Tech and transformation colleagues

Getting sick meant I had to leave my university course with just a diploma. Once I’d made the decision to get back into work, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then I saw a Level Four Data Analyst apprenticeship opening pop up. 

What really caught my eye was that it was a strengths-based job description. I wasn’t expected to have any qualifications or any lived experience of data analytics. As well as this, Lloyds Banking Group had a thing called the guaranteed interview scheme for people with disabilities. This meant that as long as my CV was relevant, I was guaranteed at least a phone interview. I passed the phone interview and went to the assessment center. And once again, everything was strengths-based.  It was all about how I thought, how I problem solved. So, I got the job.

I ended up working in rectifications – this is where the Group has had a fault or made a mistake, and we need to make things right for the customer. I like to think of my job as detective work. That's what it feels like – we're a group of people solving a problem together in the best way that we possibly can. I find that there's a kind of joy in fixing things. The culture here is very much, if something is broken, put your hand up and say, this is broken, we need to fix it.

I was given problems to solve, but as there was no other data experience within the team I used the 20% of my time set aside for learning to learn what I needed to do to solve the problems. I created a series of repeatable processes and got them reviewed by other data peers. Eventually I trained up several team members, whilst I was still an apprentice, in the same techniques. And I went on to complete the degree apprenticeship as well, so I guess I managed to get my degree after all. 

Doing the right thing

At the heart of my work in rectification is looking after our customers. We need to make sure we're treating our customers fairly, and they're getting what we say they're going to get. I think it's just a fundamental, we have to do this before we can do anything else. 

I also work within the LGBT+ community at Lloyds Banking Group and externally. It’s important for me to be visible, because if you don't see yourself in the community that you want to be a part of, there’s a barrier. You think ‘oh no, I'm going to have to be the first’. So, I do go and talk about apprenticeships, and I go and talk about being LGBT+ in tech outside of the Group. It’s about having a conversation, and showing that there are possibilities and opportunities. I think it’s incredibly important to foster dynamics within teams, make all people feel welcome and comfortable, and to educate people who aren't LGBT+ in how to actually communicate with people, making it less scary. 

Coming to Lloyds Banking Group on the Returners programme, I could see that the business had a role that was right for me. I could see a clear fit as far as my skills and capabilities were concerned. And because I was joining on a returners programme, I also knew that the business would invest in me in terms of flexibility, with active encouragement and investment into upskilling. I was already aware that the Group had a reputation as a good employer that puts its people first, so for me it was a no-brainer.

What I have since found surprising is how, even though it’s such a big organisation, it feels very personal – in a good way! There are thousands of people in Lloyds Banking Group, and yet they will take personal interest in you as an individual. That’s my experience. I feel cared about, and that makes a big difference. 

There is a hybrid working culture here. I think that's the best part about the Group – the expectation is set out very clearly in front of you. You always have dialogue, conversations with your managers. We are interested in what you bring to the table as an individual, your skills and your capabilities.

What Tech and Transformation means to me

Change is a constant, and transformation is really a way of bringing in change. So, transformation somehow always finds its way in my career. When I say Tech and Transformation, we can’t limit ourselves to thinking of offices, banks and big companies alone. It is the small businesses, the farms and the shops, and all of those people who make up our enormous customer base.

Our work means that there will be more digitally literate people – more people who are conscious of their earnings and their spending on a day-to-day basis. More people who will be able to save for important things that will make a difference to their daily life. More people with better economic literacy levels. Taken altogether, what we do has the potential to bring prosperity to families and to individuals, as well as bigger businesses.

As a child I was fascinated by computers. For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a programmer, so I did a degree in Computer Science at Warwick and then joined a consultancy firm as a developer. I loved the job, but as I grew more senior it became harder to avoid moving into a more managerial role. I went into banking, because there I could concentrate on a technical career path and be a developer for the rest of my career. At least, that was the idea. But soon I found myself leading a team.

This new role took me on a bit of a journey. I was leading a team of developers, so I could still do some coding and technical work whilst learning a new skill. But I started taking on bigger teams and more responsibility, and left the coding for working on my IoT at home! I began to enjoy the challenge of leadership – taking on something deemed impossible, or something that nobody else could do, has always motivated me.

I enjoy working in Architecture at Lloyds Banking Group because you can shape things. It's quite a creative skill, dealing with people and trying to solve their problems. It’s also a juggling act, which means that it’s a very varied role. You never know what's going to hit you. One moment I could be in a meeting with the CEO for Business Commercial Banking and the next could be a low level, technical review of how two things talk to each other. And in every one, I feel like I’m adding value. It feels like a worthwhile role, because I truly make a difference and can impact the direction of the whole organisation. 

Innovation is at the forefront of what we do. This will have a large impact on customers, doing much more on their phones and the web, so there'll be lots of investment in bringing innovative products to the market. There's hundreds and millions of pounds’ worth of investment going into my area and that’s tantamount to designing a new digital bank for businesses. Our digital future will be heavily cloud-based, so the opportunities are huge. 

Working together

Lloyds Banking Group has some of the best qualities of all the organisations I've worked in. People are very collegiate and collaborative. They genuinely want to do the right thing for the bank. It's a nice place to work - people are friendly and get on really well together. 

We come from a whole variety of different backgrounds, experiences, companies and career paths, too. We have a very diverse workforce with new ways of thinking and different experiences to share. For me, this results in a very healthy organisation because you get different opinions and different ideas; and therefore, you get the best out of everyone. 

I actually studied IT at A level and scored really well, but for me, it was always quite a mathematical area and I always saw maths as a weakness of mine. Instead, I did an International Business and Management degree and a Masters in Human Resources. The thing is, to really develop your career, I’ve always thought you should tackle your weaknesses head on. 

So when I came out of my Masters, I joined Lloyds Banking Group as a Credit Risk Analyst, which has a strong mathematical element. I moved around, with roles in telephone banking and HR, eventually arriving in Group Talent. Here I was looking at ways to move talent and reskill colleagues into future areas of the business, such as Software Engineering. I'd always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to get into technology, so I applied for an IT apprenticeship myself.

My journey has been incredibly rich with a variety of experiences. I've gained various qualifications, the most recent being a distinction L4 software developer apprenticeship. I’ve gained valuable insight into five different teams, from Agile Software Engineering to DevOps. Now I'm in Cloud services – and all in the space of 18 months. I’m fascinated by Cloud engineering and I'm currently part of an exciting new concept within an Incubation Lab. This is a learning environment where I work solely on developing the skills I need for a new career journey in our Cloud Engineering teams.

All the teams I've joined have been really accommodating. There’s a strong collaborative nature. I thought everyone was going to have all this lingo that I wouldn’t understand, but not everybody's a techie in technology. 

Learning and developing 

The apprenticeship works towards a British Computer Society qualification. You have a mentor and 20% of your time is allocated to upskilling and learning. My mentor was a Front-End Engineer. I learned the basics in terms of a website structure of HTML, how to style that using CSS, add more functionality using JavaScript and refactoring it using frameworks like React. I also learned SQL and Java and received a diploma in Software Development Methodologies. It was a well-structured way of learning. There's a lot of self-learning, but I had great resources, such as Pluralsight and LinkedIn learning. And the buddy system was really useful. 

The Group is such a big organisation that if I don't enjoy something, I can speak to a network of mentors, or my manager, and they'll find somebody for me to shadow in a different area. I think those opportunities are quite unique to Lloyds Banking Group. That's what keeps me interested. 

I have a Masters in Software Engineering and have worked in multiple roles as a Technical Programmer/Individual Contributor, Technical Lead and extensively as a Project Manager in four continents.

I joined Lloyds Banking Group as a Contract Project Manager in 2012, and became permanent with the company in 2017. It was here that I decided to pursue a purely software engineering role after almost 16 years as a Project Manager. Going back to development was definitely harder than I thought and needed a lot of work. Luckily I had the support required and as a result today I am able to use this combined experience to make better decisions which I use to improve processes to benefit people, and our work.

Personally, I have a passion to fix what is broken and also mentor and develop colleagues based on my experiences. I have also been able to gain lots of qualifications over my career including becoming a Google Cloud Associate Engineer, and a qualified Scrum Master which definitely helps me day to day.

The Security Engineering DevOps team are responsible for securing the core foundation of our cloud technology. This includes both the design, development and operation of various security services, along with delivery of a comprehensive infrastructure compliance capability to ensure the secure configuration of all resources. This is part of our wider focus on modernising our technology.

Women in engineering

I have been in engineering for over 23 years, it is still disappointing when I am either the only woman in the team, or still within the minority. Whilst I am happy that the numbers are increasing year on year within the industry, there is still so much to be done. I would love to see more women studying engineering and coming in to the business.

When I joined the bank in 2015 it was the security and benefits that appealed to me, but it’s the opportunities that I’ve had in my time here that have made me stay so long. I started my career here in the Operations team where I helped customers with their pensions queries, but after completing a coding bootcamp with a Scottish-based education centre called CodeClan, I returned as a junior Software Engineer.

I’m now completing an honours degree at Glasgow Caledonian University which helps full time workers gain a degree through an apprenticeship. I’d never have been able to retrain without the help of the bank – I really feel that my career goals have been listened to and that I’ve been supported to get the job I desired. 
 
I currently work with a team of software engineers in a Scrum/Kanban work environment. We are creating microservices that will be shared across a wider group of engineers, while building a high quality user experience that will help customers deal with their pensions online. The work we’re doing is enabling our colleagues to be more efficient in their roles, while our customers feel happier and more in control as they can now view their pensions online without having to phone up.

My role involves creating code that builds on these microservices and the front-end customer experience. We use open source software and a range of different platforms to deliver our work, including Javascript, Kubernetes, Docker, Jenkins and GitHub, and we’re now transitioning onto the Cloud too. I think what I like most about my role is the independence – I have the freedom to be creative in my coding and do it in the way I believe is right.

For me, the best thing about working in our team is the flexibility. Everyone is understanding of each other’s needs and differences, and there’s a calm, sharing culture where colleagues are keen to help out and learn from one another. That’s been especially true during the pandemic – even though we have been working from home we’re trusted to get the work done and I feel closer to my colleagues than ever before. The bank has ensured we all have the equipment we need and there’s been a lot of support for colleagues around their mental health too.

I’ve always believed in making a difference to society, and it’s this focus on helping others that led me to Lloyds Banking Group, where I saw the opportunity to help people.

Lloyds Banking Group is driven by its purpose of helping Britain prosper. We are genuinely helping customers where they need it most. We’re giving them the confidence and tools to manage their money, and we’re here to help in-branch, online or on the phone.

I found myself in the Group Transformation Department via a non-traditional path, so I’m well aware that you don’t need a background in software engineering to make a difference! 

I feel very passionately about delivering a great customer experience, so I work with teams across the business to develop and improve Webchat; an interactive tool that lets customers chat to our colleagues online.

It’s a tool that’s helping us build and nurture relationships with our customers, especially those who are vulnerable or older. It encourages customers to talk to us and give us feedback so we can better help them – and it helps us improve the way we work, too.

This is just the beginning though - the team is revolutionising the way the business communicates with their customers by using chatbots and artificial intelligence. This development is key to our aspiration to be the best bank for customers. A goal which I’m very excited about.

 It’s a cost-effective way of supporting our customers whenever they need it, and it’ll make the whole banking experience better.

I’m originally from Greece, but I moved to the UK to complete a Masters in Data Science at the University of Manchester. After I finished, I was looking to put my data science knowledge to work somewhere that I could have a direct impact. When I saw that Lloyds Banking Group, with millions of digital customers, had a graduate scheme that seemed right for me - I applied and was accepted. 

After two years on the graduate scheme I moved into the Intelligent Automation team, where I worked on multiple projects. One involved automatically identifying vulnerable customers. It was an important project in terms of the impact it might have on customers, because it's something that the Financial Conduct Authority asks banks to do, to identify vulnerable customers and support them in the best way possible. 

Now I’m leading a really exciting project. We are using some truly cutting-edge technologies to create a new in-house model – that will make us faster, more accurate and help deliver high quality service to customers. 

This shows how the Group gives you the opportunity to try different paths. I started as a Data Scientist, but I wanted to do some technical work, so I’m  focusing on learning the technical aspects of the project. At some point I’m aware that I might want to change direction, and the Group gives you this opportunity to choose your path. 

The IT field is developing rapidly. In future, I think Lloyds Banking Group will start to use more Deep Learning models, which has the potential to exceed human-level performance. The Group will also use a lot more Cloud technologies which will allow the organisation to scale, whilst still maintaining flexibility. 

Sharing expertise

The data science team is very diverse. We have smart people from a range of backgrounds; People who initially started doing Psychology, or biologists who ended up in Data Science. This means more ideas and more ways to find a solution. Everyone’s very supportive and they’re experts in their fields. You can learn so many things from them, just by asking them or looking at how they approach a problem. 

After a year working here I had the opportunity to deliver courses for new starters, teaching them some of the techniques that we use. That’s another thing I really like about the Group - they give you responsibilities early on, with the opportunity to do the work and deliver results. And they also give you the capacity to fail sometimes, so you can eventually succeed.