Shirley Borrett
I’ve been a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for 30 years and founded the Thames Valley Branch Special Interest Group for Independent Consultants. I have a psychology degree and an MBA from the Open University.
My mission for this site
- To inform individuals about different ways they could work and suggest how they might achieve them in the UK.
- To provide current and historical information about different ways of working.
- To comment on topical aspects of the changing world of work.
Who am I
I’m Shirley Borrett (nee Richards). I’m surprised to have reached my “Third Age” without being able to answer the ‘Who am I?’ question with 100% confidence. I’m determined and tenacious about things that are important to me, particularly starting things up and getting things going, but less successful with necessary routines and mundane organisation. I’m great at facilitating, encouraging and supporting and I’ve had several innovative ideas, some of which have flourished and continue to thrive. But I do tend to beat myself up about the ones that fell by the wayside, despite knowing that’s mostly due to my tendency to take on too much and try to do too many things at once. Unlike my typical teenage self who knew everything, I now realise how much I don’t know and how much I want and like to learn. And I recognise how lucky I am to still be having lots of ideas and to be blessed with the energy and enthusiasm to implement at least some of them.
What I like
I like freedom and I like to be in control. Not necessarily of other people, nor of meetings and situations. But I like to be in control of my own destiny. I’m not good with people telling me what to do, but I’m great at coming up with solutions when I find out what they want to achieve. I’m okay at delivering ‘chalk and talk’ training, but I’m more inspired and inspirational when facilitating groups. I’m used to flexibility so 9-5 doesn’t work well for me, but I have produced first-class creative work in the very early hours of the morning! I like a challenge, but sometimes that means challenging myself not to procrastinate until I’m up against a looming deadline.
What I do
I work with colleagues, partners, clients, customers to find ways to achieve their goals. I do quite a bit with websites – setting them up, or evaluating, or modifying them. That’s all based on what the site is supposed to achieve, as well as who it should attract and how it functions. I also facilitate discussions to identify problems, ideas and solutions. Facilitation could be on any topic, but is more likely to be about an aspect of flexible working, or of marketing/promotion or the web. I have worked with some big organisations like Barclays, Lloyds, CIPD, Ford, Cable & Wireless, but mostly now I work with individuals/self employed, or small companies.
Work History
Many, many years ago I embarked on a secretarial career. I worked in insurance, legal, manufacturing, distribution and some other sectors. Along with a family came a few home-based jobs including distributing frozen fish, data-entry, child-minding, and taking photos/adverts of cars for sale. As the children grew up I did full-time temporary work and eventually landed up with the computer company, Digital Corporation, in Reading. I’d not worked for an American company before and found the culture stimulating and refreshing. They seemed not particularly bothered about where you’d come from or what you’d done in the past, but in what you were capable of and how your skills could be developed to achieve more. Whilst there I started my OU MBA and my CIPD professional qualification. After redundancy when the IT industry collapsed in the early 1990s, I became self employed, and have been ever since. I’ve provided consultancy on HR related issues, specialising in flexible working, and have designed, written and delivered training courses from Assertiveness to Equal Opportunities to Time Management. I also wrote the “Working from Home Kit”, published by Lawpack, which is still now out of print.
Skills
I’m good at problem solving. I’m skilled at asking the seemingly dumb questions that encourage people to stop and think. Especially think about what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and whether their actions lead to the results they’re aiming for. Part of the problem solving is seeing connections, similarities, pathways that aren’t always obvious. Technical, website related skills include some knowledge of HTML and PHP, and reasonable competence with Drupal CMS web installations. I’m also experienced in the whole range of Office applications. Instructional design for both face-to-face and distance learning courses involves lots of writing and I’m good at setting out documents in a logical, easy to understand sequence.
Qualifications
My school days didn’t produce anything startling apart from a crop of GCE’s including English and Maths – where my sole claim to fame was getting the top grade in Maths and beating all the boys – which in those days was considered remarkable!. After a couple of decades of work and family raising, I enrolled with the Open University. I did things entirely the wrong way round, as I first completed an MBA, and then went on to do a psychology degree. At the same time I did a professional qualification to become a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development. All that took 11 years of my life (whilst working full-time too) and although I’ve always meant to go back and do something more ‘cultural’, all I’ve managed so far is a course on Digital Photography.
Have Any Questions?
If you have a question about your remote working circumstances for which you can’t find any helpful suggestions on this site, the please get in touch and I’ll try to advise a way forward. The site is in its early stages of development, so also please keep checking back as I’ll be gradually adding more content over the coming days and weeks.