What is Consultant Peer Support?

FDM prides itself on our community and the ongoing pastoral care we offer our consultants whilst they are on-site with our clients. Our Consultant Peer Support initiative is a network of consultants already placed on-site who help newly placed consultants with on-boarding as well as acclimatising to their new placement. Grainne Kennedy was recently appointed as the Consultant Peer Support with Standard Life and has been telling us about the role.

Grainne acts as the point of contact between FDM and all of the consultants placed at Standard Life. She is available to help with small issues and provide insight to new starters. Going on-site for the first time can be a daunting experience, so having a friendly face there to welcome you can provide a huge comfort.

As an Irish candidate trained in Leeds and having moved to Edinburgh exclusively for this role Grainne is ideally positioned to give others advice on moving to the city and beginning a new life in the Scottish capital. As a trusted colleague, she often discovers small but important issues that her peers may not want to discuss with the client or FDM internal staff. This includes problems with travel, difficultly booking holiday or getting onto their email. Grainne notes that helping people relieve these small but often stressful issues makes the role worthwhile.

Having only been in the role two months, Grainne has worked hard to develop a community on-site. She welcomes new starters by speaking to them before they start, having a one month catch up to discuss any issues and of course a pay day dinner.

Grainne is now working with Standard Life’s graduate programme to bring all early career staff under one umbrella as they often share many of the same achievements, needs and issues. It is hoped that this network will be able to run events for both early career staff and wider Standard Life community.

What are Grainne’s top four tips for first day on site?

• Make sure you are going to the right location and know how to get there.
• Dress smartly.
• Be open, to others and to new experiences.
• Try and find out about the business before coming in. If possible contact an on-site FDMer and find out what would be most useful to read up on.

Featured image credit: Photo by Van Tay Media on Unsplash