Sophie Angliss

I currently manage a team of 22 members of staff within our Cattery at Battersea, Old Windsor. I oversee and have final accountability on all decisions within our Cattery relating to our staff, our cats and our facilities. My role sits within the Senior Leadership team and I lead and attend regular meetings, working on organisation wide projects to deliver our strategic aims. I work with key stakeholders and collaborate with many different teams within the organisation. I am also part of our duty manager team, overseeing the running of the whole site regularly. This will entail looking after teams all teams, including our kennel team, Cattery team, reception team, behaviour teams (Feline & Canine), management team and clinic team to ensure smooth running of the day and responding to urgent matters, whilst ensuring all KPI's are met and our staff and animals are safe and happy.

Within my role I am constantly doing CPD and ensuring we are improving our welfare standards within our Cattery, but also looking at ways of improvement to ensure our cats are supported in the best way possible before they even arrive with us. I hold weekly meetings to discuss everyone's duties and what our current goals and aims are, to ensure everyone is working efficiently to support our cats in the best way. We adhere to cat friendly homing and ensure we are always trying to improve our process and policies in regards to how we rehome our cats, and making sure their welfare is paramount.

I have final accountability on all decision making for our cats. I coach my team to upskill them with decision making, but I will oversee this and deal with any escalated cases.

I am currently seconded to a project to help build our new CRM system. My role in the project is 'Subject Matter Expert' and along with a small team of colleagues, we are working with Deloitte to build a new system which will support our teams in their roles, from the care and welfare of the cats, to the intake and rehoming of cats, and how our system supports us working with other teams and departments.

Worked with another Team Leader and between us oversaw the day to day running of our Cattery. At this time, we didn't have a Manager on site (my current role - Rehoming & Welfare Manager was created after this, which I was successful in my application for.

I line managed 8 Rehomers whose main focus was speaking to customers and rehoming our cats. I would manage performance by having regular 1-1's as well as quarterly performance meetings. I would recruit, onboard and conduct probation reviews for all new members of staff.. I would oversee the ordering of all essential items and work with other teams and stakeholders to ensure the smooth running of our Cattery.

In my role as Kennel Team Leader, I would manage and oversee a team of staff members and one area of our kennels. This would involve overseeing the behaviour of the dogs prior to their arrival, and during their stay with us, to efficiently and safely assess their behaviour. I would lead the team with decision making and support both the dogs and the staff members. I worked closely with many other teams to ensure the welfare of our dogs was the utmost priority during their stay with us.

I line managed a team of 10 members of staff and completing management courses and attending skills workshops such as coaching, delegation, giving & receiving feedback and managing difficult conversations.

In my role as Rehoming & Welfare Coordinator, I worked within a team of 6 others and dealt with all customer enquiries regarding dog and cat rehoming. This was prior to when our dog and cat teams became completely separate.

I would work both within a team and on my own, proactively looking for new homes for our animals, and providing excellent customer service to our customers. I would deal with customer complaints to resolve these in a timely manner and finding a positive solution for the customer, whilst not affecting our integrity and decision making. I worked with our behaviour teams to increase my knowledge and skills of dog behaviour and would regularly be involved in assessing dogs behaviours.

I would train new starters within our rehoming team, and be asked to provide feedback to my team leaders. In the team leaders absence, I would be asked to step up and be 'acting team leader' for the period they were absent for, so that the team always had a point of contact for any concerns or questions.

In this role I dealt with customers regarding a variety of financial transactions. Had to ensure we were reaching sales targets, and also providing exceptional customer service. There were many security standards to uphold and had to diligently manage every customer transaction to mitigate any fraudulent activity. Attention to detail was key and would ensure there were no errors. I had additional duties as head cashier, ensuring all security measures were checked daily, ensuring all cashiers had appropriate money in their tills, and ensure the bank had the required money ordered in for planned transactions that day. I would hold morning 'huddles' to discuss the day's plans and everyone's duties.