with his Father. 

“My Dad worked in telecommunications and he was speaking to me all the time about server rooms and computers. When I was 9 he brought home a BBC Micro and something just clicked in me and I have been working with computers ever since.”

Now managing two teams, a software QA team and a release team, Giulio is responsible for coordinating software operations across the whole software development department at Graphcore.

Not Everyone Learns in the Same Way

Giulio, who doesn’t have a degree and has never been asked about his education during any formal interview process, believes that a person's experiences and personality are more important than education because not everyone learns in the same way. 

“I could never learn from studying a text, for example. But I have a lot of dedication for work, I won't stop until I understand something and have done it in my way. It’s important that we remember the capacity to learn is not just from books.”

Listening and collaboration, for Giulio, are crucial and these are skills better honed and suited to a workplace setting than a library or a classroom.

“Sometimes you just need a spark and someone to point you in the right direction, you can roll your sleeves up and get it done any way you can.”

We’re Not Testing People On Real-World Problems

Education in general comes under fire for not teaching students valuable life skills.

Instead of learning critical life skills on how to manage money, how to negotiate, or how to communicate, kids are mostly taught to memorize information. This is helpful to learn, but not at the cost of not learning critical life skills.

When it comes to advanced education, a similar logic applies with many employers believing degree level education does a poor job of preparing students for their next step: the workplace. 

Giulio, who conducts interviews for his teams, isn’t just seeing this rub off on candidates, but also the interview processes of many companies who are becoming increasingly less practical with their testing.

“I see a lot of algorithmic testing - but that doesn’t solve a real world problem. It’s just an academic use case: how would you solve this? And all you have to do is write a single line of code. This is not representative of a working scenario.”

Mark Wharton, Chief Architect at Iotic Labs

Mark Whartonis the Chief Architect at Lotic Labs. Computer science was very much in its infancy when Mark graduated with a degree in physics in 1983. Despite this, much of Mark’s early career was in programming training - something that would later inform his move away from traditional programming and into technical leadership roles. 

“I was a programmer for a while and I got really fed up with just looking at the screen talking to code. And I've always described my career as being”on the beach”. So if we've got technology as the sea and the user community as the land, I always seemed to find myself in the middle as the bridge between engineering and the rest of the business.”

With Mark’s background in training, we were keen to hear about his opinions on the value of education in a tech career. 

The Theoretical Background Helps More Now Than Ever

With Mark’s position as a hiring manager both now, at Iotic, and in the past, he’s interviewed many candidates with a diverse range of different skills and experiences. When we asked Mark about his thoughts on the importance of education in technology he found himself recounting a career that was split down the middle, with his younger self believing that it didn’t matter as much as raw talent and experience and his current self putting more weight into an educational background.

“If you think about what coding is right now, it’s more about putting things together into architectures that work. If you’re going to do any coding, it’s really important that you get into the right paradigm. With that in mind, I do think you need more of a theoretical understanding and an education will give you that.”

Mark leads a team of skilled architects who, to his admission, are way more grounded in computer science than he is - that only reinforces the way he feels about the importance of theoretical knowledge in a modern tech career. 

There Is A Snobbery Around Uni That Is Counterproductive 

University, rightly or wrongly, can be a bit of a bubble for students gearing up for the world of work. On one hand, you need very specific environments and standards to accurately assess a student. On the other, you need to expose them to the rigours of the real world to truly see if they’ll sink or swim. 

It’s hard, but not impossible, to do both. 

For Mark, who’s two best colleagues in terms of output both didn’t do well at University, part of the problem with formal education is the standards on which they judge success. 

“There’s a certain amount of snobbery around university and it’s counterproductive. This is especially a problem for red-brick universities where candidates often leave with an overinflated view of how clever they are.”

When the criteria for success is a test under controlled environments or a project that may have taken them an entire course to finish, graduates are often woefully underprepared for the agile working environment. 

“You can get someone who’s managed to get their theoretical training under their belt but they’ve tempered it with real-world experience - but it’ll always be a  bodge because nothing is perfect. There needs to compromise on either side because if you spend your life seeking perfection you never get anything done.”

Roundheads and Cavaliers - Finding The Balance

There’s a balance to all things - no less in technology team building. For Mark, who has spent many years of his career building technical teams, this balance is key and links back to their education background. 

“If you've got the really superduper theoretical people, they tend to be a purist and they don't care about whether it gets done as long as it's done perfectly. And then you get the kind of bodgers and hackers who will try their best to make something work. You want to try and get somewhere in the middle - or a mix of the two.”

Roundheads and Cavaliers, as Mark calls them, are two of the ‘types’ of people he tries to bring together when building technology teams. 

“Roundheads read manuals. They spend three weeks thinking about something, write 6 lines of code and it’ll work. Cavaliers get their fingers straight on the keyboard and work through things.”

Of course, different challenges require different approaches. You may need a Cavalier if you need something done quickly because it’s just a demo. Some jobs may require more of a theoretical approach which the Cavaliers might struggle with. 

“Somewhere in between is the utopia and that ‘in between’ doesn't necessarily have to even be in the middle.”
 

The Future?

Although it’s unlikely organisations opinions on the value of a degree will change soon, those who have their heart set on a career in technology but don’t have an educational background shouldn’t be disheartened. 

Through our conversations with the contributors involved in this article, we think it’s clear that there is a place for anyone who shows commitment and hard work to an area they feel passionate about. 

And with the sheer amount of contenders and bootcamps popping up, it’s never been easier to get a high level of theoretical knowledge. 

I Was Always Conscious of My Gaps

As Deputy Director of IM&T, Heidi coordinates, facilitates and supports a number of departments within the IM&T Directorate. This includes business intelligence, health records, telecoms development, business change, and also infrastructure, data centre, support service delivery and desktops. 

Starting her career in the NHS on a temporary 12 month contract as a receptionist, Heidi is now 23 years into her NHS career - a career that has seen many opportunities. 

“Developing from postgraduate medicine, I got an insight into clinical terminology and professions as a medical secretary. I did that in a couple of different teams - orthopedics, plastic surgery, orthodontics. I handled waiting list management and improvement, which was my first taste of transformation.”

From there, Heidi went on to introduce new systems for secretary templates. Strong transformational work here led to her support for wider EPR projects with ED and outpatients before embarking on wider strategic transformation projects such as Digital Dictation. Looking for operational experience, Heidi went back into the Outpatients Department as a Business Support Manager before going back into IT as the Deputy Head of Service Development. 

“The focus was initially on the integration and transition between Royal Stoke and County to form University Hospital of North Midlands. We were looking at what solutions we had between the two organisations and how we could blend the two and integrate them.”

Now, as Deputy Director, Heidi has taken her service development experience to provide support to the revolution of work and planning methodology. She is investing in the team and building their work methodologies so they meet both the goals of the organisation and clinical needs.

Taking These Opportunities

Heidi’s career in the NHS, which started as a 12 month contract as a Receptionist, has seen her take on many opportunities across many different disciplines and teams within the NHS. With an expansive understanding of both the clinical side and operational side of many of these teams, Heidi is able to combine that with her passion and knowledge of digital transformation to provide solutions for all. 

The driving force for Heidi’s pursuit of the next best opportunity stems from her passion for making a difference and adding value. 

“I get immense satisfaction from seeing change through. I love to find different tools, different services and different people to engage in our projects.”

Despite never being a direct aspiration for Heidi, her desire to see change through to the end has led her to new and exciting projects. Regardless, she’s still not forgetting her routes. 

“Even now, I’d love to go back to the reception and have face-to-face contact with patients and enjoy that camaraderie within the clinical teams. But it was also about ‘what else can I offer?’ It was never about ‘where can I be in 20 years?’. There was no planning.”

Do You Need to be Technical to Lead Technical Teams? 

Despite lack of formal training or experience in the technical topics she works within, Heidi brings a wealth of transformational, clinical and organisational knowledge to her teams. 

For Heidi, different teams need different leadership styles and approaches. If a team needs specific direction and coaching, then technical knowledge in the issues they’re dealing with would be valuable. 

For her role, technical knowledge is just not that important to the delivery of projects and programmes that provide a positive impact. 

“Through experience, whilst working with the  Development Team who handle a wide range of systems and skills, that I don’t have specific knowledge in but I understand the context, the priorities and I can support them with that knowledge by removing barriers and helping them to manage expectations and fill gaps where needed.”

There’s a lot to be said about Self Awareness 

Now 23 years into her NHS career, Heidi is on the bleeding edge of digital transformation in one of the world's biggest employers. Heidi’s journey, which has been filled with learnings and setbacks, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for the NHS. 

For those looking for a leadership role within the NHS, Heidi has two pieces of advice. First, know where your strengths lie: 

“It’s about looking at yourself critically and understanding where your strengths are and building on those strengths while having the awareness and confidence to look for help and support. “

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it’s about having a level of organisational knowledge that allows you to peak over the horizon to find the best possible opportunity. 

“Having an understanding of what our services do now, whether that’s the frameworks we use or general processes, systems and solutions, will mean you’ll have foresight into an achievable but ambitious strategy for the business.”

Combine the two, self-awareness and foresight, and you’ve got an effective way to climb the career ladder within a large organisation like the NHS. 

“Coming back to your self-awareness, it’s important to match up your own development with that of your organisations. Working on personal gaps in skills and knowledge while providing solutions to the wider business gives a sense of a personal and professional achievement.”

Sonia’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

A Challenging Journey

Graduating in 2004 with a computer science and business admin degree, Sonia started her career with a contract at Jaguar Landrover at an on-site GP surgery that had databases on Microsoft Access. 

“My role was to try and automate as many of our processes as possible. It was my first major project and it was very successful. I learnt a lot.”

From there, Sonia moved into the private sector where she would focus on CISCO networks for emergency services. A male-dominated environment, Sonia quickly moved on to her next opportunity within the NHS. 

“My first role was in a provider acute trust, which helped me gain a lot of experience and knowledge around processes and systems within the trust.”

After a successful start to her NHS career, Sonia moved into commissioning where she spent a year in London working as a contractor. Around this time, Sonia decided to get married and move back to the Midlands. After having a child and being a full-time Mum for a year, Sonia returned to work on a contract role in an Acute Provider in the Midlands. 

This role was her first taste of management in business intelligence, but it coincided with the raising of her child. 

“It was very challenging. Daunting. There were questions in my mind about where I wanted to take my career and how much I can do with my commitment to my child.”

Returning From Maternity: “I Felt Lost”

Transitioning back to work after parental leave is hard. You’ve been out of the flow of the office for weeks or months, and you’re returning as a different person with new priorities and concerns. (Not to mention the stress and strain of endless new logistics.) It’s jarring and often overwhelming. 

For Sonia, who decided to come back full-time, the process of returning to work after maternity leave was challenging - and coincided with other major family developments. 

“I felt lost, emotional, overwhelmed. Within six months, my Husband decided to set up an online pharmacy business which put tonnes of pressure on me because I had to dedicate all of my time outside of work to being a Mum because my Husband was working so much.”

A sentiment echoed by many of the working Mum’s we’ve talked to through this series: Maternity leave, as good as it is to have time to spend with your child, can also be an isolating period. 

“I could feel myself losing a lot of my day to day skills - social, communication and delegation. So when I came back into my leadership role, I found it quite difficult to separate tough situations at work from things at home.”

Every ladies’ journey through this period will be different, but the levels of perseverance and strength shown to come through it will always be the same. 

Now 7 years into her leadership position at the NHS, Sonia is going from strength to strength. Tempered by the challenges of her past, she’s setting her sights on new and exciting projects in the digital transformation space. 

“I think I've had the best possible journey up until now in the NHS with a combination of acute commissioning and working in different regions. So it's been good, but challenging at the same time.”
 

You’ve Got to Embed Change

It’s a common conception that the private sector is a lot pacier than the public sector. For Sonia, who has worked both sectors, this conception isn’t stretching the truth. 

“Projects are turned around so quickly and you get instant data and feedback in the private sector. That experience has helped me in the NHS, where things are a bit slower.”

The NHS, a monolithic organisation, is often accused of being resistant to change. With Sonia’s experience in delivering systems technology change at pace in the private sector, she was able to pull together projects quickly - but embedding them was another problem altogether. 

“It’s not just systems technology, it’s behaviour. A lot of people are used to doing things a certain way.”

With her previous experiences in the change initiatives within the private sector, where change seemed to be understood as a necessary factor in the development, Sonia had to take a bit of a step back. 

“You’ve got to embed the change. Work with people, train and teach. It’s a big change from the private sector, but I do feel my previous experience has helped.”

COVID-19, for all the damage it has caused, has allowed many organisations to get the wheels turning on digital transformation. The NHS is one of the most obvious examples of this. 

The number of exciting developments happening right now within the NHS is astronomical. Video consultations and video calling for isolated patients are just two of the more popular examples of how technology is being deployed to transform the NHS.

The reduced levels of bureaucracy has, for the most part, enabled this big surge of digital transformation within the NHS. For Sonia, the way the pandemic has changed the way people strategise within the NHS has been nothing short of amazing.

“Now is the time to be in NHS tech, things are just growing and picking up momentum. Now I feel we’ve levelled the playing field with the private sector.”

Advice for Future Leaders

Now leading the business intelligence function at her trust, Sonia is setting her sights to the future - a future where the rate of digital change in the NHS is moving ever faster. For those who are eyeing a leadership role within the NHS, Sonia has this advice: 

“Take your opportunities. Don’t question, take them and speak up. You need to challenge things to be a good leader. Challenge the ways of working, coach and mentor.”

Rosie’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

I Understand People’s Strengths 

With a background in digital data and technology, Rosie has worked the bulk of her career inside the NHS in a number of roles. Previously, she was a database manager for the malignant hyperthermia unit, which involved creating a relational database to research the hyperthermic reaction to anaesthetics. After that, Rosie moved into the Digital Delivery role at NHS Digital before moving into cybersecurity. 

Without much formal experience in cybersecurity, Rosie was brought in as a project manager and very quickly learned on the job with a strong support network around her. Rosie considers herself incredibly fortunate to have met a number of people during her career, specifically in cybersecurity, who have believed in her, given her the chance to develop but more importantly championed and supported her throughout. 

“For the most part your career is driven by yourself but sometimes you need somebody to take a chance and give you the opportunity to grow and develop.”

It’s a common debate: do you need to have a high-level of technical knowledge to lead a technical team? 

For Rosie, who quickly stepped up into a leadership role in the cybersecurity position, this support network was key to the continued success of her projects despite a lack of formal knowledge. 

“Make sure you’ve got the right people around you that fit all the different parts of the programme. I don’t know everything, but I do understand people’s strengths and how the organisation works. Bringing those two together means I can build strong relationships that the programme lives and dies on.”

Another core tenant of Rosie’s leadership style is trust. 

Trust cements relationships by allowing people to live and work together, feel safe and belong to a group. Trust in a leader allows organizations and communities to flourish, while the absence of trust can cause fragmentation. That’s why we need to trust our leaders, our family members, our friends and our co-workers, albeit in different ways.

“you have to be able to trust and empower those people. I think one thing we did well was to ask everyone working on the programme: ‘Why do you actually think we're doing this programme?’ We weren’t expecting an answer but I think by making it clear what the aims really were, it brought people on the journey.”

Rosie, who has been in this position just over three years, is leading on a number of different security technologies across the NHS estate. Most notably, Rosie is leading on one of the largest national security programmes the NHS has seen by delivering a data security centre.

Finding Your Voice

Cybersecurity is notorious for being a male-dominated field. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there will be up to 3.5 million job openings by 2021. Meanwhile, women make up only 20% of the cybersecurity workforce. While that's up from a mere 11% in 2013, there's still a lot of opportunities to be seized in cybersecurity careers.

For Rosie, who is regularly the only woman in the room, it’s a big challenge to gather the confidence to find her voice. 

“It’s a personal battle. I can come off a call and not have said anything. Even though I’ve taken everything I needed from the call, it’s still annoying.”

Rosie, who is very much breaking ground in the cybersecurity space, believes it’s about putting one foot in front of the other and muscling through. 

“If I was to look back 5 years, I’d never have put myself here. I know if I stay resilient, I’ll get where I need to be in time.”

I Was Coached Through My Lowest Point

Rosie, who never likes to remain stagnant, has worked hard with each new challenge she has sought. Along each step of the way, Rosie has made seeking mentors, advocates and allies a priority., 

Good mentors can be pivotal during major junctures of your life, both personally and professionally. They can steer you clear of disaster, provide prescient views of the future that you can’t see, and give you support when you need it the most.

Everyone can find mentors. It’s up to you to cherish the relationships you have, cultivate new ones, and never take for granted the people who can help you. - Rosie believes these relationships have been fundamental to where she has got to today. Above all, you must recognize that mentors can be everyday people, who have extraordinary advice. They don’t have to be superheroes or millionaires or big CEOs.

For Rosie, who has had a number of great people who have mentored her and helped her to find her voice. One particular mentor was her previous line manager who helped Rosie through her low confidence, 

“I was given specific coaching sessions on confidence and she helped me through my lowest point in terms of confidence.”

You Don’t Need a Stem Background

Rosie, who was recently invited to talk at  University graduates, wants to see more diversity in cybersecurity. 

“The first person I spoke to told me they didn’t have a STEM background but wanted to get into Cybersecurity. They thought that meant it wasn’t going to be an option for them.”

For those who are eyeing a leadership role within cybersecurity in the NHS, Rosie has this to say:

“We don’t need stem, we need diversity of thought. What you need is a passion for digital technology and a good work ethic. If you have that and you believe in yourself, nothing can stop you.”

We spoke to Jo Smith, Group Chief Informatics Officer (GCIO) at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust to discuss her career, leading technical teams and formal qualifications.

Jo’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.
 

Jo left school at 16 and, after a 5-year tenure in banking, started working in pharmaceuticals. Here she would move through project management and broader IT management roles before landing her first big informatics role at Roche as the Head of Informatics for Sales and Marketing in 1999.

From there, Jo would move between other global and regional roles before landing a Director of IT role at the Japanese company, Takeda. This would pave the way for Jo’s entry to her CIO roles, with her first at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust in 2013.

After a few years at Sidra Medicine in Qatar, Jo came back to the UK at the end of last year. Now she is the interim CIO at MFT, with responsibility for technology in the widest sense and also patient services, health records, clinical coding, and all of Information Services.

If I Don’t Take Control Of What’s Ahead, I Will Start To Lose Control

With Jo taking many international roles across different geographies, she’s no stranger to risk. For Jo, who spent 26 years at Roche, the biggest risk she’s taken in her career was leaving the relative comfort of that position. 

“I had a good position. Lots of autonomy and flexibility. But I didn’t like the way the role was going.”

Jo, who had a 10-year-old child at the time, decided it was now or never for a move.

“I just woke up and thought: if I don’t take control of what’s ahead of me, I'll start to lose control and my age will work against me.”

It took Jo almost two years to get herself ready to negotiate her exit and chose to leave with nothing to go to when, at the time, she was the primary income provider for her household. 

“It was an example of something where I thought ‘if I’m not happy, I’m not prepared to turn into someone who is going to become miserable. So for me, I had to take the risk and it’s a risk I've taken quite a few times in my career.”

There’s a lesson here for anyone viewing their current position through a critical lens. Settling for less may be the safe option, but is the safe option always the best one? For Jo, risks have been part of an incredibly successful career. 

Do you need to be technical to be a technical leader?

Leadership, regardless of the industry, requires a smorgasbord of complementary skills and experiences that can take decades to define and hone. Leadership in technical circles is no different.

For some, one of the non-negotiables for leading technical teams is a technical background. 

For Jo, it’s not as simple as that. 

“I don’t think you have to be a career techie but you do need to know what good looks like and how you can make that happen. So you need a broad understanding of how things work so you can credibly challenge and interact with your technical people.”

Otherwise, you can end up struggling to match up your instincts to the rest of teams with the wool being pulled over your eyes. The key, for Jo, is a focus on the environment you find yourself in. 

“If you go into a very mature and settled technical environment that wants business transformation, then you need to understand that tech understanding is perhaps less relevant because the environment is in a steady state. If you’re going somewhere that has been underinvested in, I'd suggest you need more of a technical grasp because you’re going to help pull technology forwards.”

You’ve Got to Be Brave & Authentic

For Jo, who has a very successful career in digital transformation and informatics, the key to succeeding in a leadership role within the NHS starts with being brave. 

“I think you've got to tap into what really works for you, what really wakes you up and gets you excited and jumping out of bed in the morning. And go for it. I just focused on doing what I really enjoyed and I tend to believe that if you do what you really enjoy, usually you'll do a good job of it and I think people notice that. But if they're not noticing it or you've got a blocker, then as a state, you've got to be brave.”

In a world of automation, there are a few cases where the human mind still reigns supreme. Manual testing of software is one of those cases. 

Manual testing, as the name suggests, is the method of executing the test cases and differentiating the actual results to the expected results. Test cases are executed manually by a human eye without any support from tools or scripts.

We reached out to a few technology leaders to discuss manual testing and why it’s so important we keep the human touch. 

Joe Corrall, Test Manager, Flooid

Joe Corrall is the Test Manager at Flooid. Graduating from Coventry University, Joe got his first taste of testing when he joined Game Developer Jagex as a QA. That position started his career in Testing with Joe having testing roles at oil refinery software company Spiral before joining Flooid as a Senior QA.

Now in a team of 20+, with the majority being manual testers with a Quality Engineering Arm, Joe’s next major project is moving manual testers over to the engineering arm.

We asked Joe about his experiences with Manual and Automated testing and where he believes the differences lie. 

Testing Isn’t A Tick Box Exercise

Building up a mix of manual and automated testing experience over his career, Joe is well placed to discuss the value and limitations in both. 

One of the initial reservations Joe has with automated testing is around the thoroughness of automated tests that, all too often, barely scratch the surface. 

“A lot of the automation work that I’ve seen done in the past is treated more as a box-ticking exercise. Someone is told they must have tests so they’ve run some tests. But, it's not really digging into code. It’s not looking for faults. It’s all very surface level.”

Instead, Joe believes firmly in developing manual testing skills that can carry over into automation testing. 

“Someone who has grown as a Manual QA and moves into automation carries over a lot of good habits. They’re looking for what they can do with the software. They’re stretching it and really diving into it.”

A Machine Can’t Tell You If Your Page is Beautiful 

The power in automation lies in it’s ability to clear clutter from a busy professionals day - but, there will always be limitations due to the uncertain nature of software development. 

Machine learning allows the test bots to be robust and act under conditions of uncertainty unlike traditional test automation tools and frameworks.

But, regardless, the fact still remains that a machine will never be able to tell you how something feels.

“At the end of the day, it can’t tell you if your page is beautiful. It can’t tell you if it’s actually friendly to use. There will always be someone around to give it the final check. We won’t ever get rid of that.”

It’s Expected Now (To Learn Automation)

The automation testing market is expected to grow at 14.2% CAGR from 2020 to 2025. Driven by growth in the demand for automation of the testing process and solutions to seamless customer experience and rising usage of AI-enabled cutting-edge technologies for software testing environments, Test automation is quickly becoming a must-have skill. 

A cursory glance over Linkedin or any job board will show you that automation is quickly becoming a ‘must-have’ in testing roles. 

“It’s expected now as a QA that you’ve got that skill in your arsenal. There is still a place for a QA who wants to be fully manual but over the last 10 years it’s gone from a challenge to know to impossible to avoid. Over the next 10 years, it’s going to be standard practice.”

Paul Elliott, QA Manager, Verint

Paul Elliott is the QA Manager at Verint. Starting his career in the Aerospace Industry, Paul was able to take his experience to a Startup in Cambridge as a Tester and left, 13 years later, as a Test Manager.

In this role, Paul was exposed to manual testing and, as it turns out, a very advanced form of automated testing at the time.

“I probably didn’t appreciate it at the time but it was right at the cutting edge of automation. The size of the product and the complexity, it only dawned on me when I left that it wasn’t standard practice.” 

Automation Is A Check, Not Assurance

Now leading the QA function at Verint, Paul has all of his testers running both manual and automated tests but weights the two versions of testing differently. 

“My Mental Picture is that I treat automation as more of a quality check than true quality assurance. I consider a product to be done when we’ve got enough automated checks to look after the product moving forwards. The manual effort is usually front-loaded and where we find all the edge-cases.”

Consciously choosing to call them ‘automated checks’ as opposed to ‘automated tests’ so people don’t associate automation as something intelligent, Paul believes the difference between an automated check and a manual test lies in the details. 

“I call them checks because they will only ever check for something that you've asked them to check for. Whereas the manual tester will go in and will notice something.”

Preferring to use automation as more of a regression backstop, Paul likes to have automation in place to support the testers throughout the projects. 

The Best Automation Testers Have A Manual Mindset

Echoing similar sentiments to all the professionals who have contributed to this article, Paul believes the best testers are those who can learn automation skills while maintaining their manual testing mindset. 

“If someone is just telling you about the scenarios and giving you some user stories and you go away and automate them, then you’re not really doing a testing job - you’re creating test artefacts.”

Developing an automated testing solution just a few years ago, every single tester on Paul’s team has learned automation skills in the role and, as such, benefit from a mindset a bonafide automation tester wouldn’t have. 

“They look at automation in a certain way. They want to take all the manual testing and take out all the repetitive stuff, all the time-consuming stuff and script it.”

Paul, who looks for testers with this mindset, covers one topic in particular when he interviews testers: to what extent do they act on behalf of the customer?

“That, in my view, is what good testers do - they’re the eyes and ears of an organisation. They’re keeping the dev team honest and ask the difficult questions that build better products.”

Dimitri Vinogradov, Software Dev Manager, Xilinx

Dimitri Vinogradov is the Software Dev Manager at Xilinx. With a background in cell and molecular biology, Dimitri entered the IT industry as a tester around the turn of the millennium and hasn’t looked back since. 

“The number of similarities between science and testing is staggering. The only difference is that in science you study nature, in testing - it’s someone’s code.”

With 7 direct reports, Dimitri has a team of testers that use both manual and automated testing methods. He believes that the two methods really shouldn’t be siloed away from each other. 

The Two Inevitably Intertwine 

With every member of Dimitri’s team being capable of writing at least very basic code (e.g., in bash), they’re able to stay agile and create a testing culture where no lines need to be drawn between manual and automated testing. 

“Every now and then you need to automate routine activities.”

For example, you may have an output of 10 columns of text or numbers, and you only need two of them. To cut off the unwanted eight columns, you’d script something.

As opposed to automated testing, Dimitri would argue that what you’re actually doing in such a case is programmatically manipulating data - an action that is still manual. 

“That's my bottom line. I don't think there is a  firm boundary to be drawn anywhere between the words ‘automated’ and ‘manual’.”

Should A Tester Learn Automation Skills?

We’ve already talked about the growth of the automated testing market. Growth, for the most part, is usually a good indicator of demand for talent.

Breaking into the role of an automation engineer is challenging, and sometimes it might seem like more trouble than it’s worth. When there’s still a clear need for manual testing, what’s the point of your uprooting your current ways just to follow the trend?

For Dimitri, it depends highly on the area the candidate is working in and the rate of change happening in that area.

“Generally speaking, you automate your tests for an area that isn’t going to change much and you don’t expect any surprises from it. But whenever you’re testing new functionality, you don’t just drop everything and rush to automating tests on something that may change tomorrow. That would be twice as much work.”

Keeping your skills up to date is an absolute necessity in any line of work, and the software industry is certainly no exception. As the testing market moves more and more towards automated tests, it is clear that a tester must have at least a functional understanding of automated testing while never forgetting the core methodologies that make manual testing so effective.

With COVID-19 forcing social distancing measures, metaphorical jet-boosters have been strapped to the back of many companies’ remote working policies. 

In the scramble to get everyone efficiently working outside of the office environment, many will have overlooked the security challenges that come along with this new set up. 

We reached out to cyber security leaders to discuss the scale of the challenge and what businesses can do to secure their remote teams. 

Benn Morris, Founding Director and Owner at 3B Data Security

Benn Morris is the Founding Director and Owner of 3B Data Security. Starting out in network engineering before joining the Police in their Hi-Tech Crime Unit and counter terrorism division, Benn has focused primarily on the payment card industry for the last 12 years as a PCI forensic investigator and qualified security assessor. 

Now as Founding Director and Owner at 3B Data Security, Benn is working with global clients on incident management, PCI DSS, pen testing and other advisory services. 

“Some of my Customers Didn’t Even Have Laptops”

Offering both consultative services and a managed service option, Benn has seen the full spectrum of response to the rush to get everyone set up remote. 

“Some of our customers didn’t even have laptops. It was quite a shock for them.”

Doing a number of engagements to get things locked down for clients, like Microsoft 365 security and configuration hardening as well as penetration testing, Benn believes there are three main areas that his clients have needed the most support with over this period. 

“The Behavioural side of working from home and helping people get into secure habits at home. Having the technology ready to take home, with the means to connect back into the business for continuity and finally the shifting of functionality on some systems to get them remote ready.”

“This Has Always Been An Issue, But Now It’s More Publicised”

Having been working in security and breaches for the best part of 15 years now, Benn has seen it all when it comes to attacks. With that in mind, nothing Benn is seeing now from his wide portfolio of clients necessarily surprises him.

“A lot of the stuff we’re seeing now isn’t new - it’s just being talked about a lot more now.”

A combination of high-profile breaches, like the recent cyber attack on Manchester United Football Club, and more security-minded professionals at a senior level, has brought about a shift in perceptions. Security is no longer seen as the after-thought and is brought closer to the start of a development lifecycle. 

It’s that changing of perception and perspective that Benn is more concerned about as, in most cases, how you educate people on security can be just as, if not more, important than any one tool. 

“Remote working security is more of a psychological problem than a technical one. If you’re sat at home and receive something you’re not sure about, you can’t just shout out: ‘did anyone else get this?’. This is key when it comes to things like phishing.”

While Benn isn’t seeing anything new, he is seeing different approaches that are particularly effective given the context of the pandemic. 

A Freedom of Information request from the firm has revealed taxpayers reported 9,948 Covid-related scams to HMRC between January and June.

Activity peaked in May, with 5,048 incidents explicitly mentioning Covid, then proceeded to fall by over 55% to 2,495 in June.

The total number of all phishing scams reported to HMRC was 44,777 in January. This rose steadily month on month to a peak of 77,148 in June, an overall increase of 73%.

On average, two thirds (66%) of the scams reported to HMRC in the first half of 2020 offered the recipient some form of tax refund or rebate.

Some scams offer the recipient a tax refund to help manage the financial pressures of the coronavirus, while others take the form of a bogus fine levied on the recipient for repeatedly leaving the house during the lockdown.

“The pandemic has given phishing scammers the chance to use more authentic content given the context of the pandemic. We need to be vigilant.”

Security Awareness Training is Incredibly Important

At the top of any security agenda for Benn is security awareness. So often overlooked, the education piece can be incredibly powerful when supported by a wider business model.

“Security training can be as simple as communication training. We’re showing people what dangerous looks like and what steps people need to take. Nine times out of ten, the steps are no different to the ones they’d take if they were in an office environment.”

Outside of education, Benn advises organisations invest in VPNs and the systematic locking down of features and functions.  To minimise risk.

“The idea is we don’t want people to have too many options. We want them to have what they need to do their job and that’s all.”

Holly Grace Williams, Managing Director at Secarma Ltd

Holly Grace WIlliams is the Managing Director at cybersecurity consultancy, Secarma Ltd. Ex military, Holly spent five and a half years in Secure Communication Systems before securing a masters degree in information security. With her master’s, Holly worked as a penetration tester for 5 years before taking the position at Secarma. 

“The Attack Surface Has Changed, The Attacks Haven’t”

Covid-19 has brought about an unprecedented amount of change. One of the necessary changes has been around the removal of processes to allow for the swift continuation of critical work. 

Although this has allowed for the quick deployment of security systems, it has left behind several key aspects of security testing which simply cannot keep up with the pace.

“Making changes can be done fairly quickly. With cloud providers, it’s almost instantaneous. But that’s the thing with security, you don’t want to just spin things up quickly. You want to be testing. But how quickly can they procure that test? Does their current supplier have capacity? You end up with companies operating at a risk to allow for these issues.”

Echoing similar sentiments to the rest of the professionals featured in this article, Holly believes the types of attacks happening right now are no different to the ones happening pre-pandemic. With that in mind, strong security habits will continue to prevail regardless of whether you’re at home or not.

“Your IT team may be used to operating in an office environment but the tools and technology we use is still the same for the most part. Communication is still email, and that’s still at risk of phishing attacks. So email hardening in response to that is still the same.”

Although the risks haven’t changed, the makeup of a network certainly has and, by extension, the levels of awareness training we need to provide for our employees. 

“How do we protect data in transit? We typically use VPNs to add encryption to data in transit. These also affect behaviour, so we need to consider updating security awareness training in light of the pandemic.”

Furthermore, it’s important we consider the diverse range of working conditions now open to vulnerability.

“Some will have lovely home offices, others will be sitting on their sofa with a laptop on their knee. Things like confidential conversations and confidential email need to be addressed. Headsets and privacy filters as well as security awareness training.”

Revisit Changes Made At The Start Of The Pandemic

As far as actions businesses can take right now to make their teams more secure while working remote, Holly recommends a pragmatic approach that focuses on changes made in the past.

“All of those changes that you made under duress back in March - go back and validate that work with rigorous testing.”

Sean Tickle, Security Operations Centre Manager at CyberGuard Technologies Limited

Sean Tickle is the Security Operations Centre Manager at CyberGuard Technologies Limited, where he leads a specialist team of experienced, knowledgeable and accredited staff whose main responsibility is to review and investigate alerts generated by numerous sources. After completing an honours degree, Sean took the role of junior security analyst. Raising quickly into senior security analyst, it wasn’t long before Sean was running his own team, building out the CyberGuard services and plans. 

Nobody Was Prepared

CyberGuard, and the wider security industry, saw a massive uplift in work from a managed service point of view. CyberGuard’s sister company, OGL Computer, experienced a huge surge in requests to get VPN connections in place and hardware to organisations. 

“No one was prepared for this initiative, but they also didn’t have a choice. It was all about what we can do to make sure everyone is protected and business continuity is maintained.” 

Currently, in the middle of a large incident response process for a big client, Sean is seeing perceptions around security changing because of more serious fines for breaches with COVID-19 just pushing people further towards the inevitable tightening and improving of security. 

“It’s not just the attack itself, you have to think about the reputational damage and the fines you might face from other organisations because you have to report a data breach if you’ve had one. These have massive implications that people are starting to wise up to now.”

Be Diligent on Your Chosen Solutions

A common solution employed by many, the VPN, is a good option for securing organisations against ever-evolving threats. But, as mentioned by Holly earlier in the article, rushing to implement these solutions without proper support or testing will lead to it having the reverse effect. 

“You need multi-factor authentication, you need audit logs. You need all these extra things because, in this climate, you run the risk of creating more security holes by not running due diligence on the ones already in place.”

We spoke to Jas Cartwright, Head of Digital Innovation Strategy at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust to discuss technical experience, chairing the BAME Network and advice for future NHS leaders. 

Jas’ story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

With a background in applications, Jas completed a Business Information Systems Degree before working in the industry and finding her place in the NHS. It’s here she started a career that spans 20 years, across a range of different teams in the IT and Technology space. After being Head of IT for a number of years, Jas moved sideways into her Digital Innovation role. 

“It’s been really challenging, but interesting, given what's happening now in the world of digital in the NHS, where we've just got to play catch up. And so the opportunities are there for us to grasp, really. It's a great time to be working in healthcare and leading on digital technology.”

“I Couldn’t Fix my Laptop When it Breaks, But I Know What Questions to Ask.”

Admittedly, Jas is the first to profess that she isn’t technical - but she’d also tell you that it isn’t necessary to lead technical teams. 

“I can’t fix my laptop when it breaks, but I know what questions to ask. I think being a technical leader is about having the ability to step back and ask those questions so that you can get the right information to the right people.”

Those new to leadership roles often feel they need to be the smartest person in the room - the one with all the answers. For Jas, and many of the leaders we’ve spoken to on this series, the opposite might be closer to the truth as recognising your own weaknesses is key to finding the right solutions. 

“As long as the leader recognises their own weaknesses, but has the ability to question on a wider basis, then you’ll be fine. My non-technical background hasn't been a disadvantage at all. In fact, it meant I can bring a new perspective to technicians who are very much wires, boxes and help them think about the impact of their work.”

Chair of the BAME Network

In addition to her work in transformation, Jas has recently been elected to be the Chair of the BAME Network within her organisation. Here she strives to address conscious and unconscious bias - something many people take for granted. 

“We all have biases, but it’s about helping people understand what they mean and helping them leave them at the door when they get into the workplace. Whether the person in front of you at work is male, female, young, old - everyone should be listened to.”

Meeting weekly, Jas and the BAME Network and leading crucial work and by highlighting the inequalities in the organisation, while giving BAME colleagues more support, the BAME Network is improving life for everyone at the organisation. Jas is now turning her focus towards getting that change embedded into the organisation's culture. 

“Even if there’s just one or two BAME colleagues who we can help give a voice to and positively impact their role, I'll be pleased.”

Advice for Future Leaders

Now 20 years into her NHS Tech career, Jas is on the bleeding edge of digital transformation in one of the world's biggest employers. Jas’ journey, which has been filled with learnings and setbacks, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for the NHS. 

For those looking to start a career in the NHS, Jas has this advice: 

“It's about just having that confidence. If you feel that you can do more, go do it. But it's not without hard work, and some people aren't prepared to put in that hard work. But for those of us who are, it's there for the taking. I think it's just about being confident in your own ability, and be able to go: ‘Actually, I want to move up and this is what I want to become.’ And just having that support network around you that can help you achieve your goals.”

For many, Digital transformation has become a bit of a buzzword. With full-scale home working just a button’s click away for most, it’s easy to forget that larger, more monolithic organisations transformation projects can take years, sometimes decades. 

In the NHS, one of the world’s largest employers, decades worth of transformation has happened over a matter of months due, in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic. The transformation that has seen millions of NHS staff moved out of hospitals and into their homes. 

In this article, we brought together many of the NHS Tech Leaders who have worked through the mass migration to efficient and effective remote working to share their stories and challenges. 

Annette Scott, Digital Programme Manager at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Annette Scott is the Digital Programme Manager at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital. Joining the Trust in July last year, Annette has been at the Trust for 16 months of her 15 year NHS career. Annette joined the NHS after working as a temporary staff member at Warrington PCT, before joining them on a permanent basis, swiftly moving to a position in the LIS as the NPfIT Training Manager.

Now leading her team on the delivery of several key, digital projects for LHCH, we asked Annette to reflect on the beginning of the pandemic and how herself and her team handled the mass migration to home working. 

The Home Element is Very Strong

Those who are effective working from home are those who strike a balance between their home life and their professional life. Keeping them physically and psychologically separated will help you switch off and focus on whatever needs your attention. 

This was the challenge for Annette, who is the first to admit that she initially struggled with the change.

“When you go to work you put your ‘costume’ on. You straighten your hair, put on your makeup and head out the door looking smart and preparing for the day. When I first started working from home, I didn’t do any of that and I struggled to switch off after the workday because there wasn’t that clear line between the two. I used to spend the journey home reflecting on work and preparing for home - that ceased to happen.”

With two children and a husband, Annette’s household has been very busy. And, without a dedicated workspace, both her and her husband were sharing the dining room table. This image will be a familiar one to many professionals who weren’t really set up for home working. 

Despite this, Annette was quickly able to set up a routine and opportunities for her team to benefit from the social capital that a home-working setting can lack. 

“Those ad-hoc conversations that add value to your day without you even realising. Those are key. I felt it was important to capture those moments in the best we could.”

In addition to regular 1:1s, Annette set up chat sessions through teams to try and capture that ad-hoc support and found that it helped the team, especially when welcoming a new staff member. 

There’s An Opportunity To Give People Flexibility

We wanted to ask each of our contributors what they thought the future held for the NHS and whether they thought distributed working was here to stay. 

For Annette, who is full of cautious optimism, the future is full of opportunity but needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

“We’ve seen the value of home working but we’ve also seen the detriment. There’s an opportunity to give people flexibility so they can go where they need to go to get the job done. The best part is that there are savings to be made for the NHS by responding to these needs.”

Andrew Carter, Head of IT at Liverpool Heart and Chest

Andrew Carter is the Head of IT at Liverpool Heart and Chest. Entering the NHS straight from University, Andrew is now approaching his fifteenth year in the NHS.

Spending his entire career in IT in the NHS, Andrew has seen the entire spectrum when it comes to the general perception around IT. The past few months, however, have seen a massive shift. 

“Digital services have been thrust into the limelight. Whereas before we were seen as a support service, we are now leading transformation and enablement. We’ve become a focal point and it’s given us a platform to drive more change.”

We Were Caught Off Guard Initially 

As the Pandemic took hold and the thousands of staff in the Trust’s area began to move to working from home, Andrew and his team were given the mammoth task of getting them up and running.

“We suddenly needed a lot more kit. For us, it was about getting the priority people settled then scrambling for a bit more kit. Once we got over the initial rush with kit, there were more challenges waiting for us.”

With everyone now set up from home and accessing the same systems, the bandwidth strain became a big problem. Andrew and his team quickly set up split tunnelling for traffic to flow down the VPN link securely. 

“None of this could be predicted because everything was just coming in so quickly.”

The Majority Weren’t Used to Remote Working

Usually, when it comes to digital transformation there are three major fronts - people, process and technology. With technology firmly under control, Andrew and his team now turned to the people. 

“There aren’t that many people who are used to home working and have the right set up for it. The majority weren’t used it it at all.”

Seeking to provide more than just the technology solutions, Andrew and his team set about creating ‘packages’ that came along with the kit. These packages included guidance on remote working practices.

“It was difficult to get everyone into a happy place. That was the real big challenge for us. So we really had to help them transition quite quickly over to a different mentality which people sometimes do for years before they’re really used to it.”

 

The Culture Around Video Conferencing has Changed

Since the pandemic hit, Zoom, FaceTime, Houseparty, Microsoft Teams and all manner of other video-calling apps have become so ingrained in our lives. As one of the only safe ways to communicate, it’s hard to imagine living without them. None of these has taken off quite like Zoom. At the end of December, the app reported a maximum of 10 million daily users. By March, 200 million people were on it each day to work, socialise, view lessons and lectures, sing in choirs, attend church, birthday parties and weddings, meet new babies, say final words to dying family members and observe Ramadan and Easter.

So ingrained into our everyday lives has video calling become that it seems a stretch to even imagine a world without it. But, as Andrew recalls, it wasn’t always the case. 

“I remember Lancashire Care. This is going back 10 years now, but we were rolling out Office Communicator. We were giving out webcams, providing training and more but no one would go on webcam. Obviously, the technology has improved, but I think the big part is our perceptions.”

This shift in perception has helped compound the work that Andrew and his team have done as more and more staff buy into the technology solutions. Now normalised and part of everyday life, Andrew is keen to see the digital transformation work continue past video calling. 

“It's something that we've been trying to push for because there's a lot of time and money to be saved from getting this right. It’s so important we carry this momentum forwards.”

Our Talent Pool Has Expanded

Amongst all the hard work enabling the work of those on the front and backline of the NHS, there has been no end of benefits to the digital transformation work that Andrew and his team have delivered. 

One particular benefit that flies somewhat under the radar is how the remote working capability of the NHS will impact the talent pool from which is draws its technical candidates. For Andrew, it’s a very exciting time to be in a hiring position. 

“Why limit ourselves to the Liverpool area for candidates or the northwestern area? As long as we're getting the right person, and they've got the scope and ability to work remote - we can hire from anywhere.”

 

Lin Horley, Senior Program Manager at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

Lin Horley is the Senior Program Manager at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), where she is taking a leading role on the Epic EPR HIVE Programme. Lin is working on the  Epic Program covering the third party vendors which are necessary to support the overall deployment in a major transformational programme for one of the largest UK NHS Trust which comprises  9 hospitals, soon to be 10. 

With significant experience in EPR solutions, Lin worked for many years as an NHS employee before moving to work on a contractual basis. 

Lin joined MFT at the end of the first lock down period working on-site initially, however more recently during the second lockdown has been working remotely.

The Culture Has Changed For Everyone

With a long and distinguished career in the NHS, Lin has worked with many different teams across the country. One of the biggest changes she has witnessed during this lockdown period has been around the perceptions people have on what is possible while working from home. 

“One of my clinical colleagues was telling me about how the culture has changed for him. He’s working with very, very sick patients with immune disorders and he’s found a balance, caring for some patients remotely over digital solutions and some on site.”

Lin has also seen the culture shift from what used to be quite a difficult process to something that is fun and engaging. 

“It’s quite interesting, when you’re a leader, to bring people in remotely and make sure they still feel valued. Sometimes they feel like just another number but now, with the technology we have, we can make it fun and enjoyable.”

We Need to be Cognizant of Everyone’s Needs and Circumstances

The team at MFT is currently being established to meet the demands of the growing HIVE project during a difficult lockdown period.  Lin reflected on past experience from her 5 years experience at University College Hospitals London where she worked on the Epic program during the first lockdown.  She emphasised the need to understand the varying needs of the people on the team. 

“There are a number of people who are not in a great position for working from home. I’ve had people who live alone and need that social interaction in the office. I’ve also had people who are living out of bedsits. We just need to recognise everyone’s circumstances before making decisions.”

Including more than just the physical space in which people work in, consideration also needs to be given to the emotional and psychological space people work in too. 

“As leaders, we need to recognise that people will react to this situation differently. They might struggle to find focus, they might lose discipline or they might work ridiculous hours. We need to make sure we’re communicating more than ever and giving support and praise where needed.”

It’s Never Going to Go Back To The Way It Was Before

We wanted to ask each of our contributors what they thought the future held for the NHS and whether they thought distributed working was here to stay. 

For Lin, the future for the NHS is a more connected one, where both patients and staff will enjoy the benefits of more flexibility supported by technology.

“It's never going to go back to what it was before. So I don't think we'll ever go back to having all patients attending busy outpatient clinics on-site, I think they'll be a mix of virtual and on-site attendances, which I think is probably a positive thing. Because number one, it saves patients  the costs and time necessary to commute and it provides hospitals with a more efficient way of working."

Paul Morris, Associate Director of Informatics at NHS Bolton CCG

Paul Morris is the Associate Director of Informatics at NHS Bolton CCG. Having worked in informatics for 18 years and the NHS for 21, Paul has significant experience in handling both the technical requirements of his role and the intricacies of the NHS as an organisation. 

In a similar fashion to Andrew, Paul was also responsible for the delivery of kit to almost 2000 members of staff in his area almost overnight. A massive task, Paul and his team were able to overcome that challenge with savvy use of suppliers and good old fashioned hard work.

We’re Always Looking at Rationalising

One of the rather unique challenges that Paul is facing as a result of the move to remote working comes in the form of the various estates in the Bolton Area. With many empty spaces and a growing number of spaces with reduced capacity, Paul is looking at cutting down. 

“We can make better use of our space and save the system some money, which is ultimately what we need at the minute.”

A restructure of this nature may well reduce the capacity of these locations and, with more investment in agile technology solutions, enable more employees to work remotely. But, like with most of the contributors in this article, Paul is aware that working from home isn’t for everyone. 

“I do think there are benefits to working from home. You can sometimes focus on a single task better and you are more flexible with how you spend your time. But, on the flip side, the isolation from your team and your colleagues can have a detrimental effect. For us, it’s about finding the balance.”

We’ve Proven That We Can Respond Quickly

Sometimes unfairly, the NHS is lumbered with a reputation for being slow on the uptake when it comes to technology. The past few months, however, have proved that the NHS can mobilise quickly and there’s no sign they’re slowing down. 

“The changes are here for good and I don’t think there’s much choice about that for NHS staff. We shouldn’t be going back to having 25 people in a room so we can have a conversation. Think of everything we’ll cut down on like Parking spaces and Expenses and all the productivity we’ll gain from video conferencing alone. There is absolutely no reason we can’t make it work.”

We spoke to Kully Kaur, Head of Data Processing & Reporting Unit at Arden & GEM CSU to discuss role models, finding your voice and advice for future leaders.  

Kully’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Computer Science Was a Man’s Course

Graduating with a Computer Science Degree, Kully started working in the NHS in 2001 as an Information Assistant. Over the course of her degree, Kully was exposed to competition and started to develop her ambition, determination and drive to succeed in a system that wasn’t 

“It was a course that was predominantly Male. I believe we had six females on the entire course and we felt that we really had to prove our worth and abilities to the males on the course. It spurred me on to study that bit harder.” 

Combining her love for healthcare and her passion and knowledge in Computer Science, Kully completed her degree with a dissertation that focused on building healthcare systems, knowing that this would be invaluable for a career in the NHS.

After working her way up the pay bands gradually, Kully is now Head of Data Processing & Reporting Unit at Arden and Gem CSU. In this position, Kully is responsible providing senior leadership for the CSU DPRU, working with NHSE/I regional and national teams and heads of services to deliver a robust service which meets the needs of service users.

Always looking to grow and learn, Kully took the opportunity to do a Masters in Public Health followed by the Mary Seacole course - study she would have to commit to whilst in her full-time position in the NHS. 

“The novelty of being a student had well and truly worn off. It was 9-5 with evenings. Every new door it opened presented new challenges and I was really ready to give up towards the end.”

But, after getting her head down and muscling through it, Kully was able to prove her ability once again - while walking away with lessons that’ll see her through the rest of her career.

“I think it's that doubt and fear you put in your head. What if I don’t succeed? I’ve let the organisation down. But once you trust your abilities, you get through it.”

You Feel You Have To Prove Yourself

In 2019, it was recorded that the BAME working population of the UK is 12.3%. In the NHS, BAME candidates made 38.2% of all external applications for jobs. 

Although having a zero-tolerance approach to any form of discrimination and prejudice, the NHS still has a lot of work to do when it comes to equal opportunities. The numbers speak for themselves and paint a world where professionals like Kully are often left feeling a sense of doubt and urgency to work harder, faster and better than their none BAME colleagues just to keep up. 

Why? Because there is a significant lack of representation at the highest level. 

“People do have their misconceptions about me. I’m an Asian Female and sometimes it’s detrimental because you always feel you need to speak louder and stand out - but that’s not who I am.”

Throughout her career, Kully has always been a skilled listener and observer. Always willing to add value when she can, Kully found these scenarios, where she felt she needed to go out of character and play up to the room, incredibly challenging. 

“You feel like you've got to prove yourself, you've got to go into your own head and convince yourself that you are here for a reason. You’ve not been given this job because you tick the ethnicity box or the female box. You’re here because you’re more than capable.”

It’s One Big Support Network

Like many of the professionals we speak to on this series, Kully has been able to call many of her colleagues role models. 

Good mentors can be pivotal during major junctures of your life, both personally and professionally. They can steer you clear of disaster, provide prescient views of the future that you can’t see, and heal your soul when you’re hurting.

Everyone can find mentors. It’s up to you to cherish the relationships you have, cultivate new ones, and never take for granted the people who can help you. Above all, you must recognize that mentors can be everyday people, who have extraordinary advice. They don’t have to be superheroes or millionaires or big CEOs.

For Kully, who has had both male and female role models throughout her career and had different people who have provided very different types of support.

“The Males who have supported me are always keeping me driven. They’re telling me to never give up and supporting me to push through. The Females are always supporting each other hand in hand - ‘how do I help get you there?’. It’s one big support network.”

You Need To Have That Drive

We all have moments of doubt. These moments either come from within yourself, or as a result of external influence. 

Ambition and drive, a core skills for NHS leadership, has been highlighted by many of the professionals we’ve talked to throughout this series. 

For Kully, who rose through adversity and been rewarded for her determination, the key to getting into positions of leadership in the NHS lies in that ambition.

“Your background doesn’t matter. You don’t really need a particular skill set, either. What you do need is that drive and ambition. Take one step at a time. The NHS has got so many people with so many different skill sets that we complement each other. I believe one person on their own cannot do this. We are the NHS.”

We spoke to Felicity Parker Seale, Digital Programme Manager at Royal Papworth Hospital to discuss mentors, returning to work after maternity and leading technical teams. 

Felicity’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

My Age Came As A Shock

Having left school at 16, Felicity started her career in the NHS as a Medical Records assistant at her local Trust. Enjoying this role, and the culture of her Trust, Felicity moved up through primary and secondary care in a number of roles.

“I loved primary care. Knowing that you’re always helping patients is a massive deal for me.”

After taking a number of receptionist roles at larger and larger practices, Felicity got her first taste of digital transformation through the Choose and Book initiative when she moved to a local PCT. At the time, Felicity was still quite young and, with a lot of her work being done over the phone, she often came as quite a shock when she needed to visit in person.

“There was always a shock of this really young person turning up to help us. You just have to take that on board and work through it. Once people realised I knew what I was talking about - it was all fine.”

Driving this change for all the practices in the area, Felicity was quickly making a name for herself. She was doing all of this at the age of 23 with a young child. 

“You have to juggle these things and people do understand that.”

Having gained a vast amount of experience transforming the patient journey, Felicity secured the role at Royal Papworth where she is using her experience to take a lead on massive digital programmes. 

I Had to Work Myself Back Up Again

Transitioning back to work after parental leave is hard. You’ve been out of the flow of the office for weeks or months, and you’re returning as a different person with new priorities and concerns. (Not to mention the stress and strain of endless new logistics.) It’s jarring and often overwhelming. 

For Felicity, who was travelling long distances from home to get to work, the process of returning to work after maternity leave was challenging. It forced her and her family to find a solution that ultimately meant Felicity would take a lower band role that was below her experience level. 

“I did that for my own peace of mind. Even though I was part time, I wasn’t really able to commit to anything fully. Not my daughter, or my work. So I had to work myself back up again.”

Taking a role as deputy screening manager at a local hospital, Felicity really started to enjoy herself. This bought her time to make sure her daughter was settled in a Nursery so that she could return to a position worthy of her experience level with peace of mind. 

Felicity, an avid runner and sports enthusiast, believes her competitive spirit and stubborn nature was a big part of her return to work.

“I am really stubborn in some ways, and I think that helped me come back. I always think: ‘if they can do it, I can do it ten times better.’”

 

Mentors Enable You to Do Things You’re Passionate About

Felicity, who never likes to remain stagnant, has worked hard with each new challenge she has sought. Along each step of the way, Felicity has made seeking mentors, advocates and allies a priority - but, crucially, she recognises that mentors can be right in front of you. 

Good mentors can be pivotal during major junctures of your life, both personally and professionally. They can steer you clear of disaster, provide prescient views of the future that you can’t see, and give you support when you need it the most.

Everyone can find mentors. It’s up to you to cherish the relationships you have, cultivate new ones, and never take for granted the people who can help you. Above all, you must recognize that mentors can be everyday people, who have extraordinary advice. They don’t have to be superheroes or millionaires or big CEOs.

“I’ve had a couple of really amazing female line managers in a couple of my roles who would enable me to go after what I felt passionately about.”

With her current line manager continuing to give Felicity the freedom and autonomy to make a difference, Felicity is going from strength to strength. 

To Lead You Don’t Need to Know Everything

Now leading digital transformation at her trust, Felicity is setting her sights to the future - a future where the rate of digital change in the NHS is moving ever faster. For those who are eyeing a leadership role within the NHS, Felicity has this advice: 

“To lead you don’t need to know everything, you just need to support those around you who do. Always believe in what you’re doing and have the confidence to do it.”

We spoke to Zona Marshall, IT Program Manager at Arden and GEM CSU to discuss balancing work and life, imposter syndrome and the constant pursuit of knowledge. 

Zona’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Starting her NHS career just over 18 years ago, Zona had taken a seven year gap to raise her children before returning to work as a receptionist and outpatients clerk in mental health services. 

After several years of moving up through the mental health services ladder, Zona moved to a Multi-site Acute Trust to take the role of Operational Manager covering all sites within the Trust being based in the Lincoln area. 

“One of the projects I worked on during my time as an operational manager was centralising services. I managed all the referrals coming into the trust and cancer services - which, at the time, were going to different teams at each site who worked slightly differently. We used the tech we had available to centralise those services.”

While leading this massive project, Zona completed a post-grad certificate and diploma and MA in professional practice. After completing her MA, Zona could feel herself being tugged towards change and set her sights on project management. 

Securing a role in the IT Services Department in the Acute Trust, Zona had three project managers but managed, as a programme manager, multiple projects. Staying there for 5 years, Zona took a sidestep to move to Arden and GEM looking to broaden her already expansive knowledge and experience towards the unique challenges the CSU has. 

Now providing IT support through the CSU across three different organisations in Lincolnshire, Zona leads IT projects for each of the customers in the area from Windows 7 to 10 upgrade to network and server infrastructure.

“My Confidence Was At An All Time Low”

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to many courageous women on the course of this series. Women who have juggled full-time jobs while raising children and continued to go from strength to strength. 

As a mother myself, I’m filled with pride to listen to these stories but also reminded of my own challenges around returning to work. 

For Zona, who returned to work after a seven-year gap, confidence was hard-fought. 

“My confidence was at an all-time low and I still feel that at times now. But I did have people around me who supported me.”

Coming back to work on half time so she could still drop and pick up the children from school, Zona worked with another Lady who shared the load with Zona - taking shifts Zona couldn’t do while Zona stepped up in times like School Holidays. This was great for the practical element for returning to work, but Zona’s confidence was still shot. 

“I loved staying at home with my kids but there were days where I wouldn’t talk to another adult for days. I’m already a natural doubter so my confidence was at rock-bottom.”

But the days kept coming, and so did the work. Between the support Zona had at work and at home, Zona was able to progress - even doing her first post-grad certificate through Lincolnshire Hospital. 

“I left school as soon as I could, at 16, so I was understandably hesitant.  But my Manager at the time was amazing and encouraged me to go for it.”

Unfortunately, her next manager wasn’t as supportive. Totally self-funded, Zona studied in her annual leave and spare time due to the fact her new manager wouldn’t let her study in work time. When it came round to doing her masters, Zona was really strapped for time. 

“I was spending weekends and holidays studying. I felt guilt. Guilt I was missing out on being a Mum.”

Now completed and being applied to her day-to-day role, Zona isn’t looking back. 

“We should all carry on learning and never stop learning. It’s that valuable.”

“Sometimes It’s As Simple As Recognising Someone’s Strengths”

Zona, who never likes to remain stagnant, has worked hard with each new challenge she has sought. Along each step of the way, Zona has made seeking mentors, advocates and allies a priority - but she’s also been the first in line to offer her guidance and support. 

“It’s an important skill to share. If that first manager of mine hadn’t recognised my potential, I’d probably still be doing that outpatient role now. Because of that, I’m always available to share my experiences and recognise talent.”

Recently having been approached to mentor someone else through a project management degree, Zona is excited to gain a new experience while supporting someone else through a similar challenge she faced earlier in her career. 

“I think sometimes it’s as simple as recognising someone's strengths - then they can go on and develop that.”

Good mentors can be pivotal during major junctures of your life, both personally and professionally. They can steer you clear of disaster, provide prescient views of the future that you can’t see, and give you support when you need it the most.

Everyone can find mentors. It’s up to you to cherish the relationships you have, cultivate new ones, and never take for granted the people who can help you. Above all, you must recognize that mentors can be everyday people, who have extraordinary advice. They don’t have to be superheroes or millionaires or big CEOs.

“Sometimes it’s a colleague who you can have a simple chat with. Or it could be someone who is quite far down their career path. It’s about the type of personality.”

Recognising talent can go one of two ways - someone can encourage and nurture that new talent or see it as a threat to their role and try to hold them back. Zona experienced both sides to this story during her career. 

“I got away from the person holding me back as soon as I realised what was happening because it did nothing for my confidence. People should want you to progress and be the best you can be - that’s a good mentor.”

Always Have Consistency In What You Do

We all have moments of doubt. These moments either come from within yourself, or as a result of external influence. 

Resilience, a core skill for NHS leadership, has been highlighted by many of the professionals we’ve talked to throughout this series. 

For Zona, who has taken lots of risks in her career and been rewarded for her determination, the key to getting past moments of doubt is to focus on consistency. 

“Have the consciousness to deliver everything you do and remain true to yourself while you do it.”

Similarly, Zona believes in a focus on continual development. 

“Make sure you’re always learning - especially if you’re in technology. You don’t need to be tech-focused, but you do need to be an excellent leader and work on your communication and negotiation skills so you don’t get taken for a ride by the techies.”

We spoke to Charlotte English, Senior Improvement Lead at Kings College Hospitals NHS to discuss imposter syndrome and the mentors who have shaped her career. 

Charlotte’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Starting her career in the NHS at the age of 18  with the intention of taking a gap year before applying for university. Charlotte found a role at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust as a receptionist. 

Here she stayed for the next five years conducting her regular receptionist duties while also taking on responsibilities in developing medical record processes and patient pathways. Before finally ending up in an assistant service manager role managing an admissions team.

“I was bitten by the bug then. I knew I wanted to continue in management.”

From here, Charlotte would move into her first Transformational role at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT). Here she would look at outpatient transformation as well as performance and RTT management. 

“I got to work with a lady called Els Drewek who was brought in from NHS England to help with the RTT position and I was like her right hand man as we worked with informatics to redesign all the patient tracking lists and effectively relaunch 18 weeks at GSTT.”

Although just a short 6-month position, Charlotte learnt plenty from Els and the position itself. Next, Charlotte took a position as a Service Manager in Theatres and Anaesthetics. Here Charlotte worked on engaging with specialities to improve their theatre utilisation through reducing any downtime e.g. reducing late starts and early finishes as well as inter-case delays. From here, Charlotte went on to work at King’s College Hospital in another service management role, before leaving the NHS altogether, to undertake a Senior Improvement Lead role for a consultancy firm specialising in theatre and outpatient improvement projects.  

Now as Senior Improvement Lead, Charlotte has been working at King’s College Hospital since November of last year. Brought on as a theatre expert, Charlotte’s remit was to lead transformational work on the theatre practices. Since COVID, and the reduced capacity in theatres, Charlotte has switched her focus to implementing digital solutions from third parties with an eye towards helping with outpatient work and performance. 

“I’m Not Afraid to Ask Stupid Questions.”

Charlotte’s career in the NHS, which started as a Receptionist and specialised in project management, has seen her take on many opportunities across many different disciplines and teams within the NHS. With an expansive understanding of both the clinical side and operational side of many of these teams, Charlotte is able to combine that with her passion and knowledge of digital transformation to provide solutions for all. 

It’s for that reason Charlotte is able to lead digital transformation at the highest level without a formal technical background.

“It helps but it’s not completely necessary. The set of core skills I’ve needed hasn’t changed because it’s all still project management. But, truth be told, when I did make the transition to full digital work - I did feel out of my depth.”

Charlotte, who made the transition to being fully focused on digital transformation last year, found the transition challenging. Working closely with Jaki Allan, who has also contributed to the FLINT series, Charlotte was able to work through the initial challenging months. 

“People talk to you as if you do know. At the time that was scary, but on reflection it’s quite nice. There was no speaking down to me at all. Now i’m picking up the pace and not afraid to ask stupid questions. It takes time but now i’m confident in these meetings."

Now with the time and experience under her belt on the technical side of things, Charlotte is able to focus on bringing her project management expertise to the table. 

“The projects would still get done if I didn’t have all the knowledge, but I’m one of those people who wants to know what everyone is talking about. I can’t spend my day blagging. I need detail.”

Demonstrating resilience and drive across her career, Charlotte has thrived in highly technical environments that are, more often than not, linked to the responsibility of patient care. 

The early days, that Charlotte has discussed, were days characterised with feelings of doubt and insecurity. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. 

“Whenever I’ve been speaking to Heads Of IT I do get a bit of doubt. Do I have the right skills set? Am I just pretending? Am i in the right role? Why have I been put into this role? You just need to remember you earned the right to be here and keep working hard.”

Finding A Mentor and Shaping Your Career

Charlotte, who never likes to remain stagnant, has worked hard with each new challenge she has sought. Along each step of the way, Charlotte has made seeking mentors, advocates and allies a priority.

One such mentor came during Charlotte’s first-ever NHS job.

“It was quite a small Orthopaedic centre so although there was a hierarchy, it was the kind of place where everyone knew each other. The CEO there was very supportive.”

Good mentors can be pivotal during major junctures of your life, both personally and professionally. They can steer you clear of disaster, provide prescient views of the future that you can’t see, and heal your soul when you’re hurting.

For Charlotte, her mentor was there to push her and help shape her career. 

“He got back in touch with me after he set up a consultancy firm and invited me to come work for him. I took that opportunity and worked there for 5 years. He’s always been someone that looked out for me, pushed me and has tonnes of experience at the highest level.”

Digital Is Ever-evolving and Ever-improving

Having had a career with many challenges and opportunities, Charlotte is relishing the ever-changing nature of the digital space. A space that motivates and encourages her to continually develop her own self. 

Charlotte, who often runs lectures at Kingston University, recalls a conversation with her course director where she summarises how she feels about her move into the digital space: 

“Last week my course director asked me how I was getting on in my new role and I was saying how I think i’ve found my calling. I really love what i’m doing in digital right now and I can see myself progressing down this route because it’s ever-evolving and it’s ever-improving. I need that.”

We spoke to Katherine Church, Chief Digital Officer at Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership to discuss the role of a technical leader in the NHS, the pace of change in the NHS and being curious. 

Katherine’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

I Wanted to Influence Change for the 1.2 Million in Surrey

9 months into her NHS career, Katherine brings a wealth of digital transformation delivery and management from her career in the private sector where she worked across retail banking, investment banking and a number of start-ups.

“I really liked the idea of being able to influence change for over 1.2 Million people in the Surrey area. I’d already spent so much time on commercial projects that the opportunity to deploy tech for good was just completely irresistible.”

You Need to Spend Time Understanding the Building Blocks

Every organisation, every team and every product has different challenges and goals. This makes defining the Technical Leaders within a team a very difficult task.

It’s a common question we ask most contributors: do you need to be technical to lead a technical team? 

For Katherine, who has worked in massive transformation projects and sat in technology teams for the past 20 years, it’s about understanding the fundamentals. 

“You don’t need deep technical knowledge. But you absolutely need to spend time to understand the building blocks - how else will you know what good looks like?”

Similarly, not knowing the basic building blocks of the technology stack you’re working with - or the solutions you’re providing - will invariably lead to confusion. 

“It’s easy to be bamboozled in tech. People make careers out of jargon. Being able to see through that and be able to know the questions you need to ask to understand the end value for the citizen - that’s imperative.”

For Katherine, a big focus is on building a versatile team around her that do have the deep technical knowledge. 

“I’ve always sought someone who is half deep technical knowledge and half business. You need a team of people who can orchestrate a team of very deep technical experts as you need them.”

The Pace of Change Is Extraordinary 

The NHS, rather unfairly, has a bit of a reputation for being slow on the uptake when it comes to technology. Due to it’s mammoth size, it’s bureaucracy and it’s auditing due to public funding, many people believe not much can happen very fast in the NHS.

With a wealth of experiences in the private sector, Katherine thought the same - until she joined. 

“My hesitation was always around the pace of the public sector. But the pace of change is actually extraordinary. We’ve developed a whole set of technologies, virtual consultations being a really good example, really quickly.”

Now beginning the process of going back over the changes and looking at the right use cases and impacts for the patient, Katherine is fully focused on making the process more efficient to create a seamless patient journey and more seamless journey for the practitioner. 

“We delivered so much, so quickly, we now need to go back and make sure what we are designing meets people’s needs and does not exacerbate digital exclusion.  Too rapid a move to digital leaves people behind, and they will be the most vulnerable people we serve.”

Be Curious

Ambition and drive, a core skills for NHS leadership, has been highlighted by many of the professionals we’ve talked to throughout this series. 

For Katherine, who has led technical teams in both the private sector and public sector, the key to getting into positions of leadership lies in curiosity. 

“Be curious and have an open mind. If there’s something that looks interesting to you at the start of your career, just go for it! Work for brands that excite you. Propositions that you’re passionate about.”

This is especially true when you’re in the digital space where products can be the part that truly excites you.

“Be around products that make your heart skip a beat. Take the right kind of risks to put yourself in a position that you feel passionate about.”

We spoke to Asma Nafees, Associate Director of Business Intelligence at Arden & GEM CSU to discuss taking legal experience into the NHS, balancing work and life, imposter syndrome and dreaming big.

Asma’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“There Aren’t Many Solicitors Who Find Their Way Into Technology”

Asma, who was 5 days into her role as Associate Director of Business Intelligence at the time we spoke to her, spent the six years prior within a CCG in Coventry and Warwickshire. 

By background, however, Asma is a qualified solicitor and worked in a Commercial Property firm prior to joining the NHS. 

“I'd say the move to the NHS was accidental. The recession in 2008/2009 hit, and I was made redundant as a commercial property solicitor, so I applied for an NHS job with the intention to go back to the law. But I found as my time in the NHS grew, that I'd found a new passion for making a positive change in healthcare services.” 

Deciding to stay in the NHS, Asma felt she needed to embed her commitment to the NHS through some formal qualifications. With that in mind, Asma took the decision to undertake a Masters in Healthcare Leadership - a move that, on reflection, probably wasn’t required at that time. 

“It was about my own blockers, I must admit. But I would say anybody who is looking for structured development, go to the NHS Leadership Academy website.”

Coming away with a distinction, while operating within her role and looking after three children, Asma was able to continue to move through the ranks of the NHS towards her ultimate goal. 

“I gained so much from the Masters but, looking back, it was my own blocker. Me deciding that I needed to do it, versus me choosing to do it, are two completely different things. I think as women we do put up our own barriers and benchmarks about what we need to do before we can progress to the next level.”

Starting her role in the NHS with CBSA over a decade ago, Asma focused mainly on Business Intelligence at a time when CBSA/HCS were offering BI Services at scale across the West Midlands. Over time, and in moving over to a CCG, Asma’s role expanded to include Acute Contracting - a role that drew on her legal expertise. 

“After 2 years within the CCG, I took on Contracting as part of my portfolio too. More recently, upon return from maternity leave at the end of 2019, I went back to a BI and Planning focus as the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Planning and Performance, supporting Place-based transformation work, and the the assurance and oversight of Restoration plans to CCG Committees.”

“I Stopped Being Apologetic About Being a Mum”
 

It was this expansion of Asma’s role into Contracting that her legal expertise really started to drive the expansion of her role - and also where she found the pivotal moment in her career. 

“There were discussions about me expanding my role from Business Intelligence to also encompass Acute Contracting, but I was quite hesitant. I was happy with my BI role, and was also acutely aware that I had 3 young children to juggle alongside my career! I remember our then Accountable Officer (a mum herself), taking me aside and saying: ‘it’s perfectly acceptable for you to set your own schedule [to fit in around afterschool club pick-ups]’. That was the moment I stopped being apologetic for being a Mum.”

Feelings of guilt and feelings of missing out on certain parts of either professional or parental life are common and, out of all the professional women we’ve spoken to in this series, it’s an issue that unites.
 

“I found I was always trying to justify how I managed everything alongside being a mum, and why I choose to do so much, rather than actually celebrating that women are amazing and we can juggle motherhood and a successful career seamlessly.”

“One Meeting Can Set You Back”

Demonstrating resilience and drive across her career, Asma has worked in high pressure, technical environments while raising her four children. 

Being resilient, in theory, seems sound - but applying it is another story altogether. Elements of doubt begin to creep in as you climb the career ladder. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. 

“I think quite often with imposter syndrome, you can be having a great week or month, and you’re on top of the world. And then one meeting can set you back.”
 

Sitting on many senior leadership forums where she brings both digital transformation, analytical knowledge and legal expertise, Asma often feels like she has to do that little bit extra to get her voice heard - something that does nothing to help the feelings of imposter syndrome that already exist.
 

“I’ve made suggestions in the past that haven’t been picked up, but three weeks later, someone else makes the same suggestion and it’s a great idea. I placate myself that sometimes it’s about nudging people for the ultimate good. But on the flip side, why can’t our voices be heard from the outset?”
 

“Dream Big”

Asma, who was 5 days into her role as Associate Director of Business Intelligence at the time we spoke to her, and an Existing Non Executive Director in the Care sector, is setting her sights on becoming an NHS Trust Non Executive Director. 

For those who are looking to follow the trail that Asma has blazed and secure a leadership role within the NHS, Asma has this advice: 
 

“Dream big. Work hard. If you’re not already in Health Tech make sure you volunteer for projects and read about what’s happening in the sector. My career has been all about putting myself out there, going above and beyond, and being available for new streams of work. This can-do attitude led to me finding my niche in the NHS.”

Every organisation, every team and every product has different challenges and goals. This makes defining the Technical Leaders within a team a very difficult task.

But, regardless of agile team structures and ever changing project briefs, there are still some skills that the very best Technical Leaders use to manage engineering and technical teams.

In this article, we bring together a variety of different technical leaders, to discuss the skills needed to be successful in the role, their route into the role and their advice for future leaders.

Richard Rodriguez, Chief Technology Officer at Fleet Assist

Richard Rodriguez, is the CTO at supply chain management company, Fleet Assist. A lover of the technical, hands-on aspects of his job, Richard has worked his way up from individual contributor level where he got an idea on how not to lead technical teams. 

“Unfortunately, you get bad leadership and are asked to do things that are unreasonable. So there is always that interest on how things could be done better. It’s always in the back of your mind.”

Working in an agile environment, Richard believes the agile culture that comes with the methodologies informs technical leadership approach and also gives a platform for contributors to display their leadership qualities.

“The agile culture is very much about improvement, self improvement, team improvement, and reflecting on yourself and reflecting on the team. And what that does, is that gives everybody a voice. And with that voice, you start to recognise who the natural leaders are in any team setting. And for some reason, I feel like I've gravitated towards being a leader, I think, because I'm not afraid to speak my mind, I'm not afraid to put my thoughts out there.”

Staying close to the agile methodologies, Richard found himself being a leader, not by title, but by nature. When the opportunity came up to lead a small team, as he’s doing now, Richard was keenly poised to take his natural position as a leader into a more formal setting. Never losing sight of the agile culture that helped him find his feet as a technology leader, Richard is expanding his leadership skill set every day.

“The Agile Culture invites people to step up and do whatever it takes to get the job done. You’re encouraged to be part of everything and make it all better. It’s a really healthy culture and it’s certainly helped me grow into my role.”

What Makes an Effective Technology Leader?

Having found his feet as a manager in a healthy, Agile culture that promoted leadership qualities organically, Richard is now focusing on helping his team achieve their goals. The key to effective technology leadership, for Richard, lies in the joining up of the two aspects of leadership. 

“You manage the people in your team and you manage the work. I think you have to try and join the two up and provide a clear vision and direction.”

Unifying the two aspects of professional life helps Richard understand the vision of the company and translate them for the team.

“Crucially, it’s about being transparent with that direction and finding ways to keep people engaged as opposed to just telling people what to do.”

Asking the right questions, understanding your team and supporting them throughout their career will help you keep them engaged. Having this consistent open dialogue will help you strike the balance between what’s possible and what your colleague feels is management. Finally, for Richard, it’s also about how you then go back to the rest of the business. 

“That transparency goes both ways. Sometimes you need to go back to the business, and say this is too much, we can't do this. Here's what we offer instead. it's really just about trying to keep things simple. Keep the direction clear.”

 

A Leader Trusts Their Team

This article is about leadership in technology, but the broad brushstrokes of leadership can be applied to more than one canvas. Leadership elements that you pick up in one industry can easily be transferred to another industry with a bit of hard-work needed on understanding the subject, the challenges and the objectives. 

One of these broad brushstrokes, for Richard, is trust. 

“Outcomes are more important than Outputs. That is, it’s not what you do or how you do it, but the impact that has. That’s important because it means you can give the team a clear definition of a successful outcome, and give them the freedom to achieve it however they prefer. This empowers and engages their intelligent and creative minds, and builds a feeling of trust.”

A Leader who trusts their teams will find themselves having a much easier time setting the direction of travel and ensuring that the team knows where they’re heading. For Richard, there are many routes into technology leadership - with industry and technical experience helping you on that journey.

“A bad route to being a technical leader would be someone who's just purely technically minded. I think you have to have that leadership quality, that leadership mind, which isn't it's not about knowing how to do the job, best. It's about it's not about doing the job well yourself. It's about recognising what the signs of success are. And then finding your team and helping your team to reach that success.”

Ian Brunton, Software Development Manager at Red Bull Racing & Red Bull Technology

Ian Brunton is a Software Development Manager at Red Bull Racing & Red Bull Technology. Ian’s route to technology leadership came after a previous mentor of his recognised his skill set in understanding people. 

“Sometimes the best developer on the team gets pushed into being the manager because they’re seen as the best - but that isn’t always the right decision for the business. Being the best technically won’t necessarily help you understand the team and understand how to motivate people.”

Ian, who was given an opportunity because of his leadership qualities, is the first to admit that it took him a while to decide if leadership was actually something he wanted to do. But when a project came up that needed someone to drive it forward, Ian was ready thanks for the continual development mentality he and his team believe in. 

“As a junior developer, make sure you’re talking and listening to your team and your manager. A performance review shouldn’t just be a sit down and box tick exercise, development towards leadership should be a continual thing. It’s a bit like dental hygiene, you can’t just make efforts to improve once or twice a year, it has to be done every day. If you do it rigorously and continuously - something will come up.”

Manager and Leader Are Two Different Things

There has been plenty of debate around the nuances between the two roles of Manager and Leader. Some might say that Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly—sometimes before they fully understand a problem’s significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully.

For Ian, the differences are more subtle. 

“Management is very much about getting things done, making sure your team is trained and helping them through processes. Leadership, I think, is defining a vision that tackles a problem and engaging your team to come help you solve that problem. Really, you need to know how to use both aspects.”

Sometimes a leader has to be very focused on management and just getting something finished. At other times you need to really inspire the team to push in the right direction and help them grow in that way.

“You can have people that are great managers, but aren't necessarily brilliant leaders. Equally, you can have people that are fantastic leaders, but aren't necessarily great managers. I think there's a lot of people that are probably somewhere in the middle, but understanding the difference between them, and knowing when to really focus on the skills that come within each skill set is quite important.”

 

Never Stop Reading, Never Stop Learning

For those looking towards technology leadership as a goal in their career, Ian recommends learning as much as you can, even diving into the psychology of people management. 

“Understand how people work, and begin to read the signs of people from their body language, not just their words. Understanding things like transactional analysis is really important,  it will help you in your own life, whether you're a manager or not.”

That knowledge is also incredibly accessible. All you need is the drive and willingness to learn something - and access to the wonderful world of the internet - to develop a skill that will help you no end in your leadership style.

Outside of that learning capacity, Ian also believes it’s key to understand people’s capacities - emotionally and professionally. To this end, Ian uses the analogy of the ‘emotional bucket.’

Everybody has an emotional bucket that is fixed in size. Some people’s buckets are large, and some are small, but your bucket never changes in size. Everything in your life goes into this bucket, whether it's at home or at work, good or bad. If somebody suddenly seems out of character at work, it might be because their bucket is full.

“If you don't have any idea of how full their bucket is, you don't know whether you can push them harder or whether you need to take some load off of them. As a manager, you need to know, what's the wellbeing of my team? Can I push them harder? Can I give them more work? Or do I need to help support them more to get through this stage of a project. This shouldn’t only be the responsibility of the team leader, you can do this as an individual as well. If you can spot these signs, you can help the whole team succeed.”

Peter Leopold, Software Development Manager at eSight Energy

Peter Leopold is the Software Development Manager at eSight Energy. Working initially as an individual contributor and moving into a project manager role, Peter’s route into leadership has seen him take on different roles within the same team and always with a significant slant towards the technical aspects of his role. 

“I always had a technical element, I was very knowledgeable in my field. I’m not one of those managers who doesn’t understand what the team is talking about - they come to me for guidance. I believe this also helped the team to accept my role change.”

With his team already well aware of Peter’s capacity as a technical contributor, a peer and a leader - Peter’s challenges came in the form of juggling the different responsibilities that came with leadership.

“Getting hands off that's more difficult, because we have a small team, and there are a lot of technical challenges in our company and in our product. So I kind of have to be hands on. I don't programme too much any more, but I don’t mind if I have to help out. And I do review code, and we discuss technical requirements in meetings.”

Do you need to be technical to lead a technical team?

We interview many technical leaders from incredibly diverse backgrounds - each of them bring their own brand of leadership and experiences to the role. We always like to ask about where leaders stand on the technical knowledge a technical leader needs to be an effective leader. 

We asked Peter where he stood on this debate. 

“I'm an engineer by training but that doesn't mean that somebody who is not technical cannot lead a team. But I think when you work directly with the people who are building something, you need to understand, you know, what they are doing. You need to have some experience and  have ambitions and the ability to learn and to adapt to new challenges has to be in you from the start.”

Leading a tech team doesn’t mean that you know everything about technologies that you and your team are using. Very often it means that you know enough to move the development forward.

“If a leader understands the development process and has been working with developers for a long time, it can work. Even if they never developed a single line of code.. So, again, for me, it helps to have development experience or to have worked closely with it.”

We spoke to Astrid Grant, Digital Change and Benefits Manager​ at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust  to discuss going down the non-clinical route, overcoming adversity and her advice for future digital transformation leaders. 

Astrid’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Realised Technology Was A Barrier in the NHS.”

Born and raised in her Native Spain, Astrid studied towards a medical degree. During her foundation years, Astrid realised that the clinical route into healthcare was not for her. With options in Spain limited, Astrid made the move to the UK where she would study a masters in Healthcare Policy, Planning and Financing. 

After successfully graduating, Astrid joined a startup where she provided strategic consulting for the NHS. It was here she realised how much of a barrier technology was in the NHS.

“How is it that we all have iphones in our pockets but the NHS is struggling so much. This sparked my interest in digital health and the NHS.”

With that in mind, Astrid joined Cerner and provided EPR for four years before Astrid found an opportunity within the NHS. Now she is driving digital transformation at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust. 

“I’m Often The Youngest Person in the Room”

Written down, Astrid’s route to her position now seems straight forward but, like many, Astrid’s journey was filled with setbacks and challenges many don’t even see. 

Astrid, who was born with a cleft palate, suffers from a speech impediment. 

“It’s very noticeable everytime I open my mouth. It’s always at the back of my mind when I’m talking to people - especially since taking up a leadership role.”

Naturally, this leads to insecurities around communication that compound the fact that Astrid is often the youngest person in the room. 

“This might be a bit old fashioned, but sometimes it feels like I don’t have enough credibility. So it means that I kind of have to work a bit harder to prove myself. And it is a male dominated world, right. And even thought they probably don't care that I'm young or female - I do feel like sometimes I have to work three times harder, just to make sure that I feel people will see me well.”

The Skills Needed to be Effective in Digital Health

Astrid, who cut her teeth in healthcare and healthcare management, hasn’t got a formal technical background. But with a lifetime of passion and interest in technology, she is able to lead her digital transformation teams effectively. The key skill? Being able to quickly learn new things. 

“You need to be a fast learner. I’ve been working in digital health for the past 5 years now and I didn’t know anything about technology other than how to use my laptop when I started. It’s really important that you’re willing to study, to inform yourself and make sure you understand the conversations you’re having. You need to speak the engineering language.”

On the side of softer skills, Astrid recommends working on your empathy. A skill important in any position of leadership, empathy has become increasingly important in the NHS due to the pandemic. 

“Clinical staff are under a lot of pressure and if you’re trying to implement a new system it’s another ‘ask’ for them. You need to understand people might not be in their right headspace and you need to be aware of that.”

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to many leaders in the NHS throughout the series. One point that is raised time and time again is the togetherness, the roll your sleeves up and get things done attitude that has arisen. On the flip side of that, leaders have also raised concerns about the strains of this momentum - something Astrid echoes. 

“I worked in the London Nightingale Hospital with Cerner and we were helping them implement an electronic patient record system. It was 10 straight days of work but it was one of my most rewarding projects. This kind of work would normally have taken months, so how do we keep that momentum?”

“We Need to Be Careful We Don’t Go Back”

The speed at which the NHS was able to transform it’s working practices to ones that are safe and effective was incredibly impressive. The amount of kit and the shift in culture needed was nothing short of massive. 

But, like many who I have interviewed, Astrid doesn’t want things to flip back once the virus is under control. 

“We need to be careful we don’t go back to the way it was before. Having really slow pipelines, having 100 people weigh in on every topic. We need to keep the agile methodology that has come during the pandemic alive.”

Advice For Future Leaders

Now 5 months into her NHS career, Astrid is on the bleeding edge of digital transformation in one of the world's biggest employers. Astrid’s journey, which has been filled with learnings and setbacks, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for the NHS. 

For those looking to start a digital career in the NHS, Astrid has this advice: 

“Network, network, network. Find the people that are doing the job you want and talk to them.”

As for the future, Astrid isn’t setting her sights on the next step of the ladder. After a challenging period working in the NHS through the COVID-19 pandemic Astrid has thought long and about what it is that she wants from her role. 

“All I know is that I want to have as much of a positive impact on patient care as I can.”

We spoke to Niamh McKenna, CIO at NHS Resolution to discuss the role of changing careers, the importance of role models and advice for future NHS tech leaders. 

Niamh’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

I Wanted to be the One The Buck Stops With

Niamh, who graduated from University with a Social & Political Science degree, found a career in consultancy. Working for Andersen Consulting, later known as Accenture, Niamh found a career that would last her 26 years. 

“Many people think of Accenture as a consultancy firm and I did do my fair bit of consulting, but I also worked in the outsourcing department which has a real variety of experiences and challenges. I have done a lot of different things, from learning  how to programme COBOL, to retail and in-store operations and running a helpdesk.”

Jobs become careers and careers become massive parts of our lives, with friends and experiences that stay with us. Leaving a role after 5 years can be daunting and difficult. For Niamh, who went out to join the NHS after 26 years at Accenture, it was one of the scariest moments of her life.

“One thing you get when you've been in an organisation for that long, is you've kind of got the Rolodex to die for. You can pick up that phone to so many different people. Leaving that behind was scary, leaving not just colleagues but dear friends. All I could do was reassure myself that all of the best career moves I've made have always been a leap into something unknown.”

Niamh, who was leading Accenture’s Healthcare Practice in the UK, left Accenture with pride and sought her next challenge that would give her the levels of ownership and accountability she was looking for, after almost 30 years of working with clients who make all the final decisions. 

“I wanted to be the one the buck stops with. The CIO role came up, and I thought that this is a unique opportunity. They've never had a CIO before and they’re looking for someone to come in and help them transform. I remember thinking how rare this opportunity was, so I went for it.”

The Importance of Role Models

Niamh wasn’t alone when she made the decision to leave her role at Accenture. Helping her find the courage to take the leap was a support network of mentors and role models that have formed from years of relationship building. 

“Oftentimes we do need those people who can give us a little push - especially when you’re early on in your career because it’s hard to find that courage to go and get something. Having a mentor who can say: ‘no, you got this’ is massive.”

Whether it’s formal or informal mentors, these individuals are people you should keep hold of as they can help you when you need help the most. For Niamh, who has had mentors who have spotted opportunities for her and those who have nurtured her into those opportunities, role models and mentors are an important part of a successful career. 

“I would encourage anyone at an early stage of their careers, seek out those people and ask for advice. Find people and just talk to them. I’ve always found that people are happy to give time, and I try and give time as well. I think it's really, really important.”

Curiosity and Interest is Essential 

During the course of this series, we’ve spoken to a range of different leaders from a range of different backgrounds who all are now part of the digital transformation of the NHS. 

From each, we learn something new - but if there’s one thing that ties them all together it’s the love for technology, change and transformation. 

For Niamh, who has a strong technical background that has been driven and nurtured for her own passion for technology, being a technology leader is more a question of care and curiosity than it is knowledge. 

“It’s important you’re passionate about it and have an appreciation and an understanding about the processes - but you don’t need to code the thing yourself. Where you can, you should build up knowledge and that comes out naturally from your curiosity - which is essential.”

For those struggling with that side of the role, Niamh recommends giving it a go and trying out the processes that seem to be impenetrable to give yourself a better understanding of the process you’re looking at transforming.

“I was talking to someone about robotic process automation and I was sharing with them that I had a repetitive task to do myself. So I downloaded a trial copy of one of the RPA tools and decided to use it for my own personal task to see if I could get the robot to execute it.”

Returning to Work After Maternity 

Niamh, who has two young children, echoes the sentiment of many female professionals who struggle to find the balance between their career and their family aspirations.

For Niamh, the biggest impact was around simply finding the balance. 

“I had underestimated how challenging it would be for me just to get my act together on being a mum working part time. Getting home and dealing with the baby. It was all a lot to handle.”

A transition like no other, returning to work after parental leave is hard. You’ve been out of the flow of the office for weeks or months, and you’re returning as a different person with new priorities and concerns. (Not to mention the stress and strain of endless new logistics.) It’s jarring and often overwhelming.

Niamh, as it happens, was given a project that had a smaller scope - a decision that, in hindsight, was the right one despite being chosen for her. 

“I was quite angry about that but then I sort of sat back and I said to myself, if someone had said to me at the beginning of that process:” you know, you're going to do this role, but it's not a really big meaty role. It's not going to get your promotion, it's not going to make your career progress. But it will give you the time and capacity to work out how on earth to juggle this new life that you're in” - I would take it.”

Advice for Future NHS Leaders

After taking the leap from her long career with Accenture, Niamh is now 4 months into her role as CIO. Here she is driving digital transformation at the very top. For those looking to follow in Niamh’s footsteps, she has this advice: 

“Don’t be afraid to try something completely different. That’s sometimes hard for women - but don’t stay in your comfort zone. I’d always recommend people try to have a go [at new things] and challenge yourself.”

We spoke to Sarah Hammond, Associate CIO - Head of BI at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to discuss balancing work and life, imposter syndrome and the constant pursuit of knowledge. 

Sarah’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Was Always Hungry For Knowledge.”

With 27 years in Business Intelligence, Sarah started out in the NHS at a junior level while studying Business and Finance. After a brief hiatus in the private sector, Sarah was destined to return to the NHS. 

“I suppose I fell in love with the NHS and I thought my skills could make a massive difference.”

Despite being a junior member of the team, Sarah was automating long, drawn-out tasks that would normally take weeks, down to a matter of days. Lacking primary care experience, Sarah moved to work in a practice for 18 months before moving to the Health Authority. 

“At each step of my career, I've either taken a sideways move or a promotion. But my main focus was always to understand as much as I could about the NHS and my area. I was always more hungry for knowledge than I was for my next career move.”

After the dissolution of the Health Authority, Sarah moved to the PCT and then the CCG before moving to Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust where she remains to this day. Enjoying a long career in the NHS, Sarah has operated at almost all levels of the NHS and, as such, has gained unique insights into the health service. 

“I've worked my way up. For me, that's helped me understand how the NHS works. How internal politics and strategy work. I'd like to think my knowledge is quite, quite deep, as opposed to me just skimming through the grades.”

As the associate CIO and Head of BI, Sarah is driving digital transformation through a data renaissance at her trust. With strong analytical and business intelligence experience and knowledge, Sarah is transforming the data the NHS has. 

“We hold so much data in the NHS, and I'm an analyst at heart and I like to provide intelligence to an organisation so that they really understand their business and the patients they serve. “

Sometimes You’re the Last One Picking up From Nursery

Always striving for knowledge and understanding, Sarah led the BI function at Gloucestershire with a single-minded focus on improving care for patients through data and intelligence. Understandably, Sarah found it challenging to return to leading her department after having children. 

“You can’t give as much of yourself as you previously did, which is incredibly difficult. I used to pour hours into projects, now I’m working smarter but I still feel torn between professional and home life.”

Feelings of guilt and feelings of missing out on certain parts of either professional or parental life are common and, out of all the professional women we’ve spoken to in this series, it’s an issue that unites.

“Sometimes you're the last one picking up at the nursery. Nobody feels great about that. And then you're having to run out of a meeting because you've got to go and pick up the children again, none of that feels great. So you feel guilty, whichever way you can't win.”

Imposter Syndrome: You’re Not Alone

Demonstrating resilience and drive across her career, Sarah has worked in highly technical environments that are, more often than not, linked to the responsibility of patient care. 

Being resilient, in theory, seems sound - but applying it is another story altogether. Elements of doubt begin to creep in as you climb the career ladder. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. 

“We have difficult jobs and I think we’ve got a significant amount of responsibility. Naturally, you start to doubt and I think we all have those moments. You’ve just got to work your way through it.”

Oftentimes, simply knowing that you’re not alone in the way you feel can help you towards conquering feelings of doubt. That’s part of the reason why I decided to start this series and I’m glad to hear that it’s having a positive impact on the lives of its readers. 

“It’s easy to sit there and think you’re the only one who feels this way because everyone else seems so competent. But when you start thinking, and this series has helped illustrate this, you realise it’s highly irrational and most people suffer.”

Never Stop Learning

Now 27 years into her Business Intelligence career, Sarah is on the bleeding edge of digital transformation in one of the world's biggest employers. Sarah’s journey, which has been filled with learnings and setbacks, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for the NHS. 

For those looking to start a career in the NHS, Sarah has this advice: 

“Ensure you set up your teams so you can learn from each other because you should never stop learning. It doesn’t always have to be technical either, from other people we learn how to handle situations - we should never underestimate that type of learning.”

For centuries, technology has both inspired and frightened human beings. Today’s technology is no different in it’s dualistic nature. 

Popular opinion of technology is rather nuanced, with the general populace understanding it’s value but nonetheless expressing worries around safety, job security and more.

Intrinsically, technology is neither good nor bad—it is the use to which it is put that makes the difference. For digital and technology leaders operating in the NHS, one of the world’s biggest employers, technological applications are made for one thing and one thing only: the well-being of the 16 million patients it treats every year.

We spoke to a few technical leaders from across the NHS to discuss the applications of technology they’re seeing and how they’re driving value for both the patient and the caregivers. 

Saeed Umar, Head Of Technical Services at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Saeed Umar is the Head of Technical Services at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, a major trauma centre.

With a career spanning 20 years and focused entirely on tech, Saeed has worked as a technician and various other roles on that career ladder throughout the NHS before securing Head of Technical Services in 2016 - a role that encompasses cybersecurity, networking, telecommunications, switchboard and help desk. 

For Saeed, who has enjoyed a long career in the NHS, the biggest change that has happened over the COVID period has been around the investment technical projects in the NHS receive. 

“There was a very stop-start nature to investment. That has changed over the last couple of years. And we're kind of moving in the right direction with a lot more rigour from NHS digital.”

Cranking Up The Dials on Infrastructure

For Saeed, it wasn’t a specific technology or new project that has made the biggest impact on end-patient care, but rather the way that infrastructure has been allowed to kick up a gear. 

“We were able to crank up the dials on all our infrastructure, without the need to go out and buy anything, just upgrade, enhance or increase the capacity with our fantastic vendors. People had Teams instantly, people had the ability to work from home, thousands of users were able to go home within a matter of weeks. Without any change in the way they had to really use technology.” 

Enabling thousands of NHS staff to operate uninterrupted from a place of safety has allowed the NHS to keep up with the pace of change and match the crisis every step of the way. 

This increased emphasis on infrastructure has also had a very deliberate positive impact on the end user who has benefitted from new, digital solutions for visitations, out-patient care and video translation for non-english speaking patients. 

“Historically, we’ve struggled to build public consumer software that can integrate into a hospital. Now, we’ve quickly managed to turn it around and quickly roll out patient-facing devices that can use Zoom and Facetime that use low touch functionality. By the beginning of November, we will have these in every ward.”

Significantly reducing patient anxiety and keeping hospital attendance low, this solution is just one example of many advancements made possible by reduced friction in NHS infrastructure.

Supporting The ‘Tech Poor’ and Inspiring the Next Generation 

These tech solutions, that bring families together and drive real impact for the end-user, are revolutionary. The example above manages to keep healthy people out of hotspots for infection while allowing them to maintain contact with those infected. 

For those who use technology in their everyday life, and have access to the infrastructure to enable that technology, it’s a welcomed, yet expected change.

But for the 1.9 million households with no access to the internet and tens of millions more reliant on pay-as-you-go services to make phone calls or access healthcare, education and benefits online, it’s a reminder of the growing ‘digital divide’ that Saeed and his team are working hard to address. 

“We have to think innovatively about how we make our solutions accessible to people who don't have the technology, including children and schools.”

Saeed, who heads up Inspiration Sessions across Lancashire, works with schools to provide workshops and educational sessions around digital as part of the Gatsby Benchmark. 

One part tutorial and one part career inspiration, these sessions give children access to digital solutions and technology while demonstrating the vast array of career opportunities within the NHS. 

“We realised very quickly that from schools all the way up to universities, they're just a big gap in preparing children and students in what we expect as employers. So about three years ago, we started a partnership with Inspira. And last year, we worked with three and a half thousand children in high schools, doing Dragon's Den and mock interviews.”

Taking members from his team, Saeed brings activities into schools and begins the process of inspiring and embedding digital opportunities in the curriculum.

“We’re trying to show them that technology isn’t just about fixing things. So we take Digital Nurses, Digital Project Managers, Infrastructure and inspire kids to look at the full spectrum of careers in the NHS.”

So far, this initiative has won partnerships with two schools from less-affluent areas and focuses on showing those from BAME backgrounds the full range of careers in the NHS. 

Continuing the good work at an educational level, Saeed is also working in partnership with two of the leading colleges in Lancashire, Irwin, Shaw and Newman. Here, the NHS is providing placements in digital positions to help shape their impression of career options. 

“Inspiring the next generation to get into digital. That is tech for good.”

The Next Step? Rationalisation

Investments are being made at every level of the NHS, investments being pumped into the delivery of digital solutions that provide value to those who work in the NHS and those who benefit from it’s services. 

But as Trusts begin to develop their own solutions, the data collaboration and rationalisation between trusts has to keep up to ensure the NHS, as a whole, moves forward. 

For Saeed and his team, the rationalisation of these developments and the sharing of data presents the next big challenge. 

“Tech rationalisation and collaboration will feed into the access to data and predictive analysis. What that really means is if we don't share our data with our partners and create a massive data lake, I think you'll never really get into that next generation of predictive analysis.” 

Matt Oakes, Business Intelligence Manager at Northern Care Alliance NHS Group

Matt Oakes is the Business Intelligence Manager at Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, which is made up of Salford and Pennine Trusts. 

Predominantly looking after the data warehouse team and data engineering side of things, Matt and his team focus on the processing of clinical data and creation of dashboards.

Starting his career as an internal auditor, o, Matt moved into a role in the NHS as an analyst and worked his way up, eventually taking the opportunity to lead the data engineering team at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group. Although Matt does not have a data engineering background, Matt leads his team with a strategic vision. 

“Not having that background certainly makes my job more interesting. Most of my role consists of organising the work of the team, removing blockers and setting the vision for the future.”

Data is Absolutely at the Forefront of Everything We Do

Echoing Saeed, Matt is seeing the perceptions around communication and collaboration shifting in the NHS. With the swift transition to working from home, everyone is now seeing the benefit of more collaborative technology options. 

More specific to his role, Matt has seen the culture around data start to shift. 

“Data used to be a ‘nice thing to have’ but now it’s absolutely at the forefront of everything we do as an organisation. It should underpin all key decision makers and I’m fortunate enough to work in a Trust that champions this approach. For instance, our trust  has a Director of Analytics and Business Intelligence, so there’s a recognition that data and analytics should play a part in strategic decision making.”

With board-level representation, Matt and his team are able to drive data decision making and rationalisation for their Alliance. Driving the use of Microsoft Azure, Power BI and other data tools to improve the care of the patient and the patient's experience. 

“It's about creating a platform to underpin decision making for the benefit of patients and the wider population. This is one way we can technology for good, and I think it’s one positive thing to come out of this pandemic.”

Creating A Data Platform That Can Drive Decision Making

With an increased desire for world-class data and more access to data than ever before, Matt and his team are working hard on creating a platform that can drive decision making. 

With priority now for more robust data mechanisms, Matt and his team are working on designing, developing and implementing a new data platform from scratch with Azure as a basis. 

“We're using a lot of learning from the past and trying to make sure that it's a data platform that is going to be really stable, robust, and intuitive so it can be the ideal foundation for decision making - for the benefit of patients.”

Tori Hutchinson, Lead Digital Delivery Manager at NHS Business Services Authority

Tori Hutchinson is the Lead Digital Delivery Manager at NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), an Arm’s Length Body of the Department of Health and Social Care. In this position, Tori leads a number of digital delivery teams towards the delivery of new national services for the NHS and improvement of existing national services. 

Tori worked in the private sector before joining the NHSBSA 3 and a half years ago. Making a conscious move into the NHS, Tori enjoys seeing her projects and work delivering tangible results that benefit patients and staff of the NHS.

Tori told us about one of the recent projects delivered within the digital team at the NHSBSA - implementing text messaging services to support Covid-19 initiatives, for example notifying ‘at-risk’ patients that they need to shield and sending test results. 

“We started that service really early in the pandemic and it's kind of ramped up iteratively throughout and spawned a few different needs for messaging. In a four week period alone, there were about 17 million text messages sent which was huge.”

We’re Using Technology Better

The NHSBSA, whose digital team has grown massively over the last couple of years, has been working closely with Government Digital Services to design and build user-centred and accessible services.. As a result, technology is being deployed with a unified effort and having a real impact on the end-user of the service. 

“We’ve digitised many previously paper-based services now. In some cases, this has reduced patient and user journeys from eight weeks to a matter of minutes.”

This combined approach isn’t just providing a better service to the end-user, but it’s also changing the culture around collaboration. 

“The COVID-19 response from all of the NHS organisations and all of our delivery partners has shown the power of multiple organisations being focused on one thing.”

Jav Yaqub, Head Of Infrastructure at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

Relatively new to the NHS, Jav Yaqub joined the NHS a year ago after a period of 5 years contracting across the public sector. With work predominantly focusing on migrations, infrastructure and implementation. 

Currently working as the Interim Head of Infrastructure at Pennine Acute, Jav is responsible for all of the Pennine’s IT infrastructure and is currently focusing on a platform refresh for the Trust. 

“There's quite a lot of legacy infrastructure, which urgently needs replacing and a lot of systems running on unsupported software which, for various reasons have not been upgraded over the years. This coupled with poor technical design decisions made in the past has resulted in an underperforming environment that is unreliable, unsupported and consumes excess resources to support and manage. Over here, it had certainly reached the critical stage and was adversely affecting clinical services. So when I came in, that was my remit to get the platform refreshed, performant, secure and reliable which we've done.”

Implementing a new storage and backup system, alongside a new Dell VXRail platform and Microsoft 365 platform, Jav is driving infrastructure change that will improve patient care across the Trust. 

We Have Access To Nimbler Products

Not limited to the designated list of suppliers due to the extraordinary impacts brought about by Covid, Jav and those in similar positions, are free to explore the wealth of products on the market and even acquire them through the supply chain and frameworks such as G-Cloud 12 and more.

“You've got lots of startups that have got very good products,  who have previously struggled to get to market historically. Now all of a sudden we are offered new and innovative systems that give us new capabilities overnight such as the hi-def examination ward bots that allow our Doctors to carry out medical examinations of  Covid patients, in minute detail, from the safety of their office or indeed anywhere in the world.” We were able to roll some of these fantastically useful solutions out in a matter of weeks compared to the traditional project led delivery approach which can take months, even years."
 

We’re Enablers

While new technology becomes easier to acquire, the culture around what IT, Infrastructure and Digital mean for the NHS is also changing. For Jav, the shifting attitudes and perceptions around IT in the NHS have been driven by the flexibility and autonomy provided to IT as a department.

“Things used to be quite rigid. It resulted in IT seeming like a blocker at times and we would usually only get involved when things reached the complaint stage. Now, because of the investment being made in digital and the direction we’re going in, as an organisation, we’re involved from the beginning. We’re definitely being seen as enablers.”

Janet Young, Head of Digital Programme Delivery at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Janet Young is driving digital transformation as the Head of Digital Programme Delivery at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals. With her previous role as General Manager in Outpatient Services, Janet has been serving the NHS for just over 20 years in various roles from Change Facilitator to Business Analyst. 

“I’ve grown up with the NHS and moved around in different roles but I’ve come back to IT. I did that because I wanted to make a change. I wanted to see things using technology and make the most of our EPR.”

Right now, Janet is leading a portfolio of projects which aim to meet the technological needs of healthcare. Most recently, that has come in the form of a massive roll-out of devices and infrastructure to those working from home. 

Shielding Consultants Can Still Run Appointments

A lot has been said about the massive deployment of working from home infrastructure. From laptops to headsets, to office chairs. Each bit of kit has been meticulously set up, checked and distributed to ensure the uninterrupted flow of crucial, life-saving work. 

For Janet, who has been working hard on ensuring continuity and interoperability remains while NHS staff work from home, this infrastructure roll out has been a major positive change for the better.

“We've had consultants who've been shielding, and consultants who have been isolated who are still able to do a follow-up appointment with a patient. Technology has enabled that.”

This infrastructure roll-out, while providing consistency in care, has also contributed to the shifting of perceptions around infrastructure and IT.

“Many people now understand why we need powerful broadband, and why the network needs to be strong. There’s a real appreciation for the applications we have and the interoperability between them.” 

It has grown people's understanding of why the network needs to be strong and why we need to, but that funding into, that the heads of IT budget so they can actually bring the infrastructure to where it needs to be for a sustainable future.

Tech for Good

Operationally, the MS Teams roll-out coupled with connected home-working, technology has been used to enable collaboration. On the patient side, technology is being used in a similar way.

“We’ve piloted iPads in critical care units in the past to bring in virtual visitors but we couldn’t rely on one application. Now, we’ve got four iPads set up and the feedback from patients has been amazing.”

The initiative was so successful that Janet was actually contacted by a patient’s relative. After benefitting from virtual visitor technology during critical care, the patient was moved to another ward that lacked the same support. The patient’s relative reached out to Janet herself.

“She asked me if we could expand the virtual visitors to different wards and that’s exactly what we did. Collaborating with that ward’s IT team we started to mobilise the technology and think critically about where we want to take the platform in the future.”

We spoke to Kate Warriner, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Trust and Liverpool Heart and Chest to discuss the importance of taking risks, important skills for digital leadership and tackling imposter syndrome. 

Kate’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Never Planned A Career in Healthcare”

A musician by education, Kate’s first experience in healthcare came as a summer role as a Ward Clerk. Despite only being a brief interlude from her time studying and practicing music, this role at the hospital proved to be telling for Kate who fell in love with the vibe. 

After graduating, this love for the NHS would put Kate in pole position for an IT Trainer position within the NHS.

“This was one of my favourite jobs because I got to talk with and help so many different people.”

After doing a master's in health informatics Kate moved on to project management roles before finding her feet in more senior positions like Deputy Director of Shared Informatics Services. From there Kate found her way back to Royal Liverpool where she was a Programme Director on the Global Digital Exemplar Programme.

Now Kate is working on driving digital transformation at Alder Hey and Liverpool Heart and Chest where she takes up a joint executive & board role across both organisations.
 

“My Mum is a Nurse, So Is My Auntie.”

Kate, who has taken a fair few risks to put herself into the position she is in today, believes passion for doing right by patients has carried past the challenges. 

“It’s all about what we can do for the patient. That has always been my focus, from the early operational roles to now.”

With a family of healthcare workers, Kate knows all about the challenges that frontline healthcare workers face. 

“My Mum's a nurse and my Auntie's a nurse who are both quite motivated about improving life for healthcare workers.”

With a clear understanding of the everyday challenges healthcare workers face, Kate drives digital transformation with an eye towards its impact at the very basic level of healthcare. 

“You Need to be Able to Explain Things Simply and With Passion”

For Kate, who has experience work at different levels within the NHS, one of the most important skills a tech leader in the NHS can have is the ability to clearly distil technical jargon into meaningful discussion regardless of technical experience. 

“Our role is to implement change, and to get back to brilliant basics and to do that in a way that's meaningful for people. It’s being able to speak the language of the Doctor, the nurse and the board member and understand their drivers.” 

Tempering these keen communication skills, Kate also believes an NHS tech leader should lead with passion - not just for technologies transformative powers but also for the culture of the NHS. 

“if you're passionate and you're motivated, and you're enthusiastic, people are more likely to support and want to do a really good job.”

“Are You Honest About the Way You Feel?”

Taking a somewhat untraditional route into the NHS, Kate studied Music at university. An accomplished musician and now a leader within the NHS, Kate has experienced a certain level of imposter syndrome in both positions.

“We did a concert with our youth orchestra in the Liverpool Philharmonic and I was asked to do a solo. And I'm thinking, Oh, my goodness this is one of the most terrifying things ever. Now I’m observing some of the best surgeons in the world do groundbreaking surgery and working on computer systems for them. Everyone gets imposter syndrome.” 

For Kate, it’s less about tackling the feelings that come along with imposter syndrome and more about understanding them. Only when you come to terms with where your comfort zones lie will you be able to push through them. 

“I think the key is how you manage it. Ask yourself if you’re honest about it because you’re Only Human.”

We spoke to Ruth Holland, Deputy CIO at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to discuss her career, being a mentor and dealing with setbacks.

Ruth’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Fell Into Healthcare”

As Deputy Chief Information Officer at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Ruth works across Northwest London in a large organisation providing acute and specialist care like maternity care and emergency departments as examples. 

Ruth, whose background is in Scientific Research, fell into healthcare. 

“My first full-time job was working on a research study trying to track the spread of tuberculosis in London. And from that, I fell into health care, and digital. It certainly wasn't something that was discussed when you're having those sessions with the careers advisors at school or university.”

Despite not planning on entering healthcare and digital career, Ruth forged a lifelong passion for both complementary industries. 

“Disappointment Made Me More Resilient”

Ruth, like many, found their passion through hard work and commitment. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. 

One of the areas most people struggle with while forging their career is the disappointment of being rejected from roles they thought were right for them. Like most, Ruth had bumps in the road that helped her work towards the level of resilience needed to achieve consistently at the highest level. 

“There’s naturally disappointment, but it’s about dusting yourself off and reflecting. Did you do enough research? Did you prepare well enough? Most importantly, was it the right fit for you in the first place?”

“Sisterhood Helped Me Manage Imposter Syndrome”

At the age of 31, Ruth moved onto the board of an NHS acute trust in south-east London. Her approach to leadership, a balance of empathy and resilience, has seen her drive digital transformation in the NHS. Her achievements are without a doubt, but it’s never that simple. 

“I regularly used to think someone was going to come and tap me on the shoulder and say, Oh, you, what are you doing here?”

Empathy, balanced with resilience is an incredibly potent combination. For many, the theory seems sound - but applying it is another story altogether. Elements of doubt begin to creep in as you climb the career ladder. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. 

According to a report by Access Commercial Finance, a survey of over 3000 adults in the UK shows over two-thirds of women (66%) have suffered from imposter syndrome compared to over half of men (56%) within the last 12 months (2019). 

“People don’t admit to it happening to them nearly as much as they should.”

Overcoming imposter syndrome isn’t easy. For Ruth, it was about finding support around her from those who are suffering as well. 

“Both myself and an HR Director had been given board responsibilities at the same time. We leaned on each other for support. That sisterhood was invaluable to curbing feelings of imposter syndrome and focusing on doing the work.”

 

Agile Mentoring for Agile Lives

Mentoring is important. It can help professionals breakthrough the stages of their careers and achieve their potential. Mentoring is also tricky. It requires commitment and flexibility on the part of both the mentor and the mentee. All too often mentorship programmes or relationships ‘fail’ because they haven’t been flexible enough to fit into already busy lives. 

Ruth, who is keen on mentoring as a solution to addressing the inequalities and imbalances in the business ecosphere, is working hard on cultivating an agile approach to mentoring. 

“Mentoring needs to fit around people's commitments at home and work. The remote working policies that are being introduced at the trust will hopefully encourage more flexibility.”

The Future of the NHS

There once was a time where you could’ve got away with describing digital as a back-office function within the NHS. 

Now, the NHS is currently in a state of rapid transformation. With COVID necessitating certain adjustments to the way we operate, transformation leaders are driving significant business change. For Ruth, who sits at the tip of the digital transformation spear for the NHS, it’s all about data.

“COVID has really shone a spotlight on how important it is. The accessibility of data and our ability to share that data. Daily COVID briefings and major stakeholders using dashboards had planted the seeds for a data-driven NHS. Perhaps in 10 years we'll have Chief Data officers on the boards of the more forward-thinking, acute NHS organisations, as well as Chief Technology officers. I think that's probably a trend that we'll see.” 

With her children growing up, Ruth is setting her sights back on board level work once again. With her previous experiences at that level and a strong support network around her, she’s confident she’ll be back when she’s ready.

“I've been through that test for myself before. I'm not in a rush.”

We spoke to Jay Patel, Director of Agency Management at NHS Professionals to discuss leadership, managing remote teams and balancing work and life. 

Jay’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female leaders within the NHS. We’re bringing together the stories of these courageous leaders to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

“I’ve Never Looked Back”

Jay works for NHS Professionals, an NHS staff bank that provides flexible workers to the NHS. Currently, the Service Director for Agency Management Jay has 20 years worth of experience in Account Management. 

After initially working in recruitment, Jay fell into healthcare recruitment. 

“And then I moved to NHS Professionals nearly 20 years ago, and to be honest, I've never looked back. Every day has brought something different, its been a great journey”

The Balancing Act

Jay, who has always juggled her family and work responsibilities, draws a lot of strength from the support network around her who have continued to enable her career despite family and cultural traditions. 

“20 years ago, when I was starting my career, It wasn't a tradition that women would work in such demanding and high profile roles. The people around me did struggle with the idea that I was working long, non-standard hours whilst regularly being away from home. It was hard to find the balance but it was something we worked through, taking each day as it comes.” 
 

“Passion Plays a Big Part”

Working in a job that never conformed to standard working hours, Jay has carved out a position of leadership for herself and continues to lead with passion at the heart of her methodology. 

“If you don't actually believe in what you do, then I think, whichever role you're in, it doesn't feel that important however  If you believe in the purpose and know the impact that you are going to make, the passion will lead you there every time." 

This passion has put Jay in a good position to tackle the challenges brought about by COVID-19. A fully remote role, Jay has 20 years of experience managing a remote team. For those now facing the prospect of managing a team without seeing them in person, we asked Jay what skills she believes are the most important to managing remote teams. 

“You need a great positive attitude and to be really proactive in speaking to people and maintaining relationships at all levels. With that, you need to be able to juggle, prioritise, and reprioritize tasks accordingly.”

More specifically to the NHS and her journey, Jay believes a large helping of versatility and tenacity is important. When it’s up to her to demonstrate a value-based service where patient care is at the heart of everything, 

“It's not for everybody, you have to have excellent communication skills, and you've got to build trust, it's all about people .”

“Every day is a Learning One”

For those looking to take up a leadership position in the NHS, Jay recommends focusing on staying grounded and authentic whilst finding the learnings in everyday life. 

“Value your experiences and learn from everybody around you, including from the mistakes that you make, because you’ll make many, but remember you've got this."

We spoke to Minal Patel, Associate Director For Digital Transformation at Hillingdon Hospital Foundation Trust to discuss her career, the importance and difficulty of finding mentors and remaining true to yourself.

Minal’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

Risk and Reward

Shortly after completing a degree in business computing and management, Minal joined the NHS providing first and second line support services before being seconded to an improvement project which served as a bit of a baptism of fire for Minal.

“So the director at the time, literally called me up one day and said, right, I've got this improvement project, ‘bring all your belongings from Monday morning this is going to be your new role’. So it literally happened overnight. The only mandate that I was given was to redesign the service request process that we had at the trust.“

Forced to think on her feet and get creative with her solutions, Minal improved the process over the next 9 months. She managed to get a process that took three months down to just five days. 

“So that was massive learning curves and once I did that I realised that I really enjoyed a project role. So I took the initiative to go and get my qualifications. And, and then was successful in a number of project roles from there.”

Minal was then set off on a project management path for close to 10 years, taking on more and more qualifications as she went along before applying for Head of Digital Systems. 

“This was one of the biggest risks I've taken in my career to date but I acquired new skills and it taught me about the whole DevOps environment, agile methodologies, application development.”

In that position for a couple of years, Minal moved into the Associate Director position 18 months ago. 

Mentorship Isn’t Always About Developing New Skills 

Minal, who never likes to remain stagnant, has worked hard with each new challenge she has sought. Along each step of the way, Minal has made seeking mentors, advocates and allies a priority - but she’s also the first to admit that finding these individuals isn’t easy. 

“You need someone who knows you well, is committed to giving you time and wants you to succeed. It’s not easy to find and between busy schedules and their own work - it’s difficult.”

For Minal, that person was right under her nose. After approaching her, Minal explained exactly where she felt her gaps lie and, after several months of honest conversations, Minal and her Mentor realised it wasn’t a skill she was missing. 

“It was about building my confidence and taking new approaches to help prepare me when I feel out of my comfort zone. Together, we set short and long term goals with an actionable plan to get me to my milestones. It helped me grow as a person and a professional.”

Good mentors can be pivotal during major junctures of your life, both personally and professionally. They can steer you clear of disaster, provide prescient views of the future that you can’t see, and heal your soul (and even your body, depending on the situation) when you’re hurting.

Everyone can find mentors. It’s up to you to cherish the relationships you have, cultivate new ones, and never take for granted the people who can help you. Above all, you must recognize that mentors can be everyday people, who have extraordinary advice. They don’t have to be superheroes or millionaires or big CEOs.

For Minal, this mentorship experience led to a new level of confidence that helped her progress through the next stages of her career, taking rejection in her stride and learning from it until she found the right role for her. 

If The Door Isn’t There, Build It

We all have moments of doubt. These moments either come from within yourself, or as a result of external influence. 

Resilience, a core skill for NHS leadership, has been highlighted by many of the professionals we’ve talked to throughout this series. 

For Minal, who has taken lots of risks in her career and been rewarded for her determination, the key to getting past moments of doubt is a focus on your own plan.

“It’s not your manager's career or your colleagues. It’s your career. If I had stuck to the career path that I had laid out for me, I would have stopped a long time ago. Don’t get thrown off your plan and if there isn’t a door there already, built it.”

Many will set their sights on management responsibilities and will see it as a hallmark of their success. For most, however, the transition away from individual contributions and towards less tangible, strategic thinking is difficult. 

This is one of the most common concerns raised by the Software Engineers we talk to on a daily basis. To get an appreciation of the scale of the challenge (and to get an idea of how Engineers can reduce the friction in the transition) we sat down with a few technical leaders to discuss the Engineering Manager role, what makes an effective Engineering Manager and what advice they have for those looking to take the step up into management.

Shaun Archer, Engineering Manager, Performance Engineering @ Citrix

Starting as an Intern at Citrix in 2012, Shaun was mainly focused on security testing. With this anchoring within a technical team Shaun slowly built his influence by taking on increasingly challenging projects that included leadership responsibilities. Then an opportunity came out to build a world-class team that would focus on cloud performance engineering - a team central to Citrix’s growth plans. 

“We’re helping engineers understand, from a code perspective, how they can optimise the performance of the received end-user experience, as well as enabling executives to make informed engineering investment decisions.“

“You want to dive in, but it’s the worst thing you can do”

Coming into management after being an individual contributor is the most common route into that leadership position. You know the challenges that a team will face and that makes you uniquely positioned to provide solutions. However, this route into management doesn’t come without problems. For one, having the restraint to hold yourself back from simply solving the problem yourself - as you have done in the past - is a skill that will need to be developed over time. For Shaun, who followed this route, make sure you take your hands off the code is very important. 

“On one hand, you want to dive in and support the engineer directly, but at the same time, that's the worst thing that you can do. Because you're not coaching them towards a solution. You're doing it for them.” 

Not only will you be limiting the development of the Engineer by removing an opportunity for learning through problem-solving, but you will also be reducing the amount of time you can spend on strategic management - reducing your overall effectiveness.

“You need to be able to scale yourself. Diving into the code every day will mean you can’t take on additional responsibilities because you won't have the bandwidth. So building autonomy in people has to be the focus.”

This hands-off methodology is at direct odds with the methodology of an individual contributor who has been conditioned to tackle problems quickly and directly. For those heading into tech leadership roles, Shaun believes that focusing on the development of your team and trusting your technical strategy will help you break out of old habits and take your hands off the code.

“I have to look at it as harmful to the individual. Otherwise, I will jump in inadvertently.”

Technical guidance and alignment against operational plans are most often joint responsibilities across an engineering manager and one or more technical team leads. Ensuring technical team leaders are consistently empowered is a key responsibility of an engineering manager. A similar relationship exists between engineering managers and technical team leads as it does between team leads and members. 

“It's helping people who really understand the technical aspects well, also understand the importance of the strategy. Then aligning the two, and filling in the gap in between, which is often huge.”

“A Technical Leader Needs to Stay Abreast of an Industry That is Constantly Changing.”

To truly align the technology with the wider business objectives, while giving your team individual contributions that are valuable, an Engineering Manager needs to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the industry. Who is doing what? What developments are being made? Without that knowledge, engineering strategies will be one-dimensional. 

The problem, however, comes in the form of an ever-evolving tech industry that will not slow down for anyone. 

“The faster we move, the more of a challenge it creates. The main challenges for me as an Engineering Manager lie on the industry awareness side more than anywhere else.”
 

“You’re Always Best Moving Into Leadership When You’re Already Known.”

When is the right time to move into tech leadership? When will you know? For many, the opportunity will likely be thrust upon them without time to consider if they’re ready. But what does ready look like? For Shaun, you should look after your personal brand before you think about moving into leadership. 

“Imagine moving into a leadership role at a new company has never previously been in either. You have limited to no support network at that point, right. You don't have a personal brand or are already well established. Making that initial move into leadership can feel easier when you've already got this personal brand that's very strong. And you're very well thought of, and that potentially gives you some leeway.”
 

Aidong Xu, Head of Technology Venturing @ Johnson Matthey

With a significant pedigree in the technology space, Aidong has enjoyed a long diverse career with some of the biggest names in technology. Now at Johnson Matthey, Aidong is Responsible for developing technology roadmap, strategic R&D programs, IP management, building commercial partnerships and R&D collaboration with 3rd parties, identifying, evaluating and investing strategically fit cutting-edge technologies. Focusing mainly on batteries materials for EV applications.

His team is tasked with identifying technologies that Johnson Matthey will go on to develop over the next 5 or 10 years. 
 

You Either Lead People or You Lead Ideas

For Aidong, who is a technologist at heart, striking a balance between your love for technology and your position as a leader for your team can take a long time. 

“It can go one of two ways, you can end up leading people, or you lead the idea flow. The latter is often the most important.”

Taking a step back from the individual contributions frees you up to lead the flow of ideas in the team. This, in turn, enables you to focus on the creation of a team culture that allows engineers to be truly autonomous.

“I think it’s the technical manager's role to create an environment that allows engineers to develop their own ideas and feel comfortable following their instinct.”

Step Up In To Project Management

For those looking to take their first steps into Engineering and technology management, Aidong recommends flexing your muscles in a project management capacity first and foremost. 

“This will give you the opportunity to work with a diverse range of people who don’t actually report to you. There isn’t so much of a direct reporting burden so you can focus on your people management skills and high-level stakeholder management skills.”

Mark Bell, VP of Development @ Telensa

Mark Bell, VP of Development at Telensa started his career at BT before moving on to a small start-up where he works towards the creation of web browsers for mobile devices. After a Microsoft bought that start-up, Mark moved on to Amino Communications - a start-up he would remain at for the next 18 years moving up the ladder from software engineering to director of software. 

“The Move Away From Doing Something Tangible is Hard”

When you’re dealing with direct deliverables every day, it can be hard to suddenly be thrust into a realm of work with less definition. When Engineers and Developers assume leadership responsibility, they lose the clearly defined criteria for success and achievement. 

“When you're doing tech, you work on something all day and can move it along when you’re finished. You know, this was what I built. And this is why a lot of developers moving into leadership try and keep hold of some dev responsibilities.”

For Mark, it’s about shifting your perceptions on achievement and development - moving towards human development rather than technical development, which can be just as if not more rewarding. 

“I don't necessarily get enjoyment from implementing a piece of code anymore, I get it from helping someone move from where they are today to where they want to be.”

“It’s Important to Have A Technical Background.”

In some circles, there is a notion that once you become a Project Manager (PM) you can lead any project regardless of the industry, that it all comes down to being able to reach deadlines, assign tasks, manage schedules and stakeholders etc. But is that really all it is?

For Mark, it’s important technical managers have technical backgrounds so they can interface effectively with developers and engineers. 

“Certainly the most common route is working your way up from an engineer, figuring out the ins and outs of the product while building your profile across the organisation. That’s important if you want to be able to make quick decisions when you’re in a management position. When moving to a management role in a new company, you may have the basic technical knowledge but  You don't necessarily have the organisational knowledge. So there's that learning curve.”

We spoke to Tracey Watson, Chief Information Officer at Northern Care Alliance NHS Group to discuss the imposter syndrome, taking on challenges and advice for future NHS leaders. 

Tracey’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Did It The Other Way Around”

As the Chief Information Officer at Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, Tracey is driving the digital transformation across Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

Starting her career as a graphic designer, Tracey moved into the civil service on a graduate scheme which put her on the path towards Health Tech. 

“My move into Health and Tech was accidental, driven by personal needs and geography. I was based in London and my family were in Leeds, I needed to move back North as my mum was terminally ill. I accepted a secondment at Connecting for Health (NPFT Programme) and headed up the commercial teams looking at National Infrastructure like SPINE, ERS, GPES etc”.

Since then, Tracey has worked various national jobs before moving to NHS England as an SRO for a number of high profile digital initiatives such as Digital Primary Care, NHS Choices, now NHS.UK.  She then became the Innovation and Partnership Director at NHS Digital.  Within these roles she was responsible for key national strategies but was conscious she didn’t possess a working local knowledge of the digital challenges the NHS faced.

“At the time, I felt that I was doing all of these big jobs in digital and didn't really have an awareness of what was actually happening on the ground. I moved into a local CIO role to address those demons, by that I mean learn something locally to then do a more informed job nationally”.

This was Tracey’s motivation to move to the Northern Care Alliance. An untraditional route, but one that was filled with learnings and experiences that have made Tracey the leader she is today. 

“People tend to do it the other way around. They've worked locally or regionally and then moved into national roles.  Whereas I did it the other way around. I think when you’re in national jobs its really important to have your ear to the ground if you’re going to make any significant impact”.

“I’ve always made moves to areas that have big problems”

Tracey, who has made a habit of moving to areas in both central government and now the NHS that requires wholesale change or transformation with complex environments to navigate.

“Transformation really makes me tick, I love strategy work, problem solving and that’s the value I think I bring to the table. And the problems all tend to follow a very similar pattern, insufficient funds, capability gaps, bureaucracy, complex landscapes, commercial resistance and a range of  stakeholders”

For those who may be encountering these problems first hand, or those who like to dive headfirst into these challenges, Tracey recommends staying true to a resolute mentality. 

“It's all about building a belief system that nothing is insurmountable, don’t become too overwhelmed with the ask. Taking the issues or the challenges bit by bit, dealing with them incrementally and recognising that nobody has superpowers. We're all human. So it's about not being afraid to reach out for support if and when you need it and don’t be afraid of delivering bad news, its best to be completely open about problems and issues, rather than burying bad news. Sometimes that’s really difficult for leaders, given the pressures they deal with on a number of fronts”

For Tracey, this belief system is key to overcoming issues that plague many female leaders: imposter syndrome. 

“It's about being able to embrace the fact that you’re not a complete leader. The best leaders understand their strengths and their weaknesses and are all about building a capability that can fulfil the task.”

This vulnerability in leaders is an important part of building teams and relationships within them. Without an honest understanding of what you bring, you will never be able to help others realise what they provide. 

“When I first started at PAT, I was really honest with the Trust about my career history, what I have done in the past, where my strengths lie, and how I was going to rebuild the Digital Operation and plans for future strategy.”

“Work Hard on Understanding the Terrain”

For those looking for a technical leadership role within the NHS, Tracey recommends being clear on what it is you want to achieve and then understanding the lay of the land.

“So just be clear about what you want to do and why you want to do it and be confident in your own skin, you don't necessarily have to fit a particular mould, be unapologetic about your background and be confident about what you’ve got to offer.” 

We spoke to Emma Hollings, Deputy CIO at Portsmouth Hospitals University Trust to discuss leadership, starting a new role during the lockdown and why it’s so important to ask ‘daft’ questions. 

Emma’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’re bringing together the stories of these courageous leaders to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

As Deputy CIO, Emma is at the very tip of the NHS’ digital transformation spear. Looking back on a career that took her from teaching English in Tenerife to health informatics consultancy, Emma’s route to NHS tech leadership certainly wasn’t a straight line.

A defining moment in Emma’s career came when she set up her own limited company and provided consultancy around project management and informatics for both CSU and private companies. In this role, Emma was head of information, having to travel to Watford, London and the South West,  for one of the key providers of the NHS111 key providers) in the NHS111 rollout in 2012

“I should have a badge that says I survived that time. It was a really good experience but it was very challenging.”

Following that, Emma worked on a number of key projects including setting up data services for the South Central Commissioner's Offices in response to the Social Care Act before taking a permanent role as Head of PMO- Digital Services at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Here Emma took a lead on the trust’s data strategy before moving into the Deputy CIO for Analytics role in April this year. 

At a time when most people were battening down the hatches, Emma was in the middle of a career move. 

“Some of the normal induction programme had been stood down due to Covid and face to face introductions and meetings were difficult to arrange, so it’s been more difficult to get to know people"

It's Taken Finding Something that Didn’t fit for me to Realise Where my Strengths Lie

Once considered unrealistic, sabbaticals and reskilling is now accepted - and in some cases encouraged - by employers and career professionals alike. 

For some, it can be a way to assure your core skills, reaffirm career trajectory and crush future imposter syndrome. 

Emma, who went back to university after a false start in her early career, believes this false start and her venture back in education was an important milestone in her career as it helped her hone in on her true self. 

“Some of that goes back to 15 year old me having a certain expectation of where I was going and now finding myself somewhere I hadn’t considered. For me, it's taken finding something that wasn’t right for me to realise where my strengths lie.”

It’s Incredibly Hard to Find The Balance

“The obligation for working parents is a precise one: the feeling that one ought to work as if one did not have children while raising one’s children as if one did not have a job,” 

This extract, from Annabel Crabb’s thought-provoking book, The Wife Drought, sums up the pickle that working mothers all-too-often find themselves in - a pickle that Emma, who has a teenage son, has grappled with throughout her career. 

“There seems to be this never-ending guilt that you’re never in the right place to do the right thing or you’re missing out on something.”

Working mothers face a distinct challenge when it comes to work and their own work-life balance. In the workplace, working mums need to focus 110 percent on their workload, as if they are trying to prove that they are just as capable of accomplishing tasks and beating deadlines as they were before. In fact, they often feel as if they have to overachieve to combat the belief that they might have “gone soft” or are not as focused and determined as they once were. They will pull longer hours just to show that they are as dedicated to the company as they ever were.

With COVID-19 necessitating remote working policies in both the public and private sector, conversations around more flexible working patterns will surely follow. These flexible work options are really one of the only ways that working parents can not just have work-life balance, but work-life integration.

“There’s Something About Asking Daft Questions”

We’ve all hesitated to ask something, fearing that others will find our question stupid. Staying quiet may seem like the safe option – but in all likelihood, you’ll eventually regret it. 

For those developing their careers right now, Emma recommends stepping out of your comfort zone and asking those ‘daft’ questions.

“Don't be afraid to try different roles. Even if it feels a bit uncomfortable. That's a good way learn about what's out there. There's something about asking the daft questions. So you may feel it's daft on an individual level, but actually, it could be that everybody around the table is thinking the same thing. But nobody wants to say it.”

Ask – and encourage others to ask – stupid questions because they have the magical ability to save you from a lot of trouble later on.

We spoke to Jill Lanham, Director of Digital at South Central Ambulance Service to discuss the importance of authenticity, leading technical teams and the advocates in her career. 

Jill’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

As the Director of Digital at South Central Ambulance Service, Jill leads the digital transformational efforts of the ambulance service across the counties of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire. An IT professional by education and profession, Jill started her career in local government years before Microsoft Windows was mainstream. Jill’s first foray into the NHS involved her establishing and running an NHS IT Shared Service before moving on to the community, mental health and acute care. 

After taking a brief hiatus from the NHS to work in the charity sector, Jill is back working in the NHS - something she believes is one of her main drivers. 

“It's really important for me to work somewhere where I can see where I'm really adding value.”

You Need to Understand Technical Concepts 

An IT graduate, Jill has held positions as first-line support, development and analysis before moving into IT management. With years worth of contribution and experience on the technical side, initially, Jill found it a challenge to make that transition over to the management side. 

“As you get more senior, you start to lose your technical skills because other responsibilities take over, initially that is quite an uncomfortable place. That's a pivotal point where you start to lead and coach people.”

Often times, people are thrust into positions that see them directing technical teams without technical knowledge. Although it’s definitely possible to lead technical teams without technical knowledge, it helps to have a core understanding of the concepts and challenges they’re dealing with on a day to day basis - as Jill explains: 

"I think you need to have enough technical knowledge to understand the concepts that people are talking about so you can communicate with them effectively and translate that work at a board level.”

“You’ve got to be Authentic. You’ve got to be Honest.”

Leaders at different levels of the organization face different challenges. But whether you’re an individual contributor, a first-time manager, a senior executive, or somewhere in between, there are certain skills that will always be drawn on. These ‘soft skills’ like communication, honesty and integrity, often hard to define and categorise, are the ones that Jill holds close to her management methodology.

“The most important thing is to be authentic. It's quite easy when you first go into management to model yourself on somebody else and try to be something you're not, but it quite quickly becomes apparent. So, at the very least, stay true to yourself.”

Staying true to yourself and focusing on your integrity will help you win the hearts and minds of your team, but it won’t help you enable them to deliver their best possible work. Roadblocks at work can quite literally stop you in your tracks, but responding to challenge is a significant component of the manager’s day-to-day.

“Your role as a leader is to take away some of the roadblocks for your team and give them cover from above and to be able to unblock some of the issues that they're going to be facing. Building strong relationships with stakeholders will help protect your team.”

Advocates and Role Models

There have probably been countless moments in your life where you’ve leaned on someone you trust for advice or assistance. Whether the person you turn to is a professor, friend, family member, athletic coach or other, the importance of mentors is undeniable. These people can help to guide, direct, and shape your present situation and future opportunities for the better.

In work - and life - these people come to us as role models. People who can push us and motivate us. For Jill, who was pushed by a great line manager when she first joined local government, believes wholeheartedly in the power of mentorship. 

“It's really widened my thinking outside the digital arena, which I think is incredibly important.”

Focus on Blending Your Skills

For those looking for a technical leadership role within the NHS, Jill has this advice:

“Go for it. But remember, you need to blend your technical knowledge and your leadership. You have to be comfortable with both so start looking for projects that test you as soon as you can.”

We spoke to Phillipa Winter, CIO at Bolton Foundation Trust to discuss the importance of mentorship, handling high-pressure situations and tech for good.

Phillipa’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Was A Disrupter”

Careers are funny things. Some of them are made from trial and error, others are made from a lifelong dream and determination to achieve that dream. For Phillipa Winter, now CIO at Bolton Foundation Trust, the journey into healthcare leadership started with the witnessing of lifesaving treatment provided to her Brother when she was just 11 years old. 

“From that moment I knew I wanted to be in healthcare.” 

Phillipa would fall short of the University entry criteria and start an intense retail management course with a large grocery retailer. This move would prove to be the making of a well-rounded leader. 

“That year taught me a lot and, I believe, gave me the grounding I need in this role today.” 

After completing her retail management course, Phillipa would start her degree in OT. During her education she discovered the importance of an ‘holistic’ approach to healthcare. This interest was realised as Phillipa, now leaving University, took a position as an Occupational Therapist in 1994 before making it as a Therapy Manager in 2012. It was here that Phillipa began implementing digital transformation by leveraging her previous experience as a retail manager to develop electronic processes for patient management and outcomes.

“I was quite disruptive, actually, with the tech people around me saying: ‘this is what we need.’”

After this early disruption, Phillipa moved into the role of Chief Clinical Informatics Officer. At the same time, Phillipa took a secondment at Bolton, where she worked as a programme manager within the elective care division, focusing on a number of transformation projects including theatre utilisation and bed base reduction while doing her programme management qualifications - which laid the foundation for her move into the CIO role in 2015 where she would affect change at scale. 

“So as a therapist, I always wanted to care for people and I usually did that on a one to one basis. But now, in informatics, we can really help patients at scale. I love it, because it's a massive challenge. And it encompasses all parts of my career development from being a 19-year-old, to now.”

“It’s About Empowering Others”

For Phillipa, who has worked with people for her entire career, mentorship, coaching and empowerment go hand-in-hand and form the centerpiece of her leadership style. Tracing her love for empowerment back to her time as an Occupational Therapist, Phillipa works on getting the most out of her team of diverse professionals. Informing her empathetic leadership is a strong cast of mentors and coaches.

“So I do have a formal coach. And that's really more as a CIO. And that's more about my personal development and progression, he helps me challenge some of my Gremlins. I think it’s important to have a safe place to talk about those things.”

A fundamental part of development, mentorship and coaching is traditionally quite a rigid process in the private sector with a single mentor being assigned. For Phillipa, diversifying mentors helps her overcome the equally diverse challenges she faces as CIO. 

A good mentorship should provide value to both mentor and mentee. For Phillipa, who regularly mentors the people on her team, the value lies in the relationships she builds. 

“You need to really know your stuff, you need to know what their qualities are, you need to know what they need to help them be their best.”

Challenge Your Affirmations

Being resilient, in theory, seems sound - but applying it is another story altogether. Elements of doubt begin to creep in as you climb the career ladder. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. 

According to a report by Access Commercial Finance, a survey of over 3000 adults in the UK shows over two-thirds of women (66%) have suffered from imposter syndrome compared to over half of men (56%) within the last 12 months. 

For Phillipa, who recognises doubt as part of human nature, believes it's less a question of overcoming imposter syndrome and more a question of handling it. 

“What you've got to do is not let it take over. Find ways to identify what's real within those feelings and challenge yourself with positive affirmations. But it all comes back to coaching and building a positive working culture.”

When decisions you make at the highest level impact patients on every level, pressure is part of the job at the NHS. For Phillipa, who is coming up on her twenty-seventh year in the NHS, it’s about looking to the people around you. 

“It’s about preparing and planning, but mostly about believing in others because you’ve a really great team who when they know what the expectation is of them. All you need to do is trust them.”

There’s Nothing More Rewarding Than Seeing Somebody Thrive

For those looking towards their future, Phillipa has one piece of advice: reach out to people and look for those mentors. 

“If I look at my career, I quite often focus on what’s in front of me. I stop and reflect by asking myself: What could we and I do differently? And what impact can we make with technology and innovation? Your peer groups, networks and utilising many different people around you can help you really reflect and go to the next level. Don’t stop at one person or role model, learn and get the best bits from them all” 

Too often we focus on the next step with no second thought to the ones we took to get us there - it’s there we usually find the lessons we can pass on to the next generation. 

“This is about nurturing people and giving people opportunities, and there's nothing more rewarding to see somebody develop and thrive.”

We spoke to Jenni West, Associate Director of Digital Change at the Innovation Agency to discuss the importance of soft skills, taking risks and promoting careers in Health Informatics.

Jenni’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Always Said I’d Never Go Into IT”

As the Associate Director of Digital Change at the Innovation Agency, Jenni supports the innovation and economic growth of her regions through health and social care. With 12 agencies up and down the country forming an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), Jenni is approaching health and social care from a slightly different angle.

“We’re about economic growth within a region and trying to build up companies to create jobs, but through innovations and trying to get those innovations into health and social care and understanding that market so that you can see where they might be able to fit in.”

Now driving change at a macro level, Jenni started her career in the NHS in the canteens before taking a role as a Pharmacy Technician - a role she would settle in for the next 15 years, moving from hospitals, to community and to prisons. Her breakthrough into the world of technical and digital change came when she took the opportunity to design a pharmacy stock control system for a iSOFT a company which would later go on to be part of DXC. 

“I always said i’d never go into IT because both my Dad and my Brother were in it. But here I was, wandering in to it.”

Over the next 5 years, Jenni would travel to India as she worked on developing the iPharmacy system before implementing the system in Bradford Teaching Hospital and East Cheshire Hospital. For Jenni, who had no technical background, this was a difficult, yet rewarding opportunity. 

“I learned an awful lot about developing a system and making it right for the users needs and working closely with our customers to get it to work as it should do. I spent many a night trying to understand what happened with the SQL database while on one phone with a guy in Australia and another phone with the developer in India.”

After successfully implementing the iPharmacy system, Jenni went back into the NHS to drive business change on a national scale. Across Lancashire, South Cumbria and the regions various Trusts, Jenni was helping to set up and step-up, step-down bed management systems and single point of access.

Before taking the opportunity to work on the Lancashire Person Record Exchange Service - a service that allowed documents to flow freely from the hospital into primary care from here Jenni went to NHS Digital working on NHS login and Personal Health Records before moving to the Innovation Agency.

Jenni’s career, which has seen her embrace change at all levels, was tempered by bravery and commitment to taking risks. 

“It Was A Complete Baptism Of Fire”

With plenty of experience in Pharmacy stock control and systems, Jenni was ready to take on the challenges that came with working on the iPharmacy system. With blind spots on the technical aspects of the job, Jenni worked closely with developers in India. With progress slow, Jenni took control of the situation. 

“I flew out to India to talk them through how things work in a UK pharmacy. I even asked some of them to come back to England, and I sat them in the pharmacy for two weeks. I said, just watch the people in the pharmacy and talk to them. Between them, they were like, well, we can't do that but we could do this, does this work?” 

From there the rapport started building and progress came thick and fast. 

“It was a lot of late nights trying to make things work. It was one of the most challenging, but also most enjoyable parts of my career because I was learning so much.”

“Fight it Down and Dig Deep.”

Jenni’s experience working on the iPharmacy system was a rewarding one that laid the foundation for a long and successful career at the highest level of healthcare informatics. But, it didn’t come without its fair share of doubt. Imposter Syndrome is something we all suffer from at some point and Jenni, who has progressed into more senior roles since is no different. 

One particular experience sticks with Jenni. Invited to speak on a panel of healthcare leaders in Boston, Jenni was asked to discuss the effect of digital on the NHS.

“I sat next to a Harvard professor, the Chief Nurse from Microsoft. And I was like, I really shouldn't be here. I have no idea what I'm doing. And you just have to dig deep and just think i’m here for a reason and I’ve got something to say.”

Full-scale remote work, brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, has changed almost everything about the way we work and communicate. For Jenni, this movement is proliferating imposter syndrome issues as you now have more places to hide. 

“You can go into a meeting, and feel out of your depth. If you’re remote you can easily turn your camera off and mute yourself. So it can be a bit of a blanket but, you’ve got to ask yourself: would you ever go into a physical meeting with a bag on your head?”
 

Promoting Careers in Health Informatics

Now driving digital transformation and business change at a large scale across multiple regions, Jenni is looking to promote the diverse range of opportunities in Health Informatics. As someone who came into Health Informatics from an ‘untraditional route’, Jenni believes the continued diversification and promotion of these opportunities is key to the industry thriving. 

“There's lots of different routes into health informatics and it isn't always about working in the health informatics department. It's about looking within your own team. If you can look at small iterative changes, and how digital might work in just a small way, that's massive for your department and your career.”

Acting as a coach and mentor for many younger professionals, Jenni believes the biggest differences for patients often come with the smallest changes. Positioning yourself as a digital facilitator is step one towards becoming a digital leader. 

“It's all about if you can be a digital leader within your workspace and understand that and help people move little bits at a time towards a more digital world.”

What does it take to be a leader? Resilience? Courage? Empathy? All of the above? For most, leadership isn’t easily defined. Put simply: leadership means different things to different people, 

When your decisions can, quite literally, impact critical care functions, leadership takes on a new perspective. But what does it take to be a leader in one of the worlds biggest employers: the NHS?

We spoke to a range of Tech Leaders from across the NHS to discuss what it takes to be a successful Tech Leader in the NHS. Whether you’re planning for the future, or just looking for some inspiration, these insights are a must-read. 

‘Clinically Driven, Operationally Informed and Technically Supported’

Ayesha Rahim is the CCIO at Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust. With her clinical background, as a perinatal psychiatrist, Ayesha leads digital transformation with first-hand experience of what it’s like to work on the front lines of healthcare. Whereas others might have clinical advisors, Ayesha knows from practice the impact her digital solutions will make. 

“I see the CCIO role as being one of transformation. It's about change management, it's about people management, it's about making services better, and the vehicle happens to be technology.” 

Ayesha has completed a master's degree in digital health leadership via the NHS Digital Academy. This qualification gave her a grounding but, once again, emphasised the leadership and people side of the role rather than the technical minutia. 

For Ayesha, who uses the phrase ‘clinically driven, operationally informed and technically supported’ to describe the makeup of digital transformation within the NHS, the focus for technology leaders shouldn’t be complicated. 

“If you cannot articulate why, clinically, this is meaningful then why are you doing it? Because we have one job in the NHS and that's to support the delivery of care for patients. That's it. That's all we need to do. So if you're not sort of having that front and centre of your mind, you really need to sort of ask yourself, are you really taking the right approach?”

“You Don’t Need To Be Super Technical”

With an existing passion for patient care through her background as a Clinician and her interest in driving change through technology, Ayesha had the perfect combination of passions to take advantage of the opportunity to step up into the role of CCIO.

“I'm passionate about delivery of services to patients, and I've been on the receiving end of rubbish technology. I wanted to change that.” 

But it almost wasn’t the case with Ayesha taking a leap of faith into a role that she initially thought her lack of technical knowledge disqualified her for. Ayesha isn’t alone in this matter. 

You’ve probably heard the following statistic: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.

The finding comes from a Hewlett Packard internal report, and has been quoted in Lean In, The Confidence Code and dozens of articles. It’s usually invoked as evidence that women need more confidence. As one Forbes article put it, “Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list.” 

“It is a leap of faith. But actually, we need clinicians to step into these roles. Your technical know-how isn’t as important as actually knowing how to manage change and transformation. That is a key skill of a CCIO, and the other stuff you can learn.”

“Be Passionate About Improving Lives”

Although the front-line care workers, like doctors and nurses, deservedly get much of the spotlight, Ayesha is quick to remind us that every member of the NHS contributes to the improvement of people’s lives. Understanding this is critical to climbing the ladder in the NHS and, when coupled with skills like communication, can create a potent leader. 

“The NHS lags behind other sectors in terms of technology. You need to be very clear in how you communicate your vision in a very high stakes context.” 

“You Have to Accept That Nothing Is Perfect”

Phill James is the CIO and Director of Digital at Warrington Together and Halton One. With a career in the NHS spanning 16 years, Phill has played a leading role in the innovation of key systems, like telephony and control room, within the NorthWest Ambulance service before moving into a CIO position. 

For Phill, one of the main skills needed to be a successful tech leader in the NHS, a high stakes and high governance institution, is resilience.

“You have to accept that nothing is perfect and that things change quicker than often you can deploy, it can be frustrating if you want to drive transformation. It’s a different type of tech role.”

Phil, who moved into a leadership position quite early on in his career, believes his move, although it wasn’t actually a conscious one, was something he was building up to throughout his career. 

“You realise you've done a mix of leadership and management all the way through your career, and it's about being situational. So when I'm being transactional, when I really got something to get over the line, that's management at the end of the day, I'm really trying to convince people to come on the journey to follow to be to be engaged and to want to be part of it. That's where the leadership kicks in.”

“Patient Lives Play Into Your Decision Making”

Decision making is one of the defining traits every leader has. For Phill, and those taking up leadership positions in the NHS, decision making takes on a new perspective when put into the context of saving patient lives. 

“Somebody asked me the other day, how do you sleep at night, knowing the systems that you’re responsible for are life-saving systems?” 

For Phil, who worked in Aviation Engineering before moving into the NHS and is accustomed to making decisions that will directly impact the wellbeing of users, it’s about keeping yourself grounded and leaning on the team that you build around yourself.  

“Balance your love for technology with patient care needs. So that means you need to listen to the people around you because they’re the people with the knowledge and the experience.”

“Keep On Top Of Things, But In A Friendly Way”

Charlee Martin is a Programme Manager at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital currently operating the Share2Care programme. An NHSx Local Health and Care Record programme, Share2Care spans across Cheshire, Merseyside, Lancashire and South Cumbria. 

A large-scale programme of work, Share2Care aims to produce a persistent care record that follows patients from birth to death. With over 5 years experience in the NHS, Charlee has led a number of digital transformation projects and knows a thing or two about what it takes to be a tech leader. 

“Organisation is a key skill, especially in programme management which can have multiple complex strands. So you need to keep on top of things, but it has to be in a friendly way.” 

The NHS, which is an incredibly high pressure place to work, has plenty to keep you occupied. Motivation, in this sense, becomes another key skill. Motivation means different things to different people but, for Charlee, a decision to abolish meeting agendas for some team collaboration sessions came with a sense of freedom that allowed valuable conversations around the programme at hand.

“Now, that may seem sacrilege in programme management, and to some degree, it kind of gets me twitchy, but the outputs of that have been so valuable, because it’s helped develop a place where we can sound grievances and really problem solve.”

“You Start Getting Twitchy About Solving Other People’s Problems.”

Charlee, who was told it was her time to move into programme management during a citywide EPR roll out, was already demonstrating traits that would set her up for success. 

“You know you're no longer a project manager, when you start getting twitchy about solving problems that generally aren't your problem. It’s when you go into your steering groups, and notice no one has written a policy for instance,, and you're saying to yourself: when are you going to write it?”

Now in her leadership role, Charlee is sharing her experience with up and coming professionals who are demonstrating potential in their early career. 

“I'm really interested in developing people. Especially women who are shining in their early career. I want to be there to coach and mentor them so they can have the confidence to move on to the next stage.”

“Take Advantage of the Personal Development Review”

Charlee, and many of her colleagues, have benefitted from the NHS’s wide array of development opportunities and the formal process built around them: the PDR.

The main aim of a Performance and Development Review (PDR) is to ensure that a formal discussion takes place at a face-to-face meeting between a manager and the member of staff being reviewed. It provides an opportunity to reflect on past performance and should be used as a basis for development and plans to be agreed for the future.

A great initiative that can be used as the springboard for movement into senior positions, the PDR is something Charlee recommends highly. 

“Most NHS trusts offer a lot of great opportunities to take courses which are funded by the trust. You just need to have a clear idea of what kind of projects or  technical work you want to get into. And then from there, they should take all the opportunities you can get in terms of mentoring.” 

“It’s Customer Service”

Gregg Holland is the CIO at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. With 17 years in the NHS, Gregg knows what it means to a successful tech leader in the NHS.

“I think it’s the same skills you need in any senior tech position: customer service and willingness to deliver. Nobody ever remembers the biggest, the best, the most expensive. What they remember is their experience” 

Being successful in any tech position that is tasked with driving change means winning the hearts and minds of your potential users. And for the NHS, one the world’s biggest employers, funded by the public themselves, change isn’t as simple as flicking a switch. Long governance processes are in place to ensure that every single penny spent is spent on the right things. 

“So you do feel an extra level of responsibility to get it right because it’s public money.” 

“Always Have the Philosophy of Change At The Back Of Your mind”

Arif Patel is the Associate Director of Technology Enabled Care at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust. It’s Arif’s job to provide vision, leadership and strategic direction to multi-disciplinary teams who are operationally engaged in the design, sourcing, build and delivery of all programmes, systems and products in the sphere of technology-enabled care.

For Arif, to be a successful tech leader in the NHS, you need to be a professional who is always looking for constant professional development opportunities while still keeping your finger on the pulse of change. 

“I developed my own leadership skills, by learning on the job and understanding what my team needs. It is very much about listening to the people around you and relying on them for the decisions you then make. You need to be a subject matter expert and have the level understanding, with the philosophy of change always in the back of your mind”

“Build Resilience into Everything You Do.”

Garry Harris is the Associate Director Technology at Wrightington, Wigan & Leigh NHS Teaching Foundation Trust. Starting off as a developer, Garry has been at the trust for 32 years. For Garry, no two days are the same, as he looks after approx. 500 systems on a vast and highly complex technology infrastructure, helping 6500 staff to do their jobs the best they possibly can.

With a vast amount of experience, Garry believes an effective tech leader in the NHS has to be a self-motivator who can quickly understand the unique ecosphere that is the NHS.

‘You have to have self-drive, you have to fully understand the environment and have to understand at the end of the day, everything you do has a direct impact to the quality of care patients receive’

With an eye firmly planted on the future, Gary also places strategic thinking at the core of his leadership methodology.

“You have to understand strategically where the trust is heading, planning from top down to build up a layered digital infrastructure. Building resilience into everything you do is vital and when things don’t go right in the NHS that is when your leadership skills have to be shown, as minutes and hours are critically important to providing safe and effective care”

Garry, who is a firm believer in strength-based leadership, has a team of highly skilled technical staff who can be relied on to do a brilliant job. Trust, a two way street, is importantly reciprocated between Garry and his team. This enables great relationships between team members and front line staff and extends into his relationship with suppliers, who have a critical role in ensuring digital services are delivered to a consistently high standard. 

7m people in the UK have care responsibilities for older members of their family. Demand for older adult social care is set to increase 25% by 2025, but at the same time, NHS and local authority funding for services is decreasing.

Those are a shocking set of statistics that set the scene for onHand’s entry into a space of simple help needs that have otherwise been left neglected: the delivery of a weekly shop, the changing of a light bulb or the provision of a new prescription. In other words: the basics.

After attracting thousands of volunteers and helping thousands of people up and down the country, onHand are entering their next stage of development where they are already making significant strides towards making corporate social responsibility scalable, measurable and engaging. The good news is it’s Covid-proof and works for remote employees. With a bit of luck it may just help keep us all a little more sane in our new working world.

We spoke to the Founder and CEO of onHand, Sanjay Lobo to discuss onHand’s next chapter. 

What is onHand?

Established in 2018, onHand sought to tackle the growing social care crisis for older generations by providing sustainable and engaging access to volunteers.

“Professional care is very expensive and larger charities struggle to engage and maintain volunteers. onHand solves both issues.”

onHand is a tech for good social enterprise, which means they are for profit. Profit that goes back into doing good in the community. With councils being amongst some of their biggest clients, onHand is paid for the provision of their volunteers to cover the areas that social workers usually miss. 

“We are deployed for a number of reasons. Companionship calls. Dog walking. Shopping runs. We’ve even delivered a phone to a member of the community a social worker lost contact with.”

Backed and funded by large charities like the Red Cross and British Heart Foundation, onHand was designed as a mobile-first experience that would attract and engage young people passionate about helping their community. This winning combination rang true with onHand’s target audience who quickly built up ahead of steam.  

“It’s the really basic stuff that older people tend to struggle with, like changing bed sheets. We started helping people just over a year ago, and it's grown really, really fast during that period until COVID struck.”

"We Had To Radically Change Our Business Model At Our Busiest Time"

With social distancing and shielding measures impacting the provision of regular services, onHanders have been there to support the older individuals who might not have anyone around to help. As their volunteering services came under record-breaking levels of demand, the team at onHand were looking at the way they operated with critical eyes. 

“In the past, we’d ask the person who needed help for a small payment but that meant we were charging the most vulnerable person in the Covid scenario. In our busiest period, we had to change our business model to start working more with local authorities.”

After an initial success with local authorities who quickly commissioned onHand’s services, the gaps started to appear. A limited market, constrained by governance and budget, local authorities were proving to be a difficult market to work for a rapidly growing company. The solution, for Sanjay and the onHand team, was staring them in the face. 

“At the start of the first Covid lockdown Newcastle Building Society approached us.  They had stopped all corporate volunteering because everyone was working at home and group volunteering obviously did not work anymore. onHand was the perfect solution. It’s local to the employee, can fit round any work schedule and can be done safely.”

With the final changes being made to fully automate the DBS checking process and let volunteers instantly see their nearest opportunity to give help, onHand is ready to provide corporates up and down the country with a cost-effective way to keep their employees engaged and feeling good. With so much focus on mental health for remote workers, it’s worth noting 100% of the Newcastle Building Society team reported mental health improvement through volunteering with onHand. Perhaps it’s not just those that receive the help that benefit.
 

Measuring and Gamifying CSR

There are many barriers to entry for corporate social responsibility, but two of the main ones are access and transparency. onHand, as it pivots to help large corporates, seeks to address those two barriers to make CSR accessible, measurable and engaging. To measure the impact of volunteering for corporates, onHand have been busy working on dashboards.

“We now have live data dashboards for corporates to see their total volunteering impact, which is going out really well. The report will tell you what your total volunteering impact has been this week, month or quarter, which teams are the most impactful and more. With so many local, “micro” opportunities to volunteer, we expect corporates to see their CSR stats make a big leap forward.”

Gamification and leaderboards are also on the development roadmap as onHand looks to provide options to engage staff who might be spending more time at home than anticipated. This gamification and social sharing has been a massive hit with one of onHands biggest clients, Newcastle Building Society.

“What we're seeing with Newcastle building Society is employees will post on all of their social channels about what they're up to, including LinkedIn. As a org focused on local good, this is massive for their CSR brand credentials.”

onHand, who have just hired a new Head of Business Development, are on a growth trajectory that will see them continue to innovate while remaining at the forefront of the tech for good movement in the social care space.

If you want to give back to your community, or are part of a company who are keen on driving your social responsibility you can contact the onHand team here. 

That’s a difficult question. An Engineering Manager will mean different things to different organisations but, like many roles, there are certain skills that, once mastered, will stand you in good stead for a career in Engineering Management. 

To give an honest representation of those skills, we sat down with a few technical leaders to discuss the Engineering Manager role, what makes an effective Engineering Manager and what advice they have for those looking to take the step up into management.

Learn How to Give People Autonomy

Bill Powell is the Development and Integration Manager at social housing association, bpha. A seasoned Engineering Manager with over 20 years of experience, Bill believes a good Engineering Manager should know how to give Autonomy back to their team. 

“I had a really good manager. And he kind of taught me how to become hands-off and just trust the team. Once you realize you're there to be an enabler that's when you can really flourish as a manager.”

Dropping any pretence of ego, an effective Engineering Manager is paid to clear away the roadblocks that stand in the way of the Engineering Team’s objectives. For some, who may have come from a traditional development route, this hands-off approach may be a difficult one to accept.

As an individual contributor, your responsibilities are rather clearly defined. You get to work on time, you’re assigned certain tasks, and you’re expected to deliver them efficiently and effectively.

When you become an engineering manager, that’ll change — your responsibilities will no longer be as defined and independent. Your day-to-day life will look different and your responsibilities will increase a whole lot more. With that said, you’ll also get a greater chance to make an impact on your team’s culture and collaborate with other teams to reach important business goals.

Not only will your work responsibilities change, but your entire mindset should change as well. Bill, who spent a large portion of his early career as an individual contributor, went through a similar journey. As he moved away from the hands-on elements, Bill took up the ‘enabler’ position, acting as a buffer between his team and the rest of the business. 

“One of the most productive times I had as a manager was actually when I stepped back and did some of the support. I looked at the pain points that were coming through the support channel and looked for patterns in those. I was working in conjunction with a product manager at that time, and we had some really mutually supportive conversations about our different takes on what customers wanted and ended up coming up with solutions that worked for us and really kick-started the product acceptance across the business.”
 

Find Your Mentor

Many people view the step change from individual contributor to Engineering Manager as being a promotion. In reality, it’s more of a career change as the new skills and responsibilities you’re asked to take up in the Engineering Manager role are a far cry from the familiar responsibilities of an engineer.

For those who have their sights set on the Engineering Manager position, Bill recommends finding a mentor to overcome those early jitters when taking up a role with a whole new set of responsibilities. 

“I had some early dabblings with being a manager and I'd been dreadful. The thing that made a difference was having a good mentor. Look for people that you see doing management well, and ask them to mentor you. Look in your peer-group or somewhere completely different in your organization where you see other managers doing things well, talk to them and try and learn from them.”

Focus On Your Adaptability 

Tom Peirson-Webber is an Engineering Manager with a diverse career history that has seen him move from sales to development. Tom places significant value on adaptability when it comes to leading Engineering teams. 

“I'm not just a coder, I'm not just a product leader or a people manager. I’ve done lots of different things and the only constant has been that adaptability.”

While it may seem like a platitude, arguably the most important skill for any leader is the ability to set a direction and communicate it effectively to his or her team. This doesn’t always mean verbal or even written direction—the best leaders back up their words with behaviour that sets the standard for everyone around them. When you’re dealing with technical problems, you often have to work with individuals who know what they want but not how to achieve it - this is where Tom’s adaptability and breadth of technical knowledge really come into its own. 

“We have this mixed bag of skills that means our focus is on engineering the right products, instead of doing a particular task, and then if neccessary, passing it off to the next person to do the next step. This means that when people come to us with things they want but without the technical knowledge, we’re able to help them figure out what they need and then supercharge it”

Never Stop Broadening Your Technical Knowledge

As opposed to deepening your knowledge in one particular area, broadening your technical knowledge across a range of disciplines will enable actionable conversations with a range of different stakeholders from marketing to DevOps to Data. For Tom, this breadth of knowledge has been key to his success in the Engineering Manager role. 

“As an Engineering Manager or a Dev Manager, you're running the entire process from end to end, which includes design, requirement, gathering, development, deployment and productisation. Focusing on just a single area would mean that when it comes to managing more than just that area, you may not have the foundational knowledge to ensure you can help people deliver their best work regardless of their discipline.”
 

Confidence is Key

Dan Doughty is the Software Development Manager at SDC Builders. With 6 months in a management position before COVID-19 struck, Dan had to learn quickly to manage a remote team while maintaining his regular duties as the tip of the technology spear at SDC. Confidence, in difficult situations like this one, is one of Dan’s core management methodologies. 

“I think the confidence certainly plays a huge part in being a manager, especially if you're going to manage people more experienced than you. So part of it does come with confidence. And just knowing that if you found yourself in a position of management, someone at that business trusts you.”

Dan, who has been thrown in the deep end multiple times, knows that confidence comes in different forms. For one, there’s having confidence in yourself - not only to do a good job, but also to do the right thing by your team. For Dan, who manages Software Developers in a Construction Company and knows how difficult this environment can be for newly graduated developers, believes in leading with empathy. 

“You need to understand that, throughout your career and throughout your life, you're going to come across incidents where people are trying to make decisions that are best for themselves and it’s very easy to overreact to that situation.” 

As human beings, we emote before we even reason. So despite an intellectual desire to respond to the challenges at hand with calmness, courage and optimism, sometimes emotions – particularly anger and fear – can highjack rational thinking and derail decision-making in ourselves and others.

Simply defined, empathy is our desire and willingness to see as others see and to feel as they feel. According to studies carried out by Development Dimensions International (DDI), empathy is the single most important leadership skill that outshines all others.

“At the end of the day, you want the best software developers working for you. If they’re the best, they’re going to attract attention from others. If you’ve showed empathy to them in the past, you’ll have made yourself approachable and might potentially avoid a loss in the team.”

You Don’t Need to be the Best Developer On The Team

You likely made it into a manager position because you proved you could be successful at the job you were doing as an individual contributor, but not because you proved your ability to manage a group of individual contributors. Those are two very different things!

For Dan, who works with incredibly talented developers, it’s about embracing the step change and avoiding the very natural response to react negatively to someone who is far more skilled in an area you need to have oversight on.
 

“If you find yourself with someone that's clearly better than you at software development. Embrace that and just make sure that you're utilising their strengths as well as utilising your own. Don't be put off by someone being better at software development than you because that's not your role.”

As a manager, you will be judged based on the success of your team. That means that they are your first priority. The minute you start deviating from that path is the minute you wander into "bad boss" territory.

The world of business is moving faster than ever. With the growing demand of technology to help do more with less, IT departments are feeling increased pressure to build digital networks able to meet aggressive business goals. Most, if not all, of the responsibility falls on the CIO, and at times, it can be challenging to navigate the day-to-day operations of an IT department.

We spoke to Lisa Emery, CIO at the Royal Marsden, and Chair of the London CIO Council, to discuss the role of the CIO, Lisa’s path to CIO and the importance of mentorship and coaching.

Lisa’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’re bringing together the stories of these courageous leaders to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“We’re Trying to Build a Professional Structure Around the Role”

Without a formal route into a role like a CIO, or a clear professionalisation or educational qualification, the path to a CIO is an obscure one that not many set their sights on. For Lisa, who shocked her teachers by selecting three sciences at O-level, knows just how shallow many people’s understanding of the careers available in technology. 

“People talk about careers in technology to graduates and schoolchildren, and it tends to fall into software and coding. These things don’t happen in vacuums. We need to show the transformational side where you can combine your love of technology with your communication skills.”

Lisa’s route to CIO, which saw her drive implementation at companies like Dell and Perot, started with a love for technology and change. Inspired by her Mother, who was a scientist, Lisa pursued her interests without looking back - despite raising a few eyebrows at the time. 

“I did three Sciences at O level, which was a shock revelation to the school at that time.”

Now 6 years into her position as CIO, Lisa is working hard on supporting those building a professional structure around the role so that anyone from any background knows the options available in technology careers. 

The British Computer Society *BCS) has put together organisational membership packages. So I've joined our team up to that, for example. So they can recognise their professional qualifications in this field. And then looking at a recognised professional CIO qualification, such as  CHCIO. In addition, the Digital Academy has been brilliant in terms of recognising the need to have some structured learning around what we're doing.

What Makes an Effective CIO?

The modern CIO must now take on a more strategic business role than that of their technologically-driven predecessors, meaning the characteristics traditionally favoured in a CIO haven’t necessarily remained the same - as Lisa explains:

“We’ve transitioned away from the more traditional IT director focuses like infrastructure and towards digital transformation, change, workforce development.”

While there are some essential technical and managerial skills that you must possess in order to get the job, there are a number of other qualities that will elevate you from a good CIO to a great CIO. A love of technology is, of course, a must but from there it becomes about soft skills.

“It's quite easy to get frustrated with technology so you do need to be quite robust in yourself and quite, you know, happy and confident talking to whole groups of different people in different conditions.” 

As both the appetite and need for technology grows, the CIO takes up a translation role within the company. They take the complicated and boil it down to its very basic value statements for each and every user.

“We take all the complexity out of the technology stack and decipher it for colleagues at any level of the organisation about how the technology is going to help them deliver for our patients and staff on a day to day basis.”

With the CIO needing to be able to both comprehend and communicate the value of highly complicated technology, people skills are tantamount to success. The ability to build relationships and speak plainly within them are values that Lisa holds at the center of her methodology as a CIO in a rapidly changing business landscape. 

These skills can temper the innate love of technology that Lisa and other CIO’s possess while the people they’ve brought together deliver.

“We get a bit constrained and that's not what digital leadership is about. You don't need to know all the details to drive the delivery.”

The Importance of Mentorship and Coaching

Role models can play a central role in shaping careers. They are especially important if you belong to an under-represented group for whom a lack of representation in the workplace can lead to feeling isolated and lacking in confidence. They can help those just starting out, in their career or their role, to believe in their own abilities.

“You need to see something to be it. I’d love to be that person for someone.”

Quite often, ‘coaching’ and ‘mentoring’ are used interchangeably in a personal and organisational development context. Wherever these are used, the success of these development approaches is dependent upon many factors, not least the organisational culture, the skills of the individual mentor or coach, and the emphasis that is placed on learning and development in the organisational context.

For Lisa, mentorship has had a direct impact on her professional self having learned from both the people she worked with and for. One particular mentor, who helped Lisa make the transition back to the NHS after a short hiatus, stands out amongst the rest

“She was always honest, very transparent with people. She felt to me like a real Trailblazer. A senior female leader, in a fairly male-dominated environment, being herself. That inspired me to pass that on to other women.”

Her Story: Jocelyn Palmer, Programme Manager NHS South, Central and West.

We spoke to Jocelyn Palmer, Programme Manager NHS South, Central and West to discuss the role of the Programme Manager, Jocelyn’s path to Programme Manager and the importance of taking control of your own situation.

Jocelyn’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Never Thought I’d Work In Technology”

As programme lead of the ‘Connecting Care’ initiative across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, Jocelyn is leading the digital transformation charge for well over one million patients in the NHS. Jocelyn’s position as a technology leader is indisputable - but it wasn’t always that way. 

“I never thought I’d work in technology. It wasn't my plan.”

Jocelyn, who studied humanities at school and college, found her route into technology after doing an MSc later in life before starting a role as a Systems Analyst.

“I struggled a bit with an office environment. It was totally new to me.  The management culture was macho and work was often thrown back at you. It was a baptism of fire, but I learned so much.”

Despite the difficult working culture, this role would connect Jocelyn with her first mentor - a lady who didn’t necessarily take her completely under her wing, but did provide a sounding board for Jocelyn to figure out her own competencies and feelings at this early stage of her career. 

“What she made me realise is that you don't necessarily go into a job automatically knowing everything. It was the general guidance she provided and that really reinforced the power of positive feedback.”

A mentor doesn’t need to be someone who will coach you through the minutiae of the role. They can be just as effective as sounding boards, people who can help keep you on track with guidance and feedback. 

The power of positive feedback stayed with Jocelyn as she moved to her next role where she had her first experience of being managed by someone who truly cares.

“It was the first time I'd had a boss who basically said, “I think you're great”. That was a real learning for me because it really made me appreciate and value positive reinforcement.”

Moving into her next role, Jocelyn joined another telecommunication company. Here, she stepped out of her business analyst comfort zone and into the choppy waters of project management. Jocelyn, now suddenly had to contend with both internal stakeholders and external consultancies. 

“Everyone ran rings around me. You know, I didn't really appreciate the authority that you need to have as a project manager when you are responsible for something. And I was very much probably still in business analyst mode.”

Despite these initial difficulties, Jocelyn enjoyed a long career there  - a career that would ultimately help her define who her true, authentic self is by observing the professionals around her. 

“We had very highly paid individuals who were funny and nice to have banter with, but they were also quite aggressive in their style. They would think nothing of making somebody cry as a way to get more out of people. And I remember thinking, that's not me.  I can’t do that”

There are formative moments in our careers. Moments that define us. For some, this can be a positive role model, but for others, it can be a negative influence. While some will seek the ‘right path’ others, like Jocelyn, will seek the path that feels right to them, despite external influence.

“And I think I kind of came to the conclusion that there were certain things I had to learn and beef up on. But I ultimately had to be myself.”

Reflecting on her career, Jocelyn spoke heavily about taking control of negative situations as a way of handling imposter syndrome.

Handling Imposter Syndrome

“There have been occasions where I've felt vulnerable.” 

Demonstrating the resilience across her career, Jocelyn has worked in highly technical environments that are, more often than not, dominated by males.

Being resilient, in theory, seems sound - but applying it is another story altogether. Elements of doubt begin to creep in as you climb the career ladder. This doubt is commonly known as Imposter Syndrome and it’s something that adversely affects women. 

According to a report by Access Commercial Finance, a survey of over 3000 adults in the UK shows over two-thirds of women (66%) have suffered from imposter syndrome compared to over half of men (56%) within the last 12 months. 

For Jocelyn, who recognises doubt as part of human nature, believes it's less a question of overcoming imposter syndrome and more a question of handling it. 

“Confidence and uncertainty can coexist. You can think you’re good at your job but also be conscious of questions. I think I just give myself a good talking to when that happens.”

Advice for being an effective programme manager

Now 15 years into her NHS Programme Management career, Jocelyn is on the bleeding edge of business transformation in one of the world's biggest employers. Jocelyn’s journey, which has been filled with learnings and setbacks, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for the NHS. 

For those looking to take up a project management position, Jocelyn has 2 pieces of advice.

“Firstly, if you need help, you need to find it. Don’t be afraid to seek out a mentor - you’ll be surprised how many people are willing to help. Secondly, always be learning, and always be curious. Make a conscious effort to observe and notice the good things other people do.  Look at the ‘experts’, but also ask yourself how you can be true to you.”

We spoke to Shauna McMahon, Director of Transformation (Digital) at NHS South, Central and West to discuss digital transformation leadership, Shauna’s path to Directorship and the importance of being courageous.

Shauna’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’ve brought together these stories in an effort to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line.

“I Love Technology and I Love Health Care”

There are those lucky enough to fall straight into their dream career. For everyone else, the gauntlet of life comes with a few false starts and dead ends. For Shauna, who started her career as a science teacher in her native Canada, it took several years before she could find the right mix of her passions. 

“I was on my third chemistry experiment of the day and I messed up the mixture. As it blew up in my face, I realised that this just isn’t the career for me.”

From her teaching position, Shauna would go on to enter the world of banking where she would serve as the chair of the board for a financial institution before taking a role in an HR function. 

“It was an interesting time to be in banking because there was change happening. ATMs were coming out and I was really getting involved with technology.”

It was here she found an advert for an HR role in Healthcare, an industry that would come to define her career. Shauna’s passion for technology, tempered by her previous roles in banking, combined with her newly discovered love for healthcare, meant she was quickly assigned technical projects.

“I was looking at the redesign of how medical reports were being generated and distributed. Looking at voice recognition, we fundamentally changed how the medical reports were structured. From that, I just kept getting more and more involved in the digital space and technology. The rest, as they say, is history.” 

After a string of successful projects, Shauna eventually became a director of E-health and then a Director of Information and Technology across eight different hospitals in one health authority in Canada before moving to the UK in 2015.

“I Had to Take A Step Back and Reflect”

The route to leadership in the technical space is never a straight line. For Shauna, who very quickly progressed through a range of different projects, a major challenge came during her early career while she was working her biggest project yet. 

“It’s easy to get immersed in a massive project. You get so worried about not succeeding that you just keep your head down. What I didn’t do was stop and appreciate the team around me.”

360-degree feedback from everyone on the project changed Shauna’s orientation. Moving away from tasks and more towards people, Shauna then did a lot of self-exploration to discover what kind of leader she wanted to be and, after doing a masters in leadership, lay the foundation for the rest of her management career. 

“I had to tweak my self-awareness and that was difficult for someone early in their career. But it allowed me to really come into my own and be comfortable with connecting with people and building good relationships. I found such joy in helping and working with people.”

“Digital Transformation is About Strong, Authentic Relationships”

In her current role as Director of Transformation and her previous role as CIO, Shauna is driving digital change at a time of evolution for the NHS. Despite having years of experience in Healthcare and Technology, Shauna places relationship building at the centre of her digital transformation methodology. 

“You have to have a really good understanding of how the technology works together, and it’s potential. But I’d say my most important skill, and the one that got me promoted the most is my ability to make strong authentic relationships.”

In health care, when any change made in a technical process has a domino effect on the clinical side of the practice, it’s absolutely key that leaders are empathetic and can easily understand the pain points for users.

Despite not being an expert on the technical intricacies, Shauna was able to ask the right questions and find the right people to strike the balance between the technical aspects and human aspects of projects throughout her career, always keeping an eye on the balance between doing what's best for the citizen and the care provider.

“I'll be completely honest, in the early stages, it might have been more helpful to have more technical knowledge. But I always hired people who were smarter than me.”

Advice for Future Leaders

Now 5 years into her NHS Leadership career, Shauna is on the bleeding edge of business transformation in one of the world's biggest employers. Shauna’s journey, which has been filled with learnings and setbacks, has prepared her for the responsibility she now has driving change for the NHS. 

For those looking to take up a leadership position within the NHS, Shauna has a few pieces of advice.

“Firstly, find something you’re passionate about. Something that makes you jump out of bed in the morning. Secondly, never stop learning. Finally, be courageous. Be willing to go out on a limb and take a leap of faith”

Developing and launching products is a team activity, it involves the efforts of development, marketing, sales and support functions. The tasks performed by these functions can’t happen at random times, they all need to be co-ordinated.

We spoke to Jaki Allen Health Records and Transcription Digital Programme Manager at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital to discuss leadership, the NHS’ digital transformation and more.

Jaki’s story is part of a series of articles highlighting the careers of female tech leaders within the NHS. We’re bringing together the stories of these courageous leaders to prove that the route to leadership is never a straight line. 

With a career that has been focused on transformation, Jaki has created change at massive institutions like BT and the NHS. 

“10 years ago in the oil and gas industry I worked on a project to automate the delivery of Ink Cartridge replacements straight from the supplier and the delivery of a ‘tap in - tap out’ system for printing. That was it for me. I was bitten by the transformation bug.”

From there Jaki has become an advocate for digital transformation and rationalisation, carrying her passion for change into her latest role in the NHS as programme manager for the Health Records and Transcription services at Alder Hey Children’s hospital. At the heart of Jaki’s delivery of this programme lies a focus on vision and scope. 

“I'm not techie so I have to come up with an idea and then bring people on that journey with me. It's the art of the possible.” 

With the current focus being on an RPA for transcription services that clinicians and medical staff can use to cut out some of the busy work they’re doing, Jaki is leading a team of AI and Automation experts with a clear vision. 

“There is very little that bots, systems, and processes automation can’t do.”

Innovation can’t happen in a vacuum and Jaki, who brings passion and love to her role, creates a working environment in which innovation can thrive.

“I think when you have that passion, not just for the job that you do, but for changing the way things happen, you naturally look for different approaches.” 

The NHS has Sprinted the Last Five Years 

Jaki who has worked in both the private and public sector has a rather unique perspective on the two. While traditionally the NHS has been seen as being behind the curve in terms of innovation, Jaki is now seeing the paradigm shift. 

“There are lightbulb moments coming on now all over the NHS from clinical systems to finance systems to HR systems. The NHS hasn’t walked the last five years, it’s sprinted.”

COVID-19, for all the pressure that it has put on the NHS, has left the door ajar for a new wave of digital innovation that would otherwise be left quietly knocking. This digital innovation isn’t just making the lives of hardworking healthcare professionals, but it’s also creating a better experience for patients. 

“When you think about a 9-month pregnant woman with gestational diabetes. She’d normally have to keep getting on the bus, be told everything is fine and go home. By providing remote monitoring we can easily maintain a standard of care for all patients."

Leading Technical Teams 

Running a programme involves bringing people together and enabling them to do their best possible work towards a common goal. For Jaki, who primarily works with technical professionals, programme management becomes a very fine balancing act. 

“Not only do I have to deal with the tech side of things, and making sure that we don't miss a beat. I have to deal with the clinical risk side of things when we launch.”

For Jaki, who will be the first to admit that she isn’t particularly technically astute, it becomes more of a question of grit. Are you prepared to roll your sleeves up no matter how messy it gets? On both the technical and transformational side of her role, she surrounds herself with people who she believes in.

“We go to meetings where I might promise the earth and I'll say to the team: ‘I know you can deliver and I’ve got your back’. And it helps them to not only build their confidence, which is massive, but it's also showing them a standard of quality that we need to have.”

You’ve got to be Thick Skinned

Having just finished a mentoring programme at Liverpool’s Women’s Hospital where Jaki helped mentor four apprentices through a project management apprenticeship, Jaki is reminded of the sheer commitment and grit needed to be successful as a healthcare leader.

“You’ve got to be thick-skinned. I've slipped and tripped and stumbled through some projects. But it’s only prepared me better for future programmes. So from a leadership point of view, always be prepared to do more. If you're a junior, don't clock watch, take on more than you think you can because you can do more.”

Cybersecurity: The Savvy Career Option No One Considers

When a young person considers a career in technology, what do they think of first? Is it DNS? Firewalls? Probably not. The perception around the cybersecurity arm of technology is certainly contributing to its lack of access to the wider technology talent pool - but it’s definitely not the only reason. 

We sat down with a few cybersecurity experts to discuss this perception and explore why a career in cybersecurity, despite the growth in opportunity in the sector, seems to never be considered. 

How Exactly Do You Get a Public Body To Investigate a Cybercrime Offence?

There exists a culture around Cybersecurity that is dark, mysterious and, above all else, somewhat impenetrable. 

For Darren Desmond, Director of Security AA, this cybersecurity identity crisis is causing problems at both ends of the scale and simple consideration of the steps you might take when reporting a cyber-attack reveals a lot about the perception of the sector. 

“There exists an expectation that if you had a cyber attack, you pick up the phone to the police, and the police would come with blue lights flashing and sort your problem out for you. That seems to be the perception in younger people coming through, and even some of the management teams I’ve dealt with. No one seems to know what the options are for getting a public body to investigate a cybercrime offence.” 

No one is born cyber secure. No one is born knowing how to stay safe online and what to do in the event of a breach. It’s the responsibility of those at the top and those in education to change the understanding around cybersecurity in a similar fashion to the work done around the development and engineering careers. 

Technology and education are now firmly intertwined. While this is expected from universities who use the latest tech to teach their students and conduct research, now even the smallest primary schools have tech firmly rooted in their daily lives. There has never been a better time to engrain healthy cyber habits at an early age. 

And the responsibility shouldn’t solely fall to schools either. The products that children use every day, like Facebook, Tik Tok and Google Products also have a responsibility to reinforce positive security habits. Once that’s done you move cybersecurity out of the basement and right into focus.

“I think by the time my daughters go out into the work environment, the security arena will have changed drastically. Security will be the foundation of every major platform and that will force market consolidation. The opportunity will follow from there.”

But even in a future where security is talked about openly by schools and corporations alike, hiring managers and those looking to invest in security still need to know what skills to look out for in good cybersecurity candidates. 

Because cybersecurity, unlike other technical roles, requires a true balance of skills that, in some cases, can make them incredibly tricky hires to make.  Soft skills are as critical as technical skills.

We are Bad At Evangelising Security as a Career

Teaching and selling cybersecurity can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle. Helping someone build a game that uses scratch to develop loops and variables is a lot more inspiring and engaging than telling someone how DNS works. Is that something cybersecurity will ever be able to escape?

Surinder Lall is the VP of Information Security at global media and entertainment company ViacomCBS. With well over 10 years in technology security and, with his latest role at ViacomCBS having him manage a team across four different continents, he is well placed to discuss the security skills gap on a global scale. 

For him, one of the reasons careers in security aren’t considered as widely as their software or development cousins is because of the lack of evangelisation of these roles. 

“I speak at schools quite regularly and they've got no idea about security. There isn't a definitive body for security. You know, you've got ISC square, you've got a couple of other big names that do like certifications. But there isn't really a body like there's an engineering body for civil engineers, you know, there isn't a body for us. So there isn't really anyone with the mission to go out and evangelize security as a career.”

A cursory glance over the UK Government's Careers Service website will reveal just one security role within the Computing and Technology sector; Cyber Intelligence Officer. And without campaigns similar to the governments Get Into Teaching campaign, CyberSecurity careers seem to be damned to remain at the back of people’s minds when they consider a technology career.

We’re Missing Out on the Management Side

Howard Pritchard is Cyber and Information Security Consultant. With over 30 years of experience in cybersecurity, Howard believes the lack of consideration for security roles stems from single-minded focus on technology as a hands-on entity and not as a strategic consideration.

“Technology is all about IT and cybersecurity. It's about how you're getting your hands dirty, rolling your sleeves up, configuring, and physically moving stuff from A to B. Now, what is missing is the management side of it: how to understand policies, implementation and people.”

Bringing in this side of the technology offering at the educational level would make significant strides, but until these teachers or educational institutions are properly equipped, they won’t be able to give a fair representation of the full range of technology careers. 

“Teachers are doing their job 100% but if they’re not given the tools to understand IT security, Incident Management, risk management then students will come out without an understanding of the options.”

What’s next for Cybersecurity? 

Until organisations, large and small, bring security to the forefront of the tech offering, will the perception around cybersecurity change. Once they do, however, budding technologists will find a career filled with promise, potential and much much more.

Speakers:

Kitty Grew - Project Manager at North Central London CCG:

Since COVID, I’ve found that the system has been very efficient at implementing changes quickly and putting systems in place effectively. Do you think we can continue to work in this flexible and dynamic way post-COVID? Is there anything we can do to try to help this happen?

Charu Ritvika - Digital Transformation Project Manager at NHS​ :

Leveraging the power of collective negotiation at NHS to drive supplier behaviour and establishing central deals- the role of central bodies like NHS D etc.

Rehan Tufail - EPR Project Manager at Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust​ :

I would like to have a discussion around “Clinical engagement in EPR implementation and its impact – Clinically led EPR implementation”

Timestamps:

0 – 0.55 (Introduction to session)

0.55 – 4.35 (Individual introductions + ice breaker)

4.35 – 15.03 (Kitty Grew Question)

15.04 – 28.10 (Charu Ritvika Question)

28.11 – 38.10 (Rehan Tufail Question)

38.11 – End (Thank you)

Addressing the Security Skills Gap

There’s no disputing we have more open security positions than we have available applicants to fill them. And, at first glance, the statistics are staggering: 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs will be available yet unfilled by 2021, despite ransomware attacks growing 350% year-over-year.

We sat down with senior security leaders to discuss the security skills gap and why this industry has such a troubled relationship with attracting and retaining talent. 

“As an Industry We’re not Good At Uncovering People”

Bridging the talent gap isn’t an issue exclusive to security. Industries all over the world have trouble finding the right kind of talent to meet demand. Cybersecurity, however, is a particularly large offender when it comes to a lack of creativity in hiring. Slews of certifications and qualifications (like CISSP, CompTIAPenTest+, CySA+, CASP+, CEH, CISSP and CISM) and job descriptions that necessitate long tenures in previous positions (in an industry that is constantly evolving) puts immediate barriers to entry up. 

Oscar O'Connor, Director of Security, isn’t entirely convinced that there even is a skills gap.

“I think our problem as an industry is that we're not very good at fishing for talent. Our recruitment processes are broken they weed out many of the people we need to attract.”

Oscar believes that these barriers to entry - often imposed by HR and recruiters ‘who look for lists of keywords’ - are stopping the best talent from understanding the career opportunities in security with the big names like BAE Systems being the only institutions with the pulling power to attract the very best talent. 

But rather than competing with the powerhouses of security for the more tenured individuals, Oscar looks to education as a source of untapped talent. 

For many, time spent in education is time spent towards uncovering passions. But with a serious lack of cybersecurity in formal curriculums, it becomes an uphill struggle to inspire the next generation. 

“we're not good at uncovering talent. We're not good at encouraging girls. particularly. Young people coming through school that we need to go into science and technology, engineering, mathematics, security coding.”

“The Whole Business of Education Moves Too Slowly”

Now more than ever, schools are relying on their online IT and ed-tech services to help with teaching and admin tasks. Staff can play a key role in keeping these IT services (and the information they access) secure and available.

However, a recent school cyber security audit showed teachers and support staff did not feel very knowledgeable when it came to cyber security. The survey highlighted an appetite for more staff training, and new resources to help bridge this knowledge gap. 

The reality of the cybersecurity situation is that it’s constantly changing. In fact, security breaches have increased by 11% since 2018 and 67% since 2014. How do you teach something that is in a constant state of evolution? For Oscar, the answer is a lot simpler than you may think. 

“We just have no way of kind of envisioning what a curriculum should look like, because we don't know what the next threat is or what the next technology is. One thing we can be sure of is that it will need to be secured. Being safe. Being Secure. Being conscious. Those can be taught.” 

The school cybersecurity audit certainly revealed a desire from teachers and support staff for knowledge on security matters to better educate their students - but even that presents an identity issue for cybersecurity as a career option.

“It’s Aptitude, Aptitude, Aptitude.”

The route to a top level security role is a twisting, winding path. When it comes to security everyone has a responsibility to do the right thing. For a CISO, at the very tip of the security spear, it’s about coupling technical knowledge with really good communication and stakeholder management skills.

For Tim Rawlins, Director and Senior Adviser at NCC Group Plc, success in cybersecurity can lie outside the realms of the technical. 

“It's the aptitude that we're looking for and not necessarily technical expertise in any one technology or other.”

An inquiring mind, good communication skills and the ability to listen and understand your clients’ challenges - these are skills that no certificate, degree or qualification can give you and are absolutely essential to driving organisational security change instead of taking a prescriptive approach. For Bence Horvath, Director, Technology Consulting - Security at multinational professional services firm Ernst & Young those working in security has to become “the agent of change”.

“They need to get more out of their comfort zone, take a non-technical mindset when going out to the boards, diverse committees and business leadership, and say: Look guys, the changes you are trying to enact will open us up to new risks, so please consult us, include us, because in the end, you’re accountable for keeping the company, it’s employees and it’s customers safe."  

A new and emerging skill that is being eyed greedily by security hiring managers is the ability to step out of the narrowly defined technical role and become this agent of change. 

Perhaps unfairly, those in Tech Security are often stereotyped as being restrictive and overly concerned with process. This, more often than not, leads to them being seen as obstacles or ‘naysayers.’ For Bence, it’s crucial for a CISO to kick that stereotype quickly. 

“Move from being the person always saying ‘It's not allowed. Nope. There’s no way we can do that’ to be the proactive one working with the rest of the business and with the rest of the stakeholders to come up with a solution.”

“Security is not About Just Writing A User Policy”

Surinder Lall is the VP Information Security at global media and entertainment company ViacomCBS. With well over 10 years in technology security and, with his latest role at ViacomCBS having him manage a team across four different continents, he is well placed to discuss the security skills gap on a global scale. 

For Surinder, the first thing to consider when discussing the security skills gap is the split in the talent pool. 

“You've got a reasonably sized portion of heavily skilled, battle-hardened security people have been in the game for 10 to 15 years. Then you've got people who have been in security for 10 to 15 years but haven’t done anything more than policy writing and then you've got people who have just transitioned from other senior roles within tech, running IT departments or being ex developers”

To begin with, this rather mixed bag of professionals entering the market at the same level, with vastly diverse skills creates a difficult situation for those looking to hire a security specialist. With no defined, clear cut guide for what makes a security professional, job specs can end up being a bit of a Frankenstein's monster of sorts.

“everything they can think of security-wise and not security-wise, they chuck it in and hope for the best. In reality, there aren't any people who have all of those skills.”

In normal scenarios, that’s where training comes in. You can train people with the soft skills, or the required skills, and move them towards an area needed for that high-level, senior security professional. All it really takes is time. But for Surinder, it’s the real-world experience that is lacking and that’s something you can’t teach. As a result, educational bodies are poorly preparing graduates for the reality of the security situation. 

“And you see a lot of universities churning out security postgrads, who have never seen a corporate network before, have never experienced the chaos that comes with managing an incident across multiple time zones. They've never seen it.“

But instead of laying blame at the feet of these educational bodies, who will always have a hard time keeping up with the rate of change, Surinder looks to the image that Security has and the community that surrounds it.

“If you’re developing in C++, everyone knows C++ and all that community knows C++. Security, on the other hand, doesn’t have that community because it’s more conceptual. It’s a type of person.”

Often, the best Security professionals find themselves analysing vast amounts of data and scenarios while finding a way to mitigate risk.

“We're effectively strategists. You’ll find the most effective security people are often developers, people who have worked in engineering backgrounds, very logical, very methodical, and people able to deal with and cope with pressure.”

With such a hard to define ‘type’ the security skills gap just keeps getting bigger. With professionals not knowing what skills to develop or paths to work, and hiring managers not knowing what skills to look for. 

“There are Gaps in Organisation’s Data”

Howard Pritchard is a Global CISO and Information Security, Consultant. With over 38 years of experience in cybersecurity, Howard believes the skills gap is representative of a gap in an organisation’s understanding of the types of security roles they actually need. 

“Cybersecurity is all about securing the IT infrastructure and the Data that resides across it, and a linkage to the information security requirements. Many organisations get this wrong when they're asking and looking for information security people, what they are really talking about is IT resources with security skills (Cyber Security). There needs to be distinct clarity between what IT Security (Cyber Security) and Information Security are within an organisation.”

We’ve seen it before - organizations will say they want information security or want a Head of Information Security, but what they're really looking for is someone who can manage the technical aspects of the department through to operational requirements. So despite the person taking a senior position, a leadership position, within a security function, they lack the required skills to provide leadership in understanding the organisations business and operational requirements, not to mention setting budgets and aligning the Cyber Security strategy to the business and operation, therefore the real role becomes more an IT Security support to all, a  firefighter that then becomes disillusioned over a period of time, not to mention burn-out from the pressures of senior management who are not educated in the differences rather wanting to see an immediate return on investment, a person who will be made a point for any potential organisational Incident/Breach, the creator of Information Security Key Metrics, not to mention the management reporting of Information and Cybersecurity risks to the regular board meetings.

This lack of understanding comes at both ends of the scale with CISO’s and Head of Information Security roles missing the trick when it comes to potential new hires for road mapping future projects and Business As Usual (BAU) activities - as Howard explains:

“When an organization's CISO says “I want to hire a new resource” what many fail to look at is whether that is actually resolving an issue or challenge, has the business/operational requirements increased that require further resources for example? or is it simply bolstering team numbers due to the latest external audit report? that end up with no direction.” 

Without a proper gap analysis of the business and operational requirements and being able to build an Information security strategy aligned to that organisation, CISOs effectively become firefighters in their cause and just a label without substance.

Speakers: 

Richard Stewart - Talent Acquisition Manager @ Valiantys 

Hansel Dunlop - Senior Engineering Director @ Digital Surgery Limited 

Daljeet Kukreja - Director of Engineering @ Compass

Extracts

Richard on Challenging Assumptions During Interviews

"So much of what you do when you're interviewing is based very much on assumptions in the meeting, which are based much more on your thoughts and the relationship rather than actually what's been said. But actually, now it has been what's been said, right? And actually, I've coached managers who are very good, but actually they're good at setting the business. But actually, the conversation becomes quite one-sided.
There's no conversation. It's just a dialogue rather than a conversation.

So isn't been my questions that you've sort of have to really look out and how Yeah, yeah. And so why not do for all the interviews? I'm involved, here's why solicit five key clear questions, and what's available is questions and what is actually about the role, but we also realize how important is now to be much more organized so that you can work remotely for those roles, which has to do that anyway."

Hansel on Selling Your Company Without a Physical Location

"We're still selling on basically those principles of what we're doing, which is that we're, we're trying to do a good thing in the world. We're trying to provide some social good, basically, I think that's kind of one of the main things that we, that we attract people to us because of so people say, Well look, all right, I'd like to see those same goals of, you know, making surgeon safe, making surgery safer, more accessible to the world, basically. But in terms of the culture of our work culture, I think it's Yeah, it's been really tough. I think it's, I mean, I've struggled with I feel, you know, I've missed I missed that. That casual encounter with people I miss that all the organic conversations that happen and in an environment where you are bumping into people, and I think we've done a few little things to try to help with that. And I think no technical teams have little, little breakout sessions on Biloxi again, that's on zoom. There's I You know, there's some app out there that will get, it's going to correct us on direction, but it's like going to a party and trying to talk to every single person at once. You know, it's just normal, you would never, that's why you like to go out and gonna have a have that moment with three people where you're having that chat and sort of the back without the back door or something versus literally standing in front of every single person and trying to have a conversation with 50 of them at once. And how does that work? How does it play out? So I think there's a tool missing basically, I think there's some kind of socializing tool. There's some sort of a bit of zoom that doesn't exist yet, or both of those and other tools that would be good to have. But, yeah, as I said, the little things that we've been doing around having very, very structured onboarding, so where we might have been a little bit looser. We're now very, very much kind of making sure that we've really put people with others and direct them who to talk to her to meet with that we have some little subtle ones where they can have some sort of organic time with other people in the team as well that they might necessarily want to work with."

Daljeet on Improving the Interviewing Experience for Remote Candidates

"The main thing that's changed is that we can't whiteboard as much as we used to do in the interview session. So when you are having like a system design discussion, we it was easy to just whiteboard the solution and then brainstorm together with the candidate. So we were able to do a very open-ended question before. Now it has to be a little bit more specific. We have been doing video calls we have been using like Google meat, and they are able to share their screen and draw the diagram. But we have to walk a lot before we reach the point where they start drawing the diagram. For example, in the system design case, coding hasn't changed much the only difference in the coding rounds have been instead of whiteboard, they are just using the tool so they are able to code in their preferred language. But I think the system design down is changed a lot in terms of questions how we ask the questions, we have to be very specific and guide them to reach the point where they can start drawing the diagrams Faster than we used to, in terms of the behaviour around centres, leadership principles wrong. I don't think much has changed what? In terms of what we asked, we asked the same questions. What has changed is how we interpret we have to be more empathetic to the situation or any background noise and their body language because we can't see them completely. So as an interviewer, we just have to read them better and try to read them better than we used to before."

HackerRank's survey shows 27.4 percent of developers say they're self-taught. Another 37.7 percent say they supplemented a formal education with an online course, or otherwise taught themselves.

University degrees – although useful in many respect, such as teaching the dry theoretical aspects that are important, but dull – often fail to stay current with developer trends and best practices. Into this space, ‘bootcamps’ and other platforms have stepped up to provide a platform for budding developers to learn their craft.

But, are we really convinced that that will be enough to land the dream development job? We caught up with a now delivery driver turned Head of Development to share his advice on teaching yourself to code - what you should and shouldn’t do to get ahead. 

Learning to Code? How Much Time do You Need to Put In?

As a tech recruitment consultancy, we meet a lot of different candidates from an incredibly diverse range of backgrounds - including self taught developers who are amongst some of the most passionate individuals we’ve worked with (we’ve had self-taught developers who were at risk of arthritis in their fingers from putting so much time into development). Although that’s a rather extreme example of the amount of time and effort on show from self-taught developers, high levels of work are commonplace as they often have to juggle multiple other jobs and responsibilities. 

Sam Saunders is the  IT Manager & Systems Administrator at mobile healthcare solutions company siHealth. A self-taught developer and IT professional, Sam started learning to code while working as a full-time delivery driver in London. He used his evening and weekends to study and build up a portfolio from a few projects he managed to win. Now in a hiring position, Sam has a rather unique perspective on self-teaching developers.

“I'd say sort of a year so part time chipping away at to, to learn and to basically make a few projects and for myself to get sort of portfolio going.”

Tips on Finding A Development Job when you’re Self Taught

There are plenty of routes into a development career, but few have gained as much traction as the self-taught route. Although this route may seem rather straightforward - complete the bootcamp, learn all you can and start applying - there’s more to it. Because, much like a degree, the self-teaching part will give you the nuts and bolts of what you need to do, but it won’t tell you everything else you need to be a successful developer. 

We sat down with Sam to discuss his thoughts on what it takes to become a successful self-taught developer. 

Become a ‘T-Shaped’ Developer

Developers often specialise in a single language - and this is the recommended approach, but some developers take this a bit too literally. Becoming a ‘t-shaped’ professional means having that specialism without compromising your breadth of knowledge. Not only do alot of these languages have the same underlying principles (meaning if you do the heavy lifting in one you’ll likely have an easier time picking up another) but a hiring manager will want to see excellence in one area over average capability in a few. 

 For example, you might focus on one systems programming language like C++ but also branch out into functional languages like Scala and other frameworks. 

“I find a lot of developers nowadays try to be the master of everything and it will get quite confusing, quite a lot of things overlap. But also be aware that you’re always going to be asked to veer away from your specialism.”

Seek Out A Mentor

Mentoring is an incredibly rewarding experience for both mentor and mentee. Not only do they help you brush up on your technical skills but they can also coach you in the less tangible skills needed to be successful. When you’re teaching yourself to code, the communication, collaboration and guidance offered by a senior mentor is something often missed. 

“If you haven't got a mentor and you’re taking on projects, you are literally on your own. It can be quite difficult and daunting.”

The good news is that you don’t need to be in a company to benefit from mentorship. There are tonnes of technical communities out there that are willing to often advice, to coach and to collaborate. You won’t benefit from a specific mentorship programme but you will be able to pick up the skills you’d otherwise neglect while teaching yourself to code.

Find Your Tribe, and Grow Together

As well as looking for direct mentorship, these communities are a great place to find individuals on the same level as you. People you can learn from, learn with and, in some cases, compete against in the same way you might with team mates and university students. 

This tribe mentality is something that Sam feels he missed out on more than anything while he was self-teaching. 

“I think I also missed that on the sort of interaction with like minded people. When you’re doing a degree, for example, you’re surrounded by like-minded people who you can just talk to, compete with and help guide. Not meeting those people and not sharing that knowledge can be a set back.”

Learn from Rejections

When you’re going it alone, it can be especially demoralising to receive rejections. With no guidance on where to go next or just someone to share frustrations with, it can all become just a little bit too much. 

That’s why it’s especially important for those self-teaching to reflect on rejections as much as possible. 

“Yeah, I did get quite a lot of rejections initially. And but I felt every rejection, you take something away from it, you realize why they rejected you, maybe you didn't know about a certain thing. So I'd go home, I'd scratch up on those things, and then keep applying elsewhere. And yet just kept at it.”

Don’t be afraid to chase down feedback either. This can be difficult, but there is so much value in it. We advise connecting with your hiring managers on LinkedIn as sometimes HR can be quite unresponsive to unsuccessful candidates. Hiring Managers, especially if they’re technical, will more times than not jump at the chance to help a fellow developer.

Work on Your SoftSkills Too

Active empathy, collaboration and confidence.

These skills are all invaluable for a developer looking to progress in their career. Unfortunately, they’re also hard to develop without having a team of like-minded professionals around you. 

Before even considering the workplace, those in degrees will be surrounded by students who support, uplift and compete with each other. These connections often go on to be the most valuable members of a developers network.

For a self-taught developer, who by the very nature of self-teaching will spend time working alone, it’s all the more important you reach out into communities and find other developers. Facing the same challenges, you’ll no doubt find it easy to band together. From there, you’ll be able to work on the softskills employers so desperately need. 

Speakers:

Dimitri L. - Head of DevOps at LoveHolidays

Christo Olivier - Independent Solutions Architect 

Andy Norton - Software Development Manager at Footasylum 

Extracts:

Andy on Remote Team Management: 

So my tip is really just been around how can we still be effective in solving business problems and a lot of it is just getting people to talk to other people, like, the amount of conversations I have and i'm like: if you actually spoke to them, if you ask them what problem we got, you know, it's just getting people to talk. And I think it's quite a nice level of working from home because you developers don't always like to speak to people. They like speaking to developers. So you forced them into a situation where they're gonna have to actually have conversations and everyone's in the same situation.

Christo on Paying Technical Debt of Not Being Remote

The other thing that comes with that is I think a lot of companies are now starting to pay the technical debt. And this may be called the organizational debt of relying on the interpersonal relationship of, I could just get up and go to so and so's desk and ask them what's going on in this particular area instead of actually, having done the work to put the documentation in place so that someone can do it in an in an offline fashion or an asynchronous fashion.

Dimitri on Realigning Priorities 

We seem to be able to tackle ever larger and ever more important pieces of work where, in the past, you were in a distracted state of the office environment where you are reactive rather than proactive. You're just there to keep the ship afloat and get through the day. With a complete move to the remote work across the entire company, I can see it as a shift not just my team or not just acknowledge across the board. We as a company tackling much larger and more difficult problems that will help us to align with a true north star and solve really interesting and difficult challenges and it's something I'm really excited about.

Speakers

Michael Jones - (Accredited Clinical Coder) Northern Care alliance 

Carolyn Cooper - (Head of Clinical Analytics and Clinical Coding) Guys and St Thomas

Gareth Jones - (Clinical Coding Improvement Programme Manager) Manchester Foundation Trust

Michael Bond - (Clinical Informatics Manager) NHS Digital

Extracts

Michael Jones on Getting to the Auto-Coding Stage:

To get to that stage where you can even begin to implement even very simple mapping of terminology to classification codes, there's a lot of a lot of work that needs to be done in establishing the correct systems, making sure they're being used appropriately. I mean, I think we'd all like to think that clinicians will enter the correct terminology, and record information to the level of granularity, perhaps that we would require for reporting and information standards. But I think there's a lot of education to be done of the clinical workforce as well around the use of terminologies and the importance and the role that they play. So I think, I think getting to the stage where even, you know, a basic summary, you know, auto coded, would be available, I think, you know, to assure that to have that quality-assured, and to get to that point, I think with a lot of groundwork still to be done. So, you know, in terms of so see Where it is along with the future? It's definitely the direction of travel or, you know, are we going to arrive there in the next five years in the next 10 years? I mean, it's going to be a very gradual process and you know, it's going to depend on a much larger national strategy really to get Sno med out there and implemented across providers, you know, having, you know, electronic systems in place.

Carolyn Cooper on Soft Skills Needed to be a Coder

That facilitator role. I think we've been very good at training coders in coding rules and national standards. But those kinds of soft skills about how to engage a clinician, how to get a clinician to talk about data, how to get them to understand that data. So there is a whole, a whole process written on data grief, is you go to a room of clinicians, the first thing you're going to put a slide up there is say and say, this is your activity. And the first thing we're going to say is No, it's not. And you and you've got to take them through that data grief of No, this isn't our data or let's have a look at it. Or it could be Oh, and then you realize then that you kind of get to this acceptance stage later on all you understand why it's different, right? It's not what they expect. And that whole process is is a whole new world for a lot of coders

Gareth Jones on Digital Tools for Clinical Engagement

Clinical engagement can be facilitated more effectively by digital solutions in that you can reach more people. And in a much more scalable way you can do a Microsoft Teams event that people who are working from home who sat in clinic who were sat on award can contribute into. But I think that the underlying the underlying kind of mechanism for engagement in the first instance is transparency of the data. And I don't think that's been changed by the pandemic period. I think it's transparency of the data. Let clinicians actually see the job of work that the coders are doing and what that tells them about their services because they may experience the vast majority of times that clinicians have felt compelled to work with coding is when nobody else can tell them what their care looks like. They can describe it anecdotally but actually, short of doing a clinical audit across 500 episodes of care which is just not really a viable option, and is by its very nature potentially viewed as skewed, because the people who are doing the audit are the people who want the outcome that they want. I think coded data is a shortcut to that. And the thing that I often use as a, as a carrot to, to the, to the clinicians is to say, you know what, that 500 episode order that you want to do, that's going to take three registrar's six months of their rotation today, you can short circuit that by getting all the coded data for a particular type of patient for the last three years. And actually at a macro level, you can have an overview that starts to tell you the areas that your key lines of inquiry that you then need to potentially do that case now audit. So in terms of clinical engagement, my view is that data, wielding the value of that data and demonstrating the value of that data Be in a digital forum or be in a face to face kind of way when social distancing isn't as much of an issue hopefully in the future. I think ultimately, the basis upon which you build it is what determines how successful you are.

Michael Bond on Auto Coding

By its very nature coding is looking at the Gestalt of the record of the episode from start to finish. It's it's a, it's looking at the whole, the whole completed episode, and offering up a classification for it. So, in my view, I think this is where there's a requirement for very structured very detailed records in terminology, which is an argument, I would say for uptake of of using Sno med more fully. And then to use pattern matching, artificial intelligence, what augmented intelligence, whatever, as a method then of quotes unquote autocoding. To to offer at least a first pass assessment of what you can glean from the record, and I'm absolutely adamant because a lot of I've worked with a lot of coders over the years and they look at me and they say, Yeah, but that will do that, too. job and I said, No it won't because you are absolutely valuable in honing that mechanism for pattern matching, and for providing audit and incentive for people to actually put the terminology in the records in the first place.

The Speakers

Chris Davies – Interim Transformation/Turnaround Director – NHS

Iain Gould-  Senior Programme Manager - NHS Digital

Adam Igra - Innovation Programme Director - Royal Brompton & Harefield

Peter Bradbury - Programme manager - Frimley Health Trust

The Topics

·    How do we carry on maintaining momentum for change given exhaustion of last few months and also people working from home or in different locations?

·    What are people's focuses eg non face to face outpatients, admission avoidance, elective throughput given different infection control standards and size of waiting lists?

·    Now that we are coming through Covid-19 phase 1 and Hospitals are getting back to normal, what are the biggest challenges facing you with current Programmes and Projects?

·    The impact of COVID-19 on your organisation? and how have you managed the challenges and how has it impacted your digital roadmap going forward?

·    Why don’t people use the NAO best practice programme governance? and also the Clinical Reference Group (CRG), which mandated for all Trusts some years ago?

What does the future of the workspace look like? Are hiring geographies and 'patches' a thing of the past? How do you assure quality during remote assessments and how do you drive culture and engagement while working with remote development teams?

We brought together several leaders in the software development space to discuss all of these and much, much more.

About The Speakers 

Information about those joining us today.

Nigel Cannings - Founder and CTO at Intelligent Voice Ltd

With over 25 years' experience in both Law and Technology, Nigel is the Founder of Intelligent Voice Ltd and a pioneer in all things voice. A regular speaker at industry events not limited to NVIDIA, IBM, HPE and AI Financial Summits.

Intelligent Voice uses speech recognition technology to capture calls, convert them into text and then automatically send the transcript (along with the original voice file) to the user’s inbox, as well as provide complex analytic capabilities.

Mark Bursnall - Head of Software Development at PCMS Group

As Head of Software Development at PCMS Mark is responsible for the operational and strategic management of the Software Development group.With a strong technical background and passion for Agile methodologies, Mark successfully coach customer facing and Core Product teams to deliver in a Product centric manner with a focus on quality employing Scrum and Kanban. His current focus is on scaling agile engineering methods throughout the enterprise and DevOps.

Dragos Haluca - Software Development Manager at Telappliant

Skilled in leading complex business and technical and operations teams on a global scale, Dragos has led teams at technology giants Amazon and Oracle

Extracts from the Conversation:

A few notable extracts from a very insightful conversation:

Nigel on the future of the traditional workspace 

Our entire organization has been out of the office since the 23rd of March.

And we've managed to maintain the culture through that so I can probably start to bring some of these people on retainer into the organization and start to work with them and and what because what really got me thinking about this was was Andy and I were having a conversation about recruitment and You know, he said, where are they going to be based on like, you know, who cares, you know, And yeah, he's his company is still organized along geographical

lines so I can only deal with the guy from Central London new recruits people in central London or the guy who works at Manchester.

But what I'm thinking is actually I don't care anymore. What I want is, is the right talent for my organization.

Because I don't think we're going back. I mean, I'd be really interested to hear you guys again but I I don't think that we will ever go back as a software development company to the kind of office environment that we used to work in before. I'm really interested in what you guys are thinking about that.

Mark on Emotional Wellbeing while remote: 

In an office environment, you can observe people's body language and their behaviour during the course of the working day but on a call, people can put on whatever front they want for a short period of time.

And, you know, more often than not, you can ask people to put the video on. But if they don't want they can opt-out of that.

To your point, it’s a question of how do we Maintain the wellbeing of staff and spot those early tells that somebody might have been having a challenge about their professional life, or their home life or whatever it may be and support them for a period of time effectively at a distance.

Dragos on Quality Assurance in Software Development Hiring

I have my own interview style and Test for quality assurance. But there is a specific manner, especially in here. They're designed for, you know, the telecom business or the web applications are the remote support, so they're not tricky, but we had the same people that just looked at it and It routes out the people that have a CV, but you cannot necessarily back it up with that experience, especially in software development.

I guess it's easier than other maybe industries where you can test those skills. And see if they are up to, you know, did you actually sit in an office for 10 years and did something or not.

And it doesn't reflect in in Europe, you know, practical application and as well. You're looking for a certain level of creativity and software development.

There's no single solution.

The Speakers:

David Newey – CIO at The Royal Marsden

Nicola Heywood - Alexander – Contract NHS CIO

Kuldip Sandhu – Interim CIO/Head of Technology

The Topics: 

• As a CIO what strategies are we adapting to address the needs and expectations of younger generations and what behaviours do our organisations exhibit that stifles there enthusiasm, and creativity?
• What is the difference between 'business transformation' and 'digital transformation'?
• Are terms such as co-design, human-centred design, UXD still buzzwords in the world of HealthTech?
• As we embrace the thinking of Topol and look to empower people are we adopting UX Strategies in Digital Healthcare?
• While healthcare is ultimately about people, are we ready and sufficiently skilled to excel in this area?

The Speakers:

• Richard Kavanagh - Product Manager for Interoperability – Graphnet Health
• Ian Townend – Lead Architect - NHSX
• Graham Taylor - Associate Director for Integration - Surrey & Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

The Topics: 

• The challenge for me re-interop isn't the technical issues, but the personal issues, how do we overcome those issues?
• How do we share information across systems in Health and Social Care so that clinicians and non-clinicians in A&E can have the full picture of a patients home situation?
• Notwithstanding the national interoperability projects being led by NHSX & NHSD – what can be done to accelerate collaborative development of interoperability solutions across the wider care system to cater for local initiatives?
• What do you providers and suppliers thing that we could do more of in the centre that that would help us get to partly faster uptake, but also a better-integrated community?

Do You Need a Degree to Have A Career in Tech?

For a long time, degrees have been a hallmark of a candidate's commitment to a field and their excellence in that subject. In tech, it’s no different, with many job specs still listing a degree as a requirement for consideration.

But according to the HackerRank 2020 Developer Skills Report, the dial is moving on education and tech. Their report, which featured over 116,000 developers from 162 countries, revealed that a third of hiring managers have hired a developer who has learned their skills purely from bootcamp software and other sites like YouTube. 

We spoke to a few developers and tech leaders on their route into technology, the importance of a degree in technical fields and advice for those who might be looking to break into tech with or without a degree.

Do You Need a Degree to Start a Tech Career? 

Sam Saunders is the  IT Manager & Systems Administrator at mobile healthcare solutions company siHealth. A self-taught developer and IT professional, Sam started learning to code while working as a full-time delivery driver in London. He used his evening and weekends to study and build up a portfolio from a few projects he managed to win. Now in a hiring position, Sam has a rather unique perspective on the importance of a degree when looking for technical talent. 

“I think it's definitely helpful to have a degree in tech because a good degree tends to touch upon all the areas you’ll need to know about.”

This framework, or strict curriculum, that many computer science degrees come with is where the limitations of degrees start to appear. Whereas someone who learns while working other jobs may pick up skills like active empathy, time management and general business maturity, those studying towards degrees are learning only what is set in the curriculum. 

“Things like scope changes and deadlines shifting - those things I was dealing with everyday.”

We’ve worked with many junior and entry-level candidates who have managed to secure positions without degrees. A strong portfolio, commitment to learning and development and a strong CV all contribute to the decision to hire - but for more senior positions, we see fewer roles filled without higher education. 

Steve Donchie is the Director of Global Security Operations at Aegon. For Steve, degrees are generally expected for senior-level roles, but for other roles, they could be seen as advantageous but not required. 

“If I was looking for my replacement - i’d be looking for a degree.”

Why Are Degrees Important for Tech Positions?

Steve, who at the time of writing was working on filling analyst positions, believes the value of a degree doesn’t necessarily lie in the subject itself but rather in the skills a student picks up while studying. 

“It's more about the disciplines that you learn, how to plan and how to communicate.”

When people consider the value of going to university they usually go to the breadth of experience available. An often undervalued benefit however, is the availability of like-minded individuals. Like-minded individuals who may well go on to be some of the best connections you’ll make in the world of work - something Sam feels he missed out on. 

“I think I also missed that interaction with like minded people. These are people you work with everyday - people you learn, grow and compete with and it’s a safe, educational space to do all this before you go into the workplace which has less safety nets.” 

 

Does it Have to be A Computer Science Degree?

If you were to look at the careers of the most successful people in technology you might well find some surprises in the education sector. With the broadening of technology to include niches like cybersecurity, data and analysis - you can find your way into technology from almost any degree. 

Computer Science has, for a long time, been listed as one of the UK’s most popular undergraduate degrees. Most recently, however, courses and degrees focusing on cybersecurity have recently started to become more popular with some offering apprenticeships with organisations taking an advanced position on security.

Surely, given the option, a student fixed on entering the world of cybersecurity would be better getting a cybersecurity degree? Well, that might not always be the case as Matthew Bryant, CISO at Monese, puts it:

“Security is about understanding how to break things, understanding what happens when things go wrong. And so it can be difficult for somebody to do a degree or take a course in security and then immediately understand how weaknesses exist in complex IT systems. Experience is essential.”

Some of the most talented and distinguished technical security people on the market right now have had long careers as software engineers and developers and bring with them lived experiences of testing software and learning it inside out. 

Likewise, when it comes to data and the skills that organisations look for in their data analysts, we see a lot of candidates coming from a science background where they will have demonstrated the core, functional skills (deep analysis, writing insightful reports) that contribute towards being a success in that role. 

To get around this lack of experience that highly specialised degrees provide, ‘transition classes’ and ‘graduate apprenticeship’ programmes are picking up steam. These programmes, which allow a student to apply the lessons they learn in a real-life, working scenario, are backed by massive companies. 

Building the Cybersecurity Graduate Apprenticeship

Steve, in addition to operating as the Director of Global Security Operations  at Aegon, works closely with Napier University to utilise  the Cybersecurity Graduate Apprenticeship. Working closely with university staff, Steve has worked to get the benefits from the  course that addresses one of his primary concerns with university graduates: their business acumen.

“One of the gaps I see is great if you're bringing people in, particularly and I see this more in the role that I'm doing now, when you're bringing people in who may have worked in managed service security providers. They might have technical skills, but what they lack is that blend of technical and understanding what an organization is like and how the organization works, what the expectations are, or some of the non technical skills.” 

For Aegon, It's about developing people towards the skills to make building relationships easy and sharing information effectively. As a result, the first year of a four year is mainly  focused on generic business operations activity. From that basis they progress on to more specific security topics.

Doing one day a week in the classroom, and four days a week working at Aegon graduates come out with a degree in cybersecurity and four years experience of being part of an information security and financial services company. After that, they come in with an entry-level salary and clear route of progression through Aegon, a company that is benefitting from what can only be described as a ‘fresh perspective’ on a sector (cybersecurity) that can have a bit of a stale reputation.

"Fresher people who are spending some time in the classroom and being taught and they bring these questions back to the team. They've questioned the way things are being done. Why are they being done that way? and that in turn can make for the more experienced people maybe step back and think: ‘Well, actually, you know what, that's a good point. Why are we doing this way? Why shouldn't we be looking at it?’

Finding a Tech Job Without a Degree

Most companies' hiring policy will favour mindset – attitude and capacity to learn – over qualifications, or even work experience. The primary goal at interview is to find the people who will love their job, have the aptitude to gain the appropriate skills and the motivation to develop their own careers.

With the sheer amount of knowledge out there, in the form of YouTube videos and coding boot camps, you can kick-start your technology career from your sofa - but so can everyone else. Finding a job in tech is about mastery and commitment, something that Sam prioritised as he began to receive rejections from tech companies after interviews. 

“I would get rejections and press them for feedback. I used that feedback as a list of skills I needed to master for the next round of applications.”

Rather than letting the disappointment get the better of him, Sam opted to double down on the feedback and turn it into his next learning. From there, Sam was able to find his Niche while maintaining a broad understanding of most frameworks and languages. 

“I think it's more of just picking your niche and mastering that particular thing. So if you want to be a Python developer, like then learn the language inside and out and make sure you know, what you’re talking about when it comes to language, I find a lot of developers nowadays try to be the master of everything and it will get quite confusing, quite a lot of things overlap.”

The Future of Tech Education

Some of us can look back on our time in education and pinpoint the precise moment they were inspired to go into the career they find themselves in now. 

The fact remains that education has a tremendous effect on who we are as people and if we aren’t giving technology a fair representation at this level than we likely aren’t going to see a diverse range of candidates at the business end. 

Sam, who’s Daughter is currently going through school, can see the curriculum broadening every day. 

“She's been learning coding at school with stuff like scratch, basic coding or just coding a small game. It's very simple, but the logic is there, and I can see how they're still teaching how things like variables and loops are working, which is great because that definitely wasn't available when I was younger.”

Certainly, if you’re having any conversations about the future of tech you’d be hard-pressed to leave out discussion on AI, automation and their role in the future of the tech job market. 

Kai-Fu Lee, technologist and former executive at numerous large technology companies, believes that about 50% of our jobs will, in fact, be taken over by AI and automation within the next 15 years. Accountants, factory workers, truckers, paralegals, and radiologists — just to name a few — will be confronted by a disruption akin to that faced by farmers during the industrial revolution.

Danilo McGarry is the Global Head of Automation at market fund services company Alter Domus. Danilo, an international Keynote Speaker, Author, Podcaster and recognised "Industry Thought Leader" by The Times, believes agrees with Kai. 

“I would say concentrated things like Python, but try to look at automation at some point if you're a developer because that's big.” 

But rather than forcing people down certain paths, the automated future will, in fact, put a deeper emphasis on human-to-human soft skills. 

“As a result, soft people skills are going to become super important. EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is going to be the thing that people are valuing for management in particular”

Remote Interview Tips From Remote Hiring Managers

Remote interviews, whether over the phone or video calling service, have a completely different etiquette to regular interviews. Not only do you have to think about preparing your candidate for what may be a brand new experience you also have to prepare your hiring teams.

We spoke to a few hiring managers who have expanded their teams during lock-down to see what remote interview tips they have. 

Taking Breaks During the Video Interview

Simon Lusby is the Head of Transport Planning at City Science, a tech start-up that uses software and data to help local authorities and decision-makers decarbonise cities. Over the lockdown period, Simon and City Science have been looking to expand and secure data-driven transport planning consultants, with a passion for sustainable transport and decarbonisation.

To ensure they find the best talent, they use a technical test which asks candidates to analyse transport data from a local area. The test is designed to see if the candidate can handle and understand that data while also being able to present their findings and thoughts as insights to the relevant stakeholders. This gives us a clear understanding of their analytical experience, their presentation skills and their approach to problems. Competency questions then follow this presentation.

Despite giving the candidate a week to prepare for the interview, it’s still a two-stage interview over the video call. For that reason, Simon and his team at City Science include a 15-minute break between the presentation and competencies where both candidate and the interview panel can turn off their camera and microphone, gather their thoughts and catch their breath (use facilities etc.). This is also where we say goodbye to most of the interview panel and return with just the hiring manager and an HR rep. 

“During a normal office-based interview we would have a break to offer the candidate water etc, so we try to replicate that without it being awkward just leaving the candidate online, or the candidate feeling that they can’t take a break. This way, the distance benefits both parties who can now gather their thoughts and refill their water.”

Using Slack To Allocate Questions

Communication between hiring managers can be difficult during the interview. Asking the same question twice or general mix-ups can contribute to bad candidate experience. The distance afforded by the remote interviews means hiring managers can use software like Slack more seamlessly, without disrupting the flow of the candidate. 

“one of the benefits is we have slack open up as well during the presentation, which is our messenger system. So I and the other interviewers can raise points in slack that I might have missed, for example.”

Look after your surroundings.

Usually, all you have to worry about as a candidate is how you look - and that’s stressful enough. Now, however, you have to worry about what your backdrop looks like. A cluttered backdrop will likely give the wrong impression and, as Simon explains, the video will be the main source of communication with many clients in the future.

“This is it. This video interview will be how they engage going forward. And what we see behind them, how they dress and how they interact now is giving us an insight into how they’re going to engage with clients. So, they need to be approaching this interview as if they are City Science and we are the clients.” 

Of course, the same goes for hiring managers too - a cluttered backdrop will only serve as a distraction for the candidate who is already under a lot of pressure.

Develop a Structure

Katharine Rooney is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Mimecast. Having recently joined Mimecast herself, Katharine has some first-hand experience to consider and take into wider discussions about the overall candidate experience. 

For Katharine, this has resulted in a more even and timely approach to communication and a better connection between internal teams, which will have positive effects on the candidate experience. 

“We all know that when you start a new organization, you do feel slightly on the backfoot and normally just give it time to get to know your new colleagues and working environment. But if you're not going into an office, you need help with how do you do that."

All of a sudden, the experience for both hiring managers and candidates has changed. New sets of tools and ways of working, brought in to make up the distance between candidate and hiring manager, requires new mindsets to use effectively and be as successful as you can. For Katharine and Mimecast, it’s as much about supporting the hiring manager as it is the candidate.

“We ask them throughout their first week, at the end of every  day, how's it gone? Because again, we're conscious it's a different experience and by keeping  high touch points with them we can learn and continue to evolve the support and improve the overall experience.”