September 9, 2015

Values Awards: We try to get even better at what we do

The person who submitted this nomination describes how this employee’s approach shows tremendous commitment and flexibility. He often works till late in the evening and sometimes through the night, and all with a positive approachable manner.

Winner: Ian Travis

Ian Travis has become a well-known face (and voice) to many of us over the years. Ian’s role of IT Business Partner has involved taking on sole responsibility for PSS’ ICT service over the past 12 months, during a period of great technological change at PSS. It is fair to say that if the old saying ‘a workman is as good as his tools’ were to be true, Ian would not have had a good chance of success.

Given PSS‘ charity status technology has not been an area we have chosen to invest in, given our core priority is to provide a quality service to service users. Working on maintaining the dated servers had become part of the role and often Ian had to work unsociable hours to keep the servers up and running.

With the sudden departure of the ICT manager, Ian immediately stepped up taking on greater responsibility that required advanced technical knowledge and a thorough insight in our infrastructure/network requirements. Ian is extremely positive at all times and when faced with this challenge said he ‘just wants to get things working better and see IT providing a quality service to the business’

ICT has been outlined for many years at roadshows and surveys, as an area that causes much frustration amongst staff, often getting in the way of providing an excellent service to service users. Ian’s approach over the last 12 months has gone a long way towards improving this position.

The reduction in the team before the outsourcing of the support element, led to an increased reliance on Ian over the year. Servicing all of PSS sites is a big enough task however add an ICT outsourcing and procurement project into the mix, and the task becomes extremely challenging some may say impossible.

Ian has been heavily involved in specification of PSS requirements and contract negotiations to ensure at the end of the project we were left with a fit for purpose ICT solution. He has also managed to work with Lloyds in helping to define Support Service requirements, work with GCI to ensure PSS technical needs are met, in addition to rolling out approx 100 thin client/laptop devices and provided training at multiple sites

Following this year’s switch over, we now have a faster more efficient service. Ian’s response time to issues arising and positive attitude again made the switch relatively painless – a great step forward for PSS.

Staff at a recent road show mentioned Ian specifically saying ‘someone should recommend Ian for an award’. Our panel agreed that Ian’s effort and attitude to improvement should be commended.