Jon gets stuck in to help implement WCC's "proactive" appoach to the recovery
A year ago, Jon Stead joined Warwickshire County Council's Business & Economy team as business growth & support programme manager. He arrived just in time for the team's busiest year ever as they offered support to the business community in the wake of Covid. Here, Jon reflects upon a stretching but 'fantastic' year.
Making the leap from a City Council to a County Council was already a daunting (albeit exciting) prospect...but having to do so during a pandemic added some further nervous feelings!
Coming into the role I had some ideas of what it was going to be like. However, because of the pandemic and its effect on the economy, those expectations were always going to be somewhat removed from the ‘normal’ day to day.
Upon starting my role, I took control of managing the Warwickshire County Council economic recovery programme Survive, Sustain & Grow. This was eye-opening as it was designed to support businesses, some of which found themselves in their worst financial situations.
To manage such a programme was a great introduction to the team. The way the programme was designed really emphasised Warwickshire’s proactive recovery approach to the pandemic, which was part of my initial decision to apply for the job.
Fast forward a few months and not only has SSG been successfully delivered but I now also manage a range of access to finance & support programmes including:
Having only had to manage a singular European programme in my previous role, I had to quickly adapt to manage multiple strands which was an initial shock to the system but quickly felt natural. It’s certainly kept me busy and enhanced the skills I had built in my previous roles.
Being part of such a busy team has also allowed me to be part of other projects such as the grant recovery programme Adapt & Diversify. This was a big programme delivered to short timescales that pulled in resources from a number of different teams. It was really nice to see such a variety of teams and staff getting involved to ensure that the application process could run as smoothly as possible. It was because of the great multi-team effort that this grant programme won a WCC Star Award (Exceptional Team).
The past two years have been the furthest possible from “normal” for everyone and joining WCC during a pandemic put me in a situation I’ve not had to be in before, in that I didn’t realise it at the time, but it would be months until I managed to meet my new team in a face-to-face environment. It must be said though that the whole Business & Economy team has been very welcoming and supportive from day one. It didn’t take long to feel like I’d been part of the team for a lifetime.
After an exceptionally busy first year with many successful achievements for myself and the team, I’m certainly looking forward to my second year (and hopefully many more). There are some exciting programmes in the pipeline that I’ll be managing as well as continuing to manage the current access to finance programmes.
Overall it’s been fantastic and I would recommend working within this team to everyone!