Progression at Churchill – Meet Jodie Phillips-Turner

The next Churchill employee to take the stage and share their progression story is Jodie Phillips-Turner. Jodie started at Churchill three years ago as a Mobilisation Manager, where her role encompassed supporting all new business and working closely with the development team. Now, she is the head of business support and projects for the London business.

Jodie has highlighted some of the best parts of her career growth at Churchill and the great culture of development we strive to uphold across all parts of the company.

Jodie’s story

Starting with the company in 2018 was exciting as I had only worked in hard services before, so I hadn’t had the opportunity to work within soft FM. As mobilisation manager, I worked with the development teams as well as supporting the operations team too. Once I had a deeper understanding for the Churchill business, I honed my client experience and communication skills and began to become more deeply involved in business presentations and client facing integration

In my previous role within Churchill, I was supporting teams after the contract had already been won. So, having the opportunity to go to client pitches and create a relationship with them before the mobilisation was under way was extremely beneficial to the effectiveness of my work, and was my first step on my progression story within Churchill.

I mobilised more than ten contracts in my first year alone, but we realised that my role encompassed much more than just mobilisations. Churchill has the ability to allow people’s creative thinking to run wild and we realised that to capture these industry changing ideas we needed someone to manage this process. This meant that my role transitioned into project management. It was great to have the support of Churchill to let me develop my skills and capitalise on the fresh ideas I saw unfold; they have given me the freedom to develop into a role that no one knew we needed. For this I am extremely grateful to Churchill for being a business where people can shine!

Despite COVID-19 hitting while we were midway through the transition of my role, London was still growing and developing, and we needed to match its pace. So, Churchill allowed me to develop a small team to continue to support our expanding portfolio. I became the head of business support and projects for London and created a business support manager role and a project and implementation lead. By having the opportunity to grow my own team my biggest achievement is seeing how I can help them to shine. We are also hiring an apprentice for administrative support which I am very excited about since I started as an apprentice 10 years ago, and it was the making of me as an individual. Knowing I would have the opportunity to mentor someone and give them the support I had when I was younger was really rewarding.

The work culture at Churchill is what makes it so special. We have created a team with diverse thoughts and opinions and a supportive environment where it is okay to make mistakes. They’re important for the business’s development, to learn from them and pass on that knowledge to benefit the rest of the team. Not being afraid to say when you need support is also important. And we have a culture where you can speak your mind, reach out for gaps in your knowledge to your colleagues and continue to learn together.

Ensuring that transparency is kept throughout the business, both internally and with clients so that we can manage expectations effectively, also benefits the team hugely. There are always going to be risks and having that transparency makes everything much more comfortable for everyone involved.

I believe my progression at Churchill comes down to my great leadership team and being given the freedom and autonomy to progress without it even being explicitly said. Of course, during my time here I have taken part in lots of different training programmes and personal development. However, being proud to work here with like-minded individuals whose driving force every day is to deliver exceptional client experience by utilising all of our individual strengths is what brings such success and allows us to continue to progress both as individuals and as a business.

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