I started my journey here at Family Wise roughly 5 months ago, so I’m still fairly new. However, during my short period here I have learnt so much and feel as though I have naturally settled into the team here at the Family Wise HQ.
Before I started here, I worked part-time at TKMaxx – this was the job I got myself during my time at college to earn some extra money. I loved my time there; however, I knew that it wasn’t a practical ‘forever’ job.
Once I finished college, I was one of the many people who had no idea what to do next. I knew the next steps in my journey weren’t university, so I carried on and went full time in my job at TKMaxx until I made my next move. This was bearable for a while until I decided I needed a big career change to explore my other interests and try to gain more experience within different roles/ companies.
Unfortunately, I hit a rough period while job searching as nothing seemed to pique my interest. Regardless of this I kept on applying… Not finding the right job for me felt incredibly disheartening at times; but when I came across the Administration role here at Family Wise, it seemed to tick all the right boxes – especially being the type of role I was looking for. I sent my application off in anticipation and luckily within a day I got a response from Kirsty asking to set up an interview! I was thrilled to finally get things moving.
Within the few days following my interview I had been offered the job and was finally able to hand my notice in and move on to more exciting beginnings. I was incredibly nervous stepping into a completely new role that I had never done before, but I knew it was the change I needed in my life.
The Family Wise admin team – and wider – were so supportive and helpful in getting me settled into my new role, from the beginning I felt like part of the team. As part of the administration team my roles are particularly varied, and I quickly learned that no day here is the same! Every day I get to do something different, and this is what I find intriguing about the job, the unpredictability of coming into work and having no idea what the day ahead holds.
Some general tasks include sending out letters on estates, liaising with clients, ordering certificates, filing, and generally fulfilling requests/actioning tasks coming from the Case Managers. My role has developed over my time here and I have quickly established we are the gateway between the clients and the Case Managers.
Therefore, when speaking to our clients, it is essential for us to build good client relations. Due to this being such a rare process for anyone to be involved in, it is key for us (being their first point of contact), to ease them into the situation and make them feel as calm as possible about this process. It is common for people to have no knowledge of genealogy or Intestate law, so we as a company must be open to the questions beneficiaries may have when put in this situation.
Overall being part of the admin team means that we can assist on all cases we have open, which is over 1,000 cases. This leaves our work open to so many possibilities, as the calls we receive, or the work for that day could be in reference to any one of those cases.
We currently have 500 cases that are contracted on our system. This is a lot! This means that in everyday processes, we as an admin team could be assisting on any one of these cases.
Simply being in an open office and hearing the conversations between the Case Managers has already taught me so much about genealogy. Even though in my position I do not need to know this information I have been able to pick things up, which in turn does help my knowledge when speaking to beneficiaries.
As you can see from the sheer number of cases we are dealing with here, it is crucial to work fast and effectively. This is something my previous job has helped me with, working in a fast-paced environment is something I was used to, it is just a matter of applying a different skill set.
We hope you enjoyed reading about Emily’s story! To read more blogs, click here!
