Day in the life

As part of our new ‘Day in the life’ series, we’re interviewing employees of all levels, across all areas of the business to learn a bit more about them and how we all work together here at Three. 

Today we’re getting to know Paula Ann Miller.

Vital stats:

• Name: Paula Ann Miller
• Job title: Policy Lead
• Function: Policy team
• Tenure: 15 years

Tell us a bit about yourself

I live in Glasgow with my husband Gary.  I love to travel abroad which is something I’m currently missing.  However, it’s given me time to enjoy more of the UK. York and St Andrews are my 2 favourite places.  I love socialising with friends, going for walks, watching box sets and spending time with my nieces. I went to Paisley University and studied HR and Marketing with a 1-year work placement at Hewlett Packard. While at University I did my dissertation on Work Life Balance.  This was a new topic at the time and getting material to support it was very difficult. Not a challenge students would face today!

In a nutshell, describe your role and how you support our business objectives

I joined Three as a contractor to support a project to purchase The Link Mobile phone stores in Scotland.  Since joining I’ve completed a range of roles across the People Team which has given me a breadth of knowledge. Roles included HR Advisor, Systems Specialist (where we set up new systems team), HR Shared Service Manager, Operational HRBP, Project roles, before moving into the People policy role.

I’m accountable for all People Policy toolkits (covering everything linked to a policy e.g. Guide, FAQ, forms etc) and the contract of employment. My role is to ensure a policy framework is in place to enable the development and delivery of any new and existing people policy toolkits to meet our people and business objectives.

Our policies and processes are key enablers to the People Experience and to protecting and supporting our people, reputation, and bottom line. They help us achieve our objectives and aspirations of fostering an engaging, inclusive and ambitious culture, whilst promoting, encouraging and guiding employees to self-serve. Our (perfectly formed!) team of 2 work in partnership with Policy Owners and stakeholders, ensuring our policies always meet or exceed legal requirements, meet our desired experience needs and provide support and guidance to employees and managers to bring these to life in the business.

What does a typical day look like in your role?

Each day can be different which is one of the things I love about my role.  You can have the perfect day planned then suddenly I need to quickly shuffle things around.  A typical day can involve a range of meetings across our stakeholders/projects, reviewing and signing off policies, planning (or replanning!) our roadmap, drafting proposals/recommendations for change, keeping an eye on key external updates e.g. COVID, to dealing within individual queries from the business.

What is on the cards for the first quarter of 2022 in your world?

2022 will be a busy year for the policy team with the re-launch and embedding of the policy framework, review of current policies and introduction of some new policies.  Some examples are:

• Launching our Diversity and Inclusion and Bullying and Harassment Policies (replacing current Equal Opportunities Policy)
• Reviewing our Disciplinary, Grievance, Probation Guide policy toolkits across first half of the year.

How have you found returning to the office?

I’ve loved being back in the office.  I’ve enjoyed being able to see people again face to face and have the over the desk conversations.  Just hearing the buzz in the office and music playing in the background is a nice change. What I had forgotten about is the need to book a room when you’re in the office especially when you have forgotten your headphones!

How have you supported your personal wellbeing during the past 18 months?

I’ve consciously placed more of a focus on my personal wellbeing, but I’m not going to lie and say I’m fully focused all the time.  There are times it slips.The activities I’ve been doing to support my wellbeing is to go for a walk every day.  At the weekends I try and do longer walks.  During lockdown, I discovered I lived next to a canal so that became a good route to follow – 20K steps each time. I’ve placed a focus on reading more, listening to podcasts and trying to accept that I don’t need to be busy doing something with every hour of my day.  And for this year, I’ve created a habit tracker, where I identify 3 things I want to adopt as a habit.  One of them is to drink more water.

Give us a fun fact…

I’m not sure it’s a fun fact but when I was younger, I wanted to be a fire fighter.  Clearly my career path is very different but sometimes in my role it, particularly in the recent experience of being part of the COVID-19 working party, it can feel like we are putting out fires!