How our Analysts drive their development through Pret Roulette

 Grayce Analyst, Stephanie Fatiregun shares her thoughts on the Analyst-led initiative.

This month, our Analyst-led initiative ‘Pret Roulette’ launched to great success. Pret Roulette offers our Analysts the chance to gain insights into the clients and industries Grayce work within, from their peers over a coffee.

Grayce develops future leaders, so it’s important that we give our Analysts the opportunity to shape their experience with us. Feedback from our Employee Engagement Survey suggested that many Analysts wanted more opportunities to connect with each other. Because Grayce now has over 175 Analysts working nationwide, it can be challenging for Analysts to connect face-to-face with other Analysts outside of their own client. But we listened to our Analysts' feedback and collaborated to find a solution. With the support of Grayce HQ, a group of Analysts have created ‘Pret Roulette’ to build a stronger Grayce network.

Analysts register their interest and what they’d like to get out of the initiative, then each session is tailored to their requirements. This provides the chance for Analysts to meet people in the Grayce Community working at other client sites, to share knowledge, and to get to know their colleagues better. Here Stephanie Fatiregun shares her experience of our first session in London.

My experience at Pret Roulette

“It was really interesting meeting two science majors who are working at prestigious financial services companies, one of whom is working in Programme Assurance, and the other as a PMO Analyst. I never really understood the responsibilities of their roles, so I was delighted to listen to their day to day BAU activities.

Both firms are undergoing exciting change initiatives, and Jonny and Kirsten are at the heart of this. The most important lesson I learnt was to understand the difficulties driving alignment between business functions within an organisation. Kirstin is able to apply the skills and set processes she learnt at her first client assignment to her current role.

She is currently creating an ePMO function which is quite challenging. An ePMO function is in charge of managing all of the PMO functions. They are responsible for driving alignment amongst all of the functions. I could see the overlap between a PMO and BA. She has worked in a model ‘As Is’ PMO function previously, and she is now able to understand how to get her current client to a ‘To Be’ state. I could relate with her experiences as a Business Analyst; every day my role is based on understanding the ‘As Is’ and gathering the requirements to draw the ‘To Be’.

Jonny’s role is extremely exciting as, like Kirsten, he’s joined at a time when the client was undergoing important business changes. It was really valuable exchanging industry knowledge with Jonny and understanding the challenges he’s facing in his new role. He was so helpful in explaining the day to day challenges faced in Programme Assurance, such as managing senior stakeholders’ expectations and being responsible for action management. I’d like to encourage everyone to try to partake in Pret Roulette! I had so much fun and it was really helpful in sharing and receiving information on how to succeed at client site.”

Strengthening our community

As an organisation, we recognise that there is so much to be gained from taking a step back and letting your people lead the way. In addition to the qualifications and mentoring we offer our Analysts, Pret Roulette is a way for our Community to empower themselves and help set each other up for success.

We’re pleased we’re helping to bridge the gap between the training we provide and Grayce social events, creating a space where our Analysts can share their experiences, insights and advice. Going forward, we hope this will make the Grayce Community stronger and allow our people to support the professional development of one another. We’ve had a fantastic number of responses to this initiative so far and we look forward to rolling out Pret Roulette across our Grayce hubs nationwide, over the coming months.

Find out more about the Grayce Community on LinkedIn