Executive Assistant and Business Manager
Magrabi Retail
Total years of experience :16 years, 5 Months
Providing direct support to the CEO, CFO and COO, and also the wider Senior Leadership team across the business estate and responsibilities.
Key Responsibilities:
• Executive support to CEO, COO and CFO in both a business and private capacity.
• Diary management and international travel arrangement.
• Visa applications and HR activities.
• Executive reporting and financial control.
• Event management.
• Secretariat for all senior leadership meetings and tracking/managing resulting action.
• Colleague communication.
• Project support.
• Store management support.
• Liaison with external business partners and vendors.
Providing direct support to the General Manager and the Middle East leadership team, across 16 countries, in the day to day management of the business and the running of the Middle East Management Centre.
Key Responsibilities:
• Diary management and international travel.
• Visa and residency applications.
• HR activities and financial control.
• Event management.
• Secretariat for senior leadership meetings and tracking/managing resulting action.
• Engaging stakeholders and colleagues through regular active communication and business enterprises.
• In addition, responsible for the day to day management of the office, including health and safety, liaising with suppliers and maintenance contractors, local authority point of contact, security regulation and international colleague relocation.
Key Achievements
• Implementation of an improved leadership meeting structure and term of reference, to allow for effective capture and transparency of agenda topics covered, and increased rigor in progressing resulting action, affecting in a 42% increase in timely action closure
Key Responsibilities
• Cost, budget, headcount and SI control, risk and governance activities, regulatory activity, records management, business continuity, all administration duties.
• Identifying appropriate efficiency savings and process enhancements.
• Project management, change air traffic control and implementation - and corresponding impact analysis, ROI tracking, benefits realisation and post implementation reviews.
• Business partnering with customer experience, finance, communications and MI teams.
• Compiling ExCo and senior steering committee reports/presentations/business cases.
• Managing consistency and delivery across teams and within the UK and international cross border jurisdictions.
• Secretariat for all Premier UK governance meetings and boards.
• Senior administrative responsibly and point of contact for all COO office enquiries and requests.
• Diary, events and leadership conference/meetings - planning, logistics and management.
• Business reporting and internal communications.
• Recruitment and graduate mentoring.
Key Achievements
• Review and implementation of a new UK and International reporting and operational governance structure.
• Design and delivery of a people capability programme, resulting in a 24% uplift in productivity and an 11 point uplift in client NPS.
• Lead project support on the business case and subsequent opening of a new relationship banking office in Dubai, including design of the regulatory and governance framework, gaining UK and UAE regulatory sign off to proceed.
• Lead project support for the launch of the Barclays mobile banking app for international clients and driving ongoing client adoption activity.
• Responsible for the cross site performance of 9 UK call centres handling the resolution of complaints and customer servicing, including; forecasting call and complaint volumes, resource planning, managing telephony performance and SLAs, mapping change and horizon risk planning to build impact analysis into planning models, managing back and front office operations, and providing business partner support to change programmes.
• Executive support to the 9 Heads of Function, influencing activity and planning through use of data and insight, to help them run the sites more effectively and improve performance and operational efficiency.
• Production of board presentations and working with finance to ensure site operation within cost and FTE budgets.
Key Achievements
• Design and delivery of a daily forecasting, capacity and planning tool, increasing accuracy from 83% - 94%, ensuring the correct intraday resource to meet customer demand.
• Creation of a virtual late night team to provide an improved out of hours service - increasing customer complaints closed within the 48 hour target window by c.100 per week.
Key Responsibilities
• Providing direct support to the Group’s Director across the business and accountabilities.
• Identifying opportunities to improve the service provided to customers, share best practice and build expertise across the Group, including close and regular liaison with industry regulators.
• Instigating and completing process reviews, producing reports, ExCo packs and business cases.
• Ownership of the Group’s half yearly complaints data return to the FCA, and external announcement of results.
• Diary management and secretariat for all leadership meetings.
• Senior administrative responsibly and point of contact for all MD office enquiries and requests.
• Lead liaison with other Group EA offices and COOs to ensure effective cross function collaboration.
• Business reporting and communications planning/compilation.
Key Achievements
• Review of the executive/CEO complaint process resulting in a reduction of errors made by 22% and an improved customer experience.
• End to end review of the half yearly FCA complaints data return, with the new model implemented receiving a green score in an independent audit review.
• Compiling the customer services annual report for the Group in 2012 and 2013, resulting in GEC sign off for inclusion in the Group’s Annual Report, for external publication.
• Defining the change agenda and programme workstream requirements to integrate the two home insurance businesses in order to combine into one multi-site operation, and mitigation of customer impact.
• Leading green belt projects to deliver uplifts in performance and removal of non-value adding processes across the two legacy businesses, whilst also achieving cost reduction and regulatory commitments.
• Design and implementation of a new colleague reward and remuneration scheme to replace the existing separate structures and reflect increasing regulatory focus on service.
• Providing green belt support on black belt projects and delivering yellow belt training and coaching.
Key Achievements
• Design support and implementation lead for the new quote system, rolled out across 3 sites to 1000+ colleagues.
• The training and mentoring of 19 yellow belt project management level colleagues, leading to their sign off and accreditation.
Key Responsibilities
• Leading a management team and support functions (training, QA and colleague reward) in delivering against performance expectations, by analysing trends in performance and identifying areas or opportunities for process improvement and/or customer delight.
• Developing the skills and capability of direct reports, observational coaching and feedback.
• Account and relationship management with internal and external partners, identifying opportunities to develop and expand existing business and customer relationships.
• Owning and delivering the call centre culture plan to engage, empower and motivate colleagues.
• Working as part of the senior management team to collectively manage and achieve business objectives.
• Recruitment and training.
Key Achievements
• Seeing an increase in the Employee Engagement Index from 71 to 82 as a result of the culture plan.
• Being the top performing unit for performance and service KPIs for 3 years consecutively.
• Leading a multi-skilling programme, delivering an improved customer journey and a headcount saving of 17 FTE.
Study of the mind and human behaviour, with modules focused on human interaction with technology.