Jill's new role at Acis has been a '˜massive learning curve'

Jill Dickson started at Acis in December last year and her role is to develop and deliver a number of volunteering, employability and skills projects working with different teams within Acis as well as external partners to make them happen.

Jill said: “I enjoy working with people and was looking for a customer facing role but in a different environment.

“I was the Managing Director of my own training company.

“I had a team of 11 staff based in Doncaster, providing education and training to young people aged 14 to 25.

“My role is completely new to the organisation.

“The role has so much potential to develop in many different ways.

“Getting to know my new colleagues and working for a different organisation, sector and a new town with our wider patch area as we work in a broader setting than just Gainsborough has been a massive learning curve, which is ongoing.

“My first few months have been hectic with creating and launching our Volunteer Bank as part of National Volunteers Week so we can capture all the volunteering activity our people undertake.

“I have been working with colleagues to deliver new activities for our customers and also developing new partnership projects.

“We provided work experience through the World of Work day that we hosted for Queen Elizabeth’s High School pupils, and a partnership project with students from Gainsborough Construction Careers College who worked with our Prime team to develop their trades skills on the job in some of our empty properties.

“We are also in the process of identifying Apprenticeship opportunities across the business.”

Jill says the next steps are to develop the offer that Acis have for its customers as part of the ‘Focus on your future’ service, and this will be fully launched later this year.

She said: “This has great potential to create services to really benefit our customers in addition to the core services that we already provide.

“I enjoy the challenge of developing and creating a new element of the business which is something I find very rewarding in addition to getting to know my new team members and our customers.”

Jill says she enjoys working in a customer facing role as she likes chatting and enjoys finding out about people and how she can help them.

She said: “Any environment where I am able to meet people and build a network of relationships whilst making a difference and helping people is important to me.”

Before coming to Acis, Jill was the Managing Director and owned her own training company.

Jill said: “Setting up my own business was probably my biggest achievement so far.

“Being an employer and business owner for 11 years when life has been a rollercoaster is something I am very proud of.”

Jill is originally from Louth and is married to Ben.

Her first job was working at an Agricultural Merchants.

Then she spent around 25 years working with young people in Community, Education and Training, of which the last 11 years she was self-employed.

Looking to the future, Jill said: “I’d love to develop and grow a team to drive forward a customer focused support service that makes a difference for our communities and continue to develop the projects that we have done so far.

“I would like to personally make a difference in Lincolnshire. Having spent most of my working life not in the county, I really like to think I am helping Lincolnshire communities.”

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