Spotlight on Transferable Skills | Rory McIntyre, NatWest Group

From customer services to back office, soft skills are always key

 As the world of sport gets ready for the annual Football January transfer window, professionals up and down the UK are looking at how they can best leverage their transferable skills, to hopefully get that big move they’ve been dreaming of. My name is Rory McIntyre and I’ve spent the last few years working in several workforce planning roles at NatWest Group. A lot of my stakeholders work in some of NatWest’s Technology franchises so I’m regularly in conversations about what skills are required to meet the demands of each business area. But despite the exponential rate of Technology advances and subsequent changes in skills, the requirement for soft transferable skills is still as high as ever.

 I started my career in the public sector for a local council working in a customer service contact centre where I provided support for multiple local government services like council tax, housing, benefits, and licencing. This role was a great start for me as I was speaking to customers each day face to face about various issues. It was an extremely fast paced environment, and I quickly became a subject matter expert on a diverse list of topics. This experience is what then led me onto my first role for NatWest Group as an outbound telephony agent in a mortgage call centre. The environment was just as fast paced as my council role, but the nature of outbound calling and targets was difficult for me to adjust to. Thankfully I had a strong work ethic and fantastic support from my team leaders, so I was able to eventually become a top performer. I was ultimately promoted out of the call centre to my first workforce planning role within mortgages where I managed hiring and trading stats for the wider business, but the approach to work I had enhanced in the call centre stayed with me and ensured I was successful moving forward. Truthfully, as my career has progressed and I’ve been fortunate to climb the ladder, I’ve never had a job as difficult or as fast paced as outbound telephony. I have a huge amount of respect for contact centre workers and I feel they are often undervalued for the role they play.

 The transition from customer service roles to back-office business management roles was a definite culture change, but this brings me back to transferable skills and how they can assist you moving forward. I’ve never lost the work ethic or that desire to make lasting relationships with customers. My customers are now all internal stakeholders, but this just gives me an opportunity to still have that ‘sales’ style approach in my internal interactions. This has just continued as I’ve progressed through different workforce planning roles to my current role where I support strategies across the entire organisation at NatWest Group. The problem solving that I used to apply to customer interactions has now been pivoted to support business challenges I face each day. And the empathy that used to drive me to deliver great results for external customers, now drives me to ensure I consistently deliver a high standard of work to meet the needs of my internal customers. The pace I used to work at in customer facing roles is nowhere near the more calculated approach to my work these days but when senior executives need something ad hoc to be done at the drop of a hat, or there’s a metaphorical fire that needs to be put out, the ability to work quickly to resolve issues and deliver outcomes is an undervalued attribute that will always be handy no matter where your career takes you.

 A large part of my current role involves working on workforce planning software in an agile environment. At first, this was completely alien to me, but thankfully NatWest Group has a strong learning culture throughout the organisation, and I was able to attend onsite training to support me to learn more about agile ways of working. Once I understood the principles however, I quickly realised my experience of fast paced environments aligned to agile working. I read years ago (and the source has long been forgotten) that organisations “have always worked agile, it’s just that it was previously only reserved for a crisis”. I think that’s a great phrase to help de-bunk concerns about working in an agile environment. I didn’t know it when I first encountered sprints, scrums, and different agile ceremonies, but I actually had all the skills that would allow me to be successful working in that manner.

 Now, this is all easy for me to say in retrospect when I’ve been able to identify how the skills I refined in the early stages of my career have helped me advance in my career, but it’s often difficult for people to identify what transferable skills will support them to progressing upwards in their career or starting in a new industry altogether. My advice in overcoming this unknown would be to take a step back from your work and try categorising what you’re working on at a high level. When I moved from customer services to a back office role, it was problem solving, customer service, teamwork, and empathy. For you the starting place or destination might be different, and the skills might be leadership, communication, time management, or something else entirely. The demand for people who have these skills will never leave the financial services industry, or any industry for that matter. If you’re interested in it, by all means learn to code in Java or learn to design dashboards in Tableau or sit a mortgage advice qualification, but if it’s not your cup of tea, don’t feel you need to have a defined skillset like this to advance your career. Trust me, I work in workforce planning and see the data behind hiring demands!