Angela: A career journey at Royal London

We're committed to empowering our colleagues to focus on their development and progress their careers at Royal London. We have an exciting and varied learning offering including access to a range of tools and sessions. 

We spotlight our vacancies in monthly internal news articles, and through our internal community groups including to members of our inclusion networks.

From pensions to risk, Angela tells us all about her career journey at Royal London.

Support from Royal London

I joined Royal London in 2017 as a team manager within Group Pensions. It was a completely new industry for me, but fortunately my previous role equipped me with many transferable skills. I was in the role for a couple of years before going on maternity leave with my little girl. Six months after returning from maternity leave, my mum unexpectedly passed away and within two weeks of losing her, the country went into lockdown. 

The sudden change to working from home and managing a team of people whilst I was grieving and had my daughter at home was difficult. I am grateful that Royal London supported me to take time off whilst I worked through the loss of my mum.  

Lockdown made me evaluate my goals and what I wanted. I’d been managing teams for ten years and felt I could use the skills I have learnt outside of my business area. I decided a ‘sideways move’ was the best way for me to become more rounded in my skills and learn more about the business. 

"I gained exposure to new business areas, products and people"

I was successful in applying for a Group Operations Trainer role through our internal careers site, and in this role I gained exposure to new business areas, products and people. I was also able to maintain the elements of my previous roles that I enjoyed the most – supporting the development of others. 

I enrolled in our internal Career Confidence programme course which helped me to think about my longer-term goals and how to equip myself to achieve them. As part of the programme, we heard from a variety of external guest speakers and had the opportunity to ask them questions about their own careers and blockers. I also met colleagues from across the business and found a wonderful support network, leading me to join Royal London’s mentoring programme. I wanted to continue to expand my network so I also joined the steering committee of our Women’s Network which has allowed me to be involved in lots great projects and meet some incredible people. 

Internal vacancy spotlight

When my wonderful Training Lead, Emma, announced she was pregnant, the opportunity arose to apply for her maternity cover. In the run up to her leave starting, Emma was supportive and made sure that I had a strong handover. The Training Lead role was great and allowed me to be involved in many different projects and work with people from all over the business. As I knew it was maternity cover and would not be a permanent role, I was focused on what I wanted to gain from the opportunity, how to use it to build on my strengths and identify gaps.  As Emma’s return date came closer, I made the decision that I didn’t want to return to my Trainer role. I wanted a new challenge and one that I could use my transferable skills whilst learning and filling the gaps I had identified. 

I'd seen the Risk and Compliance Assurance role on our internal careers site, and it piqued my interest as I was looking for a new challenge. However, as happens very often in a busy environment, my attention was needed elsewhere. Then it was spotlighted in an internal news article. This encouraged me to reach out to Gary, the hiring manager, and showed me that my transferable skills could be valuable in the role. Since being in my new role, I’m learning something new every day which I’m loving.

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