The whole team were in Edinburgh for our ‘Together’ workshop with our business coach Fergus King from Shirlaws. During this time, we got to the heart of what ‘together’ means, why it is valuable to choose to work together and reflected on our own personal reasons for doing so. Kaye has taken responsibility for our ‘Together’ project and is enjoying writing up a paper capturing all of our learning’s from the together workshop. The aim is to gain greater depth and understanding of what working together means and why it supports business growth. We are already looking forward to our next workshop.

Winners – The Red Team!

After the workshop, we went out for dinner and then took part in a bowling competition. It got ever so slightly competitive and the red team came out on top (just!). Hurray!

Steph has been making great progress on her MD economic outlook report, which is the first step to getting our budgeting ball rolling. She loved creating this as it was an opportunity to learn about what is actually going on in the wider economy and look at predictions for the future – she can’t wait to see the team’s budget predictions.

And speaking of the budget, Kate has started to prepare the working sheets in preparation for all the figures that come her way. She is also working through updating our HR policies & procedures which relate to the staff handbook.

Jon is looking forward to being introduced to clients this month and is really excited to get stuck into his new role as client services manager after a fantastic induction and SK Chase welcome. 🙂

Jan has been having some training this month on the project manager’s role for our system rebuild project so that Ben knows he can leave it in safe hands while he is away on paternity leave in August.

Ben is really pleased that he has now got the Server project moving into the implementation phase so it will be ready to release the new system developments. He has never taken responsibility for this before so he shared it has been quite a challenging journey into the unknown…

Fraud has been on Catharine’s agenda this month. She has been spending a lot of her time working with our new fraud procedures and ironing out a few things to make improvements.

And there has been an increase in our sales leads over the past couple of weeks so Dani is dedicating her time to sales meetings.

And on a personal note;

It is holiday time at SK Chase – lucky people!

Lake Annecy

Catharine and Steph are off to France, but separately! Catharine is going home to stay with her parents in Lake Annecy for 3 weeks but will be doing a mixture of working and having a few nice days off! And Steph is hoping for some sunshine although the forecast thinks otherwise! But we’re sure it’ll be great fun whatever the weather and Steph said there is lots to see and do.

Jan is going to Fort Augustus, so is definitely not expecting sunshine, to do lots of walking in preparation for walking Mount Snowdon next month.

Heather has been off for the first two weeks of the school holidays to spend time with her twin girls.

And Kaye is just back from a wonderful holiday, where she and Iain explored new parts of Italy – she fell in love with the Italian Riviera, Tuscany and Lake Garda!

Ben only has 5 weeks now until his baby is due to arrive! He and his wife have most of the ‘stuff’ that they need now and are spending some time rearranging their flat to accommodate their new baby. They’ve also finished their antenatal course which was a teeny bit scary but also massively reassuring.

Jon is gearing himself up for his self titled, ‘Unofficial, yet possibly better than the official, opening Olympic Ceremony’ party, taking place in his flat which overlooks the stadium. It’s an Olympic themed party – obviously – but he has massively over-invited and is not looking forward o the tidying up the next day.

Dani has just ordered a couple of books; ‘Blue Truth’ by David Deida and ‘Illusions – The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah’ by Richard Bach, which she hopes to get stuck into as soon as they arrive.

It is now less than two months until Kate’s wedding so she has started to get organised with the final bits of planning.

And Jan has finished and framed her first painting, which she is giving to her sister and her husband for thir first Wedding Anniversary. If they don’t like it will be going up in the SK Chase office!