Amber Pocklington - Lloyds Banking Group

Having achieved a Distinction in her Apprenticeship and been Awarded a CMI Outstanding Apprentice 2022, we asked Amber for her experience on the apprenticeship.

Since aged 11, I was a young carer for my mother with only dreams of going to University. I was the first in my family to go to University and was offered a Lloyds Banking Group social mobility scholarship which allowed me to do so. Having graduated with a first-class undergraduate degree in English Literature in 2019, I joined Lloyds Banking Group the same year on the Enterprise Leadership Graduate Scheme in Audit. Being offered the opportunity to complete a Senior Leader Apprenticeship in Management for Future Leaders in 2020 was an opportunity of a lifetime for me and a challenge, having never studied business before.

I started a non-profit social enterprise ‘Hip Hop to Help’ in 2017, providing free dance classes to all with an optional donation to charity, so have a passion for learning about leadership as well as making a positive impact in society (but didn’t really know much about business!) I have since competed for the UK in America Dance Worlds in April 2022 and led dance teams. This was further inspiration for doing the apprenticeship to develop leadership skills.

I started on the apprenticeship in November 2020, having just successfully secured and started my first Team Manager Role in Commercial Banking. My career progression demonstrates the impact the apprenticeship has had on me. In March 2021, six months into the apprenticeship, I was promoted off the graduate scheme early into a permanent colleague role as Client Classification Manager in the Client Classification Team and Team Manager of Offboarding. Within another eight months, in December 2021, I was then promoted again to Business Support Manager to the Director of Client Service Delivery, becoming a part of the Senior Leadership Team and working directly with the Senior Leader of the function. The apprenticeship aided me in achieving this.

As a leader, my aim is to make a positive impact and continue to develop personally and professionally to be at my best for myself and others. Henley Business School and the CMI have been excellent in supporting me in achieving this. Education is so powerful, and I will never stop learning. I have utilised the CMI tools online, such as Qualification Support was helpful in bringing to life further models relevant to modules, and I have recently used the ‘Financial Forecasting’ resources to understand the purpose and requirements having just gone through my first round of forecasting in LBG in my new role. Reading articles such as ‘Leadership Lessons in Resilience’ in the Personal Development Resources and hearing from the CMI CEO Ann Francke was helpful to me in challenging times were my career was progressing at pace and I was leading for the first time in a pandemic having never met colleagues face to face.

The networking aspect of the course has also been brilliant. Despite completing 90% of the course virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic which was challenging at times, I have met some wonderful friends from the programme across different organisations and the cohort has been a huge support.

It is difficult to identify one aspect of the apprenticeship that has developed my knowledge, skills and behaviours (KBS), given how many brilliant ways I have benefitted. However, my leadership skills have grown the most throughout the programme. I began having just started my first Team Leader role and was nervous about running check-ins with colleagues and managing a team of older and more experienced colleagues than me. I worked with my mentor and LM to use models and frameworks such as gambits and CHEFWIT to build my confidence. Reading back my personal development essays for the apprenticeship, I can see how far I have come in leadership. My goals were to improve my knowledge and emotional resilience, which I have achieved. I have since managed multiple teams and responsibilities and mentored many colleagues who have approached me for this reason. I have also since been hired for my new team in which two colleagues I previously managed applied for the role. Every colleague I have managed has achieved a promotion in the business, evidencing my learned skills for managing people. At the core of my leadership is putting people first and caring about other's development; something I have always been passionate about, and Henley has further helped me realise this. The feedback I received from direct reports includes, “Amber has been second to none. She builds genuine relationships, with a real willingness to support, which has had a strong positive impact on the team.”

Referencing some key benefits to the organisation, I have embedded new processes into teams, such as a large-scale Anti-Money Laundering process. I have introduced my learning of agile methodology to teams to support colleagues in managing their workloads better with Kanban boards and endeavour to give colleagues one check-in per week for development. I have worked with a vast range of stakeholders across the Group and managed change and innovation through leading on Continuous Improvement, which achieved the silver path to gold status through embedding CI forums, CI leads and processes for colleagues to submit and action continuous improvement ideas. These all achieved great feedback. I have also contributed to the strategic aims of the business function by designing SLT strategy days and being a Values Influencer for LBG. Since being promoted, I have used my learning to set clear goals for the central team, such as improving SLT meetings with leadership learning, having an I&D focus in strategy and building inclusive workplace scores in colleague engagement, and increasing colleague CI accreditations to achieve wider impact across the business.

Furthermore, linking to KBS on the programme, in terms of business management, I have been able to work effectively with finance to complete budgeting management and forecasts are given my financial management learning to achieve a forecast at year-end of below budget for a good business position. I have recently taken on looking after the headcount and recruitment of a function of 500 colleagues, as well as focusing on the Risk and Conduct culture of the function by building a Conduct plan with key stakeholders, born out of my research from the Risk Management module on my apprenticeship.

Regarding corporate responsibility and ethics, I have been able to make an impact on the community by leading Financial Capability sessions for students and leading a team of 50 volunteers to do so to develop financial understanding across the UK in deprived areas. I have also started and embedded a ‘Peer 2 Peer Mentoring Programme’ to support colleagues in opening up to have conversations on ethnicity and culture, with over 40 colleagues signed up, contributing to the Race Action Plan. I designed and wrote the I&D communications, and supported leading the Commercial Banking Delivery I&D Forum. I am also designing Internships for students and have volunteered at schools to discuss careers in finance and personal development.

In addition, my Work Based Project evidences how I have used all of my experience with the Apprenticeship to make a greater impact throught the delivery of this. I am writing my project on ‘Achieving Operational Excellence: Optimising the Commercial Client Offboarding Journey through Removing the Relationship Manager From the Process.’ This project builds on my Final Management Project research through aiming to assess the feasibility of and embed one of the suggestions to optimise the Commercial Client Offboarding Journey. The project will align to the #OneDelivery Priorities of Client Service Delivery as below, in addition to the new Group strategy of Grow, Focus and Change. By achieving operational excellence in the Client Offboarding Team, this will reduce the costs for the business of contractor resource and ensure FTE is productive, removing waste from the process. In addition, from a leadership perspective, colleagues in the Client Offboarding Team will feel more empowered, contributing to colleague engagement. Finally, RM’s will have more capacity to focus on clients and generating profit, leading to better stakeholder relationships and meeting growth targets. I started the SLMDA journey as a Team Manager in Client Offboarding and have been supporting the team in various capacities since. Returning to the Client Offboarding team to deliver this project to demonstrate all of my learnings on the SLMDA journey to implement and manage change.

Being an apprentice has been a fantastic experience, and the support of my Line Managers has been second to none. Gary Indrakumar built-in weekly check-ins for my development, and gave me opportunities to meet the skills required, meaning I had met 72 of the 92 apprentice skills within a year of the apprenticeship. Gary's trust in me enabled me to grow and develop as a leader.

Having transitioned to a new Line Manager with my recent promotion, I have had the opportunity to learn from a Senior Leader Director about leadership. My knowledge of managerial skills such as financial forecasting and strategy, embedding values and visions, effective decision making and influencing, amongst many others such as recruitment and headcount, has grown immensely, coupled with the module learning has allowed me to demonstrate putting theory into practice.

Working full-time in a role whilst studying is no easy task. However, it has been absolutely worth it. My advice to anybody considering doing an Apprenticeship would be to say YES! The difference in my career and personal growth once I started my learning was incredible, and I could understand so much more in my role than I otherwise would due to the resources and modules and further materials available.

Top tip: One of the key skills required is organisation, and you need the grit to persevere and reap the rewards, but resilience in the form of taking breaks when needed is also important. I found that having my own timetable for studying was helpful, in staying on top of deadlines and requirements amongst work. In addition, I started ‘Amber in Banking’ to give tips to others on social media for how to study and work in banking, and hopefully inspire people. Also, building confidence and tackling ‘imposter syndrome’ has been a challenge for me, so utilising the learning from the Apprenticeship to do this grounded in knowledge in a safe space has been valuable.