July 2018 Volunteer of the Month
The July Volunteer of the Month is Denise Deen, Senior Receptionist at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. Denise was nominated for delivering four outstanding Customer Service Skills workshops, each for a different group of east Londoners. Denise tailored her sessions to the needs of each group and facilitated each one with skill and dedication.
Two of the four workshops were delivered in collaboration with Hommerton Hub. Dujon Harvey, Employment and Skills Project Manager at Hackney Council said:
“I was thoroughly impressed by the workshop delivered by Denise at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. It was very insightful for our service users, who were of varied ages. I felt the knowledge of how to thrive in a customer facing environment has helped shape our service users expectations when job searching. The addition of a recruitment managers presentation and guide to finding live opportunities really sealed the deal with our service users who left feeling motivated”.
We caught up with Denise to find out about her volunteering experience:
Why did you volunteer?
Having spent many years working with two major retailers both in Customer service and as a Trainer, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to attend an assessment day for Concierge at Westfield Stratford City and to cut a long story short was offered the role as Team Leader managing an aspiring group of individuals who became the Concierge team here at our Centre.
This opportunity enhanced my skills to include recruitment, people management, dealing with feed-back and inspiring our employees and our affiliated companies to be the best that they could be.
When volunteering opportunities came up through Elba, I thought about how a forward-thinking company took a chance on me and how my life experiences and knowledge could inspire others.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield are keen to encourage individual Community involvement and consequently our ELBA Customer service package was born.
What did you gain from your volunteering experience?
Having taken four workshops through the ELBA initiative, I can honestly say the feeling of giving back was tangible. With distinctly different groups and candidates, I was able to explore and develop the confidence level of each candidate whilst providing the life skills to seek and sustain future employment.
Training is the gift that keeps on giving, with many students blossoming before my eyes, and consequently leaving me with a glow of immense personal satisfaction.
Hopefully the participants will go on to achieve bigger and greater things as a result of the training.
Would you recommend volunteering to a colleague and if so then why?
I would 100% recommend volunteering as a source of personal satisfaction and fulfilment, whilst being able to offer individuals the benefit of life skills to improve employability. This particular project played to my strengths which is why I am so passionate about it, but there are many opportunities available through our ELBA partners from practical projects to people skills. In fact, there is something for everybody, by considering your attributes and how they can benefit others, we can make a significant difference to someone who may not have been given that chance in life.
