Meet Kerry Bannister

Since I began my professional journey in 2012, I've been lucky to have had the opportunity to become an apprentice completing the NVQ Certificate in Business and Administration Level 2 within Fletchers Solicitors, within 11 months of being with the company I had completed my apprenticeship and was offered a full time role. I spent the next year concentrating on my career within the team working up to assistant supervisor and then supervisor of the Support Team. The supervisor role is where I spent just over the last 5 years of my career within Fletchers. While supervisor of the team, I completed the Management Level 3 qualification, the Internal MDP Management course and the Diploma of Higher Education in Business Administration Level 4.

While I was there I spend a lot of time implementing policies, procedures and processes to the team to ensure that the team ran to the best of its ability. I spent time on training manuals for apprenticeships, work experience, team members and in the case of other supervisors. I handled all of the training within my team so I could guarantee if I had a day off the team would run smoothly without me there. I spent extra time with the apprenticeships and work experience as they were my heart and soul within that team, it reminded me that they just needed that opportunity that I was given to be able to make a career from what they were putting their minds to.

Part of my role was to keep track, tender and work with our stationery company. Each year I would complete a tender for the contract and each year the same company would win the contract. This wasn't just because I had a great relationship with our account manager but it was also very much due to myself spending time every 2 months to look at our core list, ensure it was still up to date with stock we ordered, add any new stock we had started using to our list and went through every other big stationery website and checked their prices against prices currently on our core list. I managed to get our contract prices down to a 5% profit margin with the stationery company. Because we were a very big and loyal customer, I managed to knock the prices down with the company time and time again. This I am very proud of as I managed to save Fletchers a lot of money over the years, which they would then look at spending on my teams IT equipment to help with the work we completed on a daily basis, which would help the company run more efficiently. 

While I was there I ran a project to bring a barcoded tracking system into the company. This was to help the compliance team with any GDPR issues or missing documents. We set up barcodes that would print on each document that was made within Proclaim, we also set up a barcode system that would print a barcode that had a related number attached to it, this would then be attached to the matching document.

Each of my team had their own barcode scanner which they would use to scan all barcodes printed on documents for the out going post and on labels from the scanning and data entry documents. We were able to scan all documents, anywhere the document had been and where the document currently was, up until its day of shredding. The compliance team had become very reliant on the tracking system to work out where missing documents may be and to help with customer complaints. They also used it to be able to see who could be breaking GDPR and who may need the extra training. I am proud to say, this is one of my greatest accomplishments and has helped save the company from complaints along with fines from the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) I am also proud to say the company still use this now.

After 7 years at Fletchers Solicitors, I took a big step in my life and moved to Hertfordshire, where I worked for Comensura. Here I trained to be an Implementation and Training administrator, within the 3 months I spent here I worked on training new customers on our systems  and inputting data into our sales force system.

I moved back to Southport to be closer to family and started work at Bedspace in a temporary role being a business administrator. I spent a month within this role and implemented a couple of spreadsheets to make storing information quicker to find, which included a spreadsheet that had each client, team member and manager on so managers were able to update their team according. This was then checked by myself daily to see if any changes had been highlighted from the day before that needed to be updated on the Remas system. I spent time updating their Remas system and ensuring any errors I came across were fixed and the management were aware. when looking through the system I spent time looking at our purchase orders to ensure we had ordered from the correct place, put the correct payments within the system, the correct information and who had filled in the informaton.

I then moved to New Horizons NW and worked as a recruitment and administration assistant. Here it was my role to keep Indeed up to date with our job descriptions and live roles, while also working with external companies to bring in the right staff for the roles. I would work with the candidates from day one of them applying and going through interview stages with myself and the management team, up until the day they started work. While I was here I set up a new spreadsheet to use for our updated recruitment list, this was to ensure the document was easier on the eye. I set up meetings and contracts with external companies including Sefton council for our recruitment purposes and lastly I worked with a brand new stationery company to get the best prices possible.

Since March 2021 I have been working for Sugarman Health and Wellbeing as the Payroll Team Leader. Here it is my job to ensure our workers are paid and timesheets are filled in correctly, sent in on time, chase anything missing and complete payroll reporting. A big part of my role is to ensure the cut down on payroll errors and look into any queries/credits that may occur. I have worked hard within my time at Sugarman to ensure that cash to banks decreased by 95%, along with being proactive regarding any potential issues before payroll closed. I streamlined the communication between Payroll and our workers and internal staff by ensuring there was a payroll inbox that had a 2 hour turn around. Timesheets were chased up before payroll closed, I had direct communication with clients in order to gain any missing information from the timesheets. Consultants and internal staff had trust in me to complete my job and ensure their payroll ran smoothly. I brought in new procedures that would help consultants be able to see where their payroll was up to and if they could offer help and support by chasing workers and clients. 99% of workers are now paid on time due to the new procedures brought into place. Credit control and clients understand they can come to me for any queries with a quick reply and a fix. Holidays and references were kept up to date and inboxes checked constantly. Any reports needed from my manager were always provided, Kpi's, targets, hours and any other information required.