Lucy
Video transcript
My name’s Lucy Parks, I’m a journalist and I work for John Lewis. I’ve worked for John Lewis for about seven years and I look after the staff magazines. They’re called the Chronicles, the branch magazines, so there’s 30 of them throughout the whole business and I look after the people that work for the Chronicles. Then I also deal with their line managers as well, so I deal with different parts of the business all the time, and we’ve created what we, we fondly refer to the Chronicle family, which is harnessing the feelings from people who work all over the country.
I never thought I would want to be anything else other than a journalist, but now having joined the business and learnt more about the business, it’s actually more important for me to stay with the Partnership than it is to be a journalist.
I think just being open and receptive really, and being prepared to embrace a different kind of business in the way that people work together. We talk a lot about customer service but customer service extends beyond just the shop and the customer: it’s the way that the different departments interact as well. Partners at different levels of the business all over the place, it’s the way that they all work together too.
Generally in life people are very fast to criticise and slow to praise but in John Lewis it’s the other way around and so you do actually feel appreciated. People make a point of thanking you or congratulating you or whatever it might be.
It’s a matter of taking your skills as they are and maybe using them in other ways. So I came in here in a specialist role but actually I’ve decided now that it’s actually the business that is more important to me and so I’d like to change direction within it and perhaps explore some other avenues. And the fact that the business can do that, that you can change career path if you like, that people will give you the opportunity to have a go at doing different things, I think is absolutely amazing.
