“What gets you out of bed in the morning?”

 

Michael Woodley – Service Delivery Manager – Whitbread Tech

Well a big reason for me to come back to Whitbread was the sheer size of the investment in their Tech stack. This is serious investment and it proved to me that as a business Whitbread wasn’t just ticking along with legacy systems, only focussed on keeping the day-to-day going.

We’re talking about several multi million pound projects to deliver - and I want to be part of that transformation here. As a Service Delivery Manager I always ask myself ‘How can I push the boundaries and get an even better service for my stakeholders?’ and at Whitbread we’re going all out.

It’s exciting, you don’t get many opportunities like this in a career to really make your mark on a business. My aim with the service offering is always to make it more productive, make it faster, make it more stable with high availability. If I’ve done my job well it leaves happy stakeholders and our third party suppliers with products that are the very best they can be. We all learn together. 

And it’s not just investment in tech here.

There’s investment in us as people, as a team. Everyone gets an unlimited access to Udemy courses and on the last Friday of every month the entire afternoon is focussed on your development. Just you and your ambitions. Not only in skills related to the job you do, but any areas of Tech you want. Any topic you’re interested in, it’s open to you to learn about. So they’re serious about training the individual at Whitbread too.

I began my career here after university, starting out on the IT helpdesk before moving on to Desktop Support, then Applications Management. I saw first-hand the development opportunities available. There was a nice crowd, it was people focussed and they developed young talent. It set me up for my career, really.

I moved on to other businesses but when when I saw this role come up, it interested me and I wondered if it was still a great place to be. I really related to the Whitbread values that still seemed to be spoken about – how we go about our business, the focus on people, training and development, opportunity to be yourself in the workplace. It was what I needed to hear.

I still knew a couple of people in the business from my time here and reached out to them too. They made it clear this was going to be the right move for me. They were right!

 

Rock a Tech role at Whitbread here.