Kirstie’s apprenticeship journey at Southdown

As part of National Apprenticeship Week, we’re sharing Kirstie’s story to highlight how apprenticeships support skills for life at Southdown. Kirstie is currently completing an apprenticeship in Managing Business Transformation. In this story, she shares what motivated her to apply, what she’s learning, and how the experience is helping her grow while making a real difference across our services

I love work that sits between strategy and operations. I enjoy solving problems, working with teams, clients and tenants, and thinking about how we translate big ideas into practical, everyday improvements.

I’m Kirstie and I work as an Organisation Design Practitioner in the Improvement and Impact Team, having joined Southdown four years ago as a Service Improvement Officer.

My focus is on optimising our processes, systems, and ways of working, so that Southdown can deliver the greatest possible impact for clients and tenants. I’ve worked on various projects, including the introduction of the Southdown Beacon support framework, mental health service redesign, and improvements to surveys, data, and complaints processes.

Alongside this, I am a Bank Support Worker in our Learning Disability Support service, which I love, and which helps keep my feet on the ground and closely connected to our services and the people we support.

What matters to me most is continually challenging myself to think about how we can create the most effective, meaningful impact to the people we support.

Working alongside my colleagues across our services, who have so much passion, intelligence, integrity, and heart, motivates me to do my best.

In the future, I would love to influence change at both an organisation and a system level, informed by what matters most for people using services.

To continue my career development, I have begun an apprenticeship focused on Managing Business Transformation. I wanted a structured way to build my knowledge, confidence, and toolkit with academic rigour and peer learning. The apprenticeship has enabled me to do this, while ensuring the learning is directly relevant, and materially benefitting, Southdown.

This programme specifically felt like a strong fit for both my role and my longer-term career goals. It is delivered through the Henley Business School (University of Reading) via their Improvement Leadership Apprenticeship programme and is designed to build capability in leading and managing complex transformation, and covers areas such as strategic management and planning, process and systems improvement, data driven decision making, leadership, management and coaching, project and change management, and organisational change.

A key element of the apprenticeship is applying the learning directly to my role at Southdown, using live projects to evidence impact and develop my practice. I have six hours of protected in-work study time each week, which includes self-directed learning, tutor support, and applying learning in practice. I have assignments every eight weeks, while additionally building a portfolio of evidence for the required knowledge, skills, and behaviours, and will complete an ‘End Point Assessment’ (a dissertation of sorts) next year.

It’s already helped me consider my work more strategically and thoughtfully. I’m finding it particularly valuable to connect theory directly to what’s happening at Southdown, and to learn alongside others in similar roles in other organisations, including Local Authority, NHS, and the private sector, which brings a host of different insights and perspectives.

I’m hoping to strengthen my skills and confidence in strategic thinking, process management, project management, continuous improvement, stakeholder management, and data analysis. Ultimately, I hope these skills, and the experience I will develop through their practical application, will better equip me to lead complex transformation in a way that is evidence-based, sustainable, practical, and ethical.