Five Minutes With…Shani Ellison

Can you tell us a little more about your role within Develop Consulting? How long have you been with the company?

Following my maternity leave I started with Develop Consulting on a part time, three-month temporary contract… three and a half years later I’m still here!

My initial role was to support the admin associated with the Productive General Practice QuickStart programme. This entailed the set up and onboarding of hundreds of practices per wave, over multiple waves per year. My role also required the tracking and monitoring of our facilitators and their delivery to practices on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis.

Following my temporary contract, I was employed full time to manage the back office support for the QuickStart programme. This required me to work very closely with the national programme lead Sajid Khan. As a result, my role developed into liaising with practices from the initial set up phase, supporting the onboarding of facilitators, escalating and disseminating key information, process adherence and status to plan to NHSE on a regular basis.

Working with Develop Consulting has allowed me to gain a huge amount of experience in a short period of time, and to build and develop multiple skills to ensure the successful delivery of a multi facet, national support programme for Primary Care.

In my current role as an Operations Coordinator, I am the key contact for practices to access the current facilitated QuickStart support, via an online platform. This provides and interactive way for the practice and its staff to progress through the modules. This involves the management, tracking, monitoring and reporting on a daily basis to show the progress and use of the system.

My role and responsibilities have evolved over the last few years inline with my skills and experience. They have adapted to fit the needs of the business and our clients, whilst navigating through the challenging times presented due to Covid.

What is your background?

Whilst working towards my NVQ Diploma at college, my first part time role was waitressing at a National Trust property. Once I completed my course, I gathered experience through various customer service/administrative roles, across various industry’s such as, Sky Digital, Health and Safety PPE, Manufacturing and Breakdown Services. Having worked with different companies with different systems and processes allowed me to be able to build knowledge and skills which I was able to transfer across to my current roles.

You work mostly in healthcare, how were the past few years and supporting the consultants?

Starting work in healthcare was a whole new experience to me as I had not worked in this sector before, hence I wasn’t aware of its current challenges. It was an extremely sharp learning curve, having to support this sector through probably its most challenging time. Due to these challenging times the needs and support of the practices was extremely intensive. As a result, the programme needed to adapt and evolve to support the requirements of NHS England. As a back-office function, we had to be agile and responsive to the needs of the programme to ensure it was delivered as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Hence, it was a really exciting time as no two weeks were the same.

The impact of these changes would ultimately affect the facilitators, hence it was my role to ensure that all facilitators had the knowledge and guidance to be able to adapt their delivery, and resolve any issues as their first point of contact. I feel we have some of the best consultants working with us both internally and as associates, as this was evident via the camaraderie, support, engagement and empathy we all showed during this challenging period.

What are your aspirations for the future?

Having to balance raising a four-year-old (going on 14) with my current work is challenging, but is also extremely rewarding with the support I receive from Develop Consulting, and the flexibility to be able to work remotely ensures I have a good work/life balance. The variety this role brings always keeps me on my toes but I really do enjoy what I do and for once I look forward to starting work in the morning! Hence, I hope to see myself working with Develop Consulting for many more years to come!