Helen Tonks MBE

The Pledge Partnership puts employers at the heart of inspiring, informing and communicating with the next generation of employees in Cheshire and Warrington. The Pledge Partnership enables businesses to work together with educators to provide every young person living, studying and/or working in Cheshire and Warrington with everything they need to succeed in the world of work. With the opportunity to develop employability-related skills and personal qualities whilst in education, there is a choice of employment, training or further education when they leave school.

www.HydraulicsOnline.com - 2004 to date www.InspiresMeConsulting.com - 2021 to date

Help to Grow Management Programme

On behalf of the Head of Group Partnerships, led the implementation of a series of new delivery channels formed through strategic alliances, budgeted to deliver in excess of £25million income per annum. Exceeded performance targets through: - Actively informing and participating in negotiations with prospective partners, including the definition of preferred delivery approaches, timescales and costs; - Identifying, securing and managing resources within tight-knit cross-functional teams to deliver against agreed plans, engendering confidence and a sense of direction across the business; - Aligning and managing partner activity to ensure best distribution of resources and effort within tight timescales and budgets, often despite initially ambiguous business requirements; - Supporting subsequent ongoing relationship management and business planning through driving stepped change and continuous improvements to front and back-office activities and processes; - Co-ordinating Partnership activity in respect of the definition and delivery of strategic capabilities by internal suppliers that were necessary to enhance the customer proposition and business development activities.

Played a pivotal role in a cross-functional team, responsible for managing a dynamic portfolio of product, channel, IT and customer-driven change requirements, and their delivery to internal suppliers for prototyping and development, within an investment budget of £130 million. Exceeded performance targets through: - Establishing a portfolio management function including the recruitment of team members, formulation of internal processes and the design and delivery of a change management information database; - Extensive stakeholder communications to ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ communities, to promote and stimulate continuous improvement to cross-functional and organisational ways of working; - Re-engineering end-to-end internal supply chain processes to improve the definition, scheduling and delivery of business requirements; - Effective performance management of the team, encouraging and enabling self-development at all times. Simultaneously led a business analysis of a customer segment with aggregate credit balances of £500 million. The accepted proposals also included a new segmentation model and revised customer proposition and business ownership structure that would deliver additional benefits to the customer and Bank.

Succeeded in managing the impact of the introduction (on 01/01/99) of the single European currency on the Small Business Banking Sector (contribution to 1997 Group profits - £159 million), whilst simultaneously initiating strategic business planning for UK entry to EMU. Exceeded performance targets through: - Effectively identifying, prioritising, planning and managing those activities critical to ensure euro readiness by 1/1/99. Responsibilities included the definition of customer propositions, business and operational designs, negotiations with other sectors on capacity management and service provision, marketing communications, training, internal communications and managing the implementation of business change; - Networking extensively throughout the Group, leveraging relationships for the benefit of the Small Business Banking Sector

Developed business and operational designs to enable Small Business Banking to achieve its business goals and objectives, and in addition designed, built and implemented a cross-sectoral Operational Support Agreement. This document, signed-off by Sector and Channel Executives, provided a clear statement of responsibility for sales and service processes, agreed service levels and reciprocal arrangements with other sectors. Exceeded performance targets through: - Securing early buy-in from key stakeholders to the goals and objectives of the agreement; - Demonstrating a solid understanding of tactical and strategic business and operational designs; - Building robust working relationships with sector colleagues and channel owners to provide the foundation for negotiations that would ensure the best possible outcome for the business; - Exercising rigorous attention to detail to ensure that designs provided the clarity needed in practice.

Led successful pilots for the implementation of a new customer information system across the branch network, generating real commitment and constructive feedback from the sites involved. Exceeded performance targets through: - Rigorous planning and time management, given the demanding peripatetic nature of the role; - Maintaining high quality, flexible communications with all affected areas via presentations, workshops, team meetings, written reports and one to one dialogues; - Demonstrating a sound working knowledge of all facets of the systems design and its implementation, thereby ensuring recognition by the users and Project team as a credible source of information and support.

Previous wide ranging experience gained between 1991 and 1996 in numerous regional and branch-based roles spanning Corporate, Small Business and Personal Banking including Regional Corporate Advances Analyst, Personal Consumer Lending Team Leader, and Business Relationship Management.