Jade

I became qualified in beauty when I left school and worked as a beauty therapist for around 12 years. After having my young boy, I got back into work part time with a receptionist role at the Student Loans Company. I did that for about a year and a half before they offered me a role as an Estates Advisors, which is how I fell into the world of FM, albeit on the client side.

In the summer of 2022, I was contacted by a recruiting agent who told me about an opportunity at Bellrock, so I followed it up and had an interview with the lovely Claire Wilson. I decided to take up the offer and haven’t looked back!

I stumbled into FM somewhat, as the offer from Student Loans Company was something I wasn’t expecting. That moment opened a door and I’m so glad it happened.

Now I’m at Bellrock, I’m on the client-facing side. It took a while to get used to that, but I really enjoy the fast-paced environment. Every day is different and challenging – I need to hit 100% of KPIs in my role, and that can bring with it a huge sense of motivation and achievement.

The industry has a reputation of being dominated by men, especially on the engineering side of it. But from what I’ve seen so far there many ways that women can bring value and offer a lot to FM. There are many skilled female engineers out there, and behind the scenes women can offer a range of skills that help to deal with complex and multifaceted workloads that can often cause stress to those who aren’t organised or mull over attention to detail.

Supporting mum's is important to attracting more women into this space. Bellrock has been brilliant with me and my boy. I am given the flexibility to adjust hours and working locations to help me be there for him whenever he needs me.

I haven’t actually noticed it that much at all. The client teams I deal with have a good representation of women, so I still work with women quite a lot of the time. There has been the odd occasion when a contractor might come in and may not expect to be speaking to a woman, but this is very rare and I haven’t considered it as a challenge to my enjoyment working in the sector.

Going full-time made it difficult at first! I was one of those people who would be on their phone checking emails in the evening, but I’ve now trained myself to stop doing that, and the same goes for annual leave. I think it’s really important to have that separation.

One day I would like to be able to volunteer my time again to help women in maternity wards. When I was part-time, I worked with the NHS to deliver beauty treatments for women going through tough times. It is something close to my heart.