Darren Houston has passed a level three management course and is already looking to move up to the next qualification.
Darren, who is Night Shift Senior Manager in the Armitage plant, has successfully completed the NVQ Level Three in Management with the Institute of Leadership and Management.
The course involved demonstrating competence against a wide range of criteria in some core modules and optional ones which were chosen as they were relevant to Darren’s role.
In one of the modules, he undertook a project to try to make an improvement to a process and show the potential cost savings to the business. This project was successful and the new process is now being used every day.
Darren said: “I feel that that this course has enabled me to understand and put into context a lot of the things I was doing in my everyday role, such as coaching people in the workplace to try and improve performance, understanding where my strengths and weaknesses were and the way in which I manage people.
“I also had to give a presentation through PowerPoint to a room of people with a Q and A afterwards which I had never done before and was very nerve-wracking. However, this gave me the experience and knowledge to perform a presentation to the site recruitment officer and plant leader when I applied for my current role as senior nights manager. The insight gave me more confidence when preparing the presentation I had to give during my interview process.”
He continued: “Even though the current COVID-19 pandemic put me back from finishing by about six months I believe it has been a very worthwhile two-and-a-half years and I am very pleased to have passed this qualification. I am hopefully looking to move on to the next level now so that I can keep on improving.
“The course was funded by the company who also gave me support to attend monthly lectures and 20% of the job training to complete my necessary training needs.
“However, it was a very work intensive course with regards to assignments in which quite a bit had to be done in my own time.
“There wasn’t any other way around that but it was a good test of balancing the work with home life and as my wife hasn’t divorced me I must have done OK with that!”