Finding my direction
Holly Heath, Consumer Duty Embedment Manager, Customer Experience
I joined Barclays straight from university in 2022 on the Retail Banking Graduate Programme. Most of my work experience before that had been in hospitality, and I didn’t have a clear idea of exactly where I wanted my career to go.
That was part of what appealed to me about the programme. I could experience different areas of Barclays UK, build my skills and work out what interested me without being expected to arrive knowing exactly where I wanted to specialise.
Seeing Barclays UK from different angles
During the programme, I completed rotations in Mortgage Products, Change & Transformation and Sustainability Partnerships. Every nine months, I moved into a new team. Just as I started to feel comfortable, it would be time to learn something new. It could be daunting, but it taught me to walk into unfamiliar situations, ask questions and build relationships quickly.
The rotations also gave me a much broader view of Barclays UK. There are so many different teams behind the products and experiences customers use every day, and seeing how those areas connect helped me understand what kind of work I enjoyed most.
After the graduate programme, I moved into Cost Transformation in Finance. I now work in Consumer Duty, helping teams across Barclays UK make sure we’re delivering good outcomes for customers.
There are so many different teams behind the products and experiences customers use every day.
Keeping customers at the centre
In my current role, I work across different products and customer journeys.
I also help run Customer Outcomes Forums, where colleagues come together to look at where something might not be working as intended for customers and what we can do differently.
That’s one of the things I find rewarding about Barclays UK. The work can span very different teams, but ultimately you can see how the decisions being made connect back to customers and their everyday experiences.
It’s also challenged my original idea of what a career in banking might look like. There are opportunities across customer experience, products, change, sustainability and many other areas I didn’t know existed when I joined.
Working out what comes next
I couldn’t have predicted when I started the graduate programme that this is where I’d end up, and I think that’s reassuring when you’re at the beginning of your career. Trying different things helped me understand my strengths and what I enjoy. I’ve become more confident working across teams, asking questions when I don’t know something and stepping into areas that are new to me.
My advice would be not to feel like you need your whole career mapped out from day one. Be open to opportunities that take you outside your comfort zone and use them to learn more about what suits you.
There’s still a lot I want to explore. I’d like to keep getting involved in different work and learning from people with experiences and perspectives that challenge me to think differently.
