Why having specialist skills can actually broaden your horizons

Through 70 years of leadership, The Queen has inspired us all. Sodexo features in the only official book marking the Platinum Jubilee pageant in recognition of how we champion women in leadership. To celebrate this honour, we spoke Yvonne Spencer about her experiences, her challenges and the guidance she’d give to others who might want to follow in her footsteps.

Yvonne Spencer joined Sodexo’s healthcare team after a 15-year career in nursing. She’s now General Manager at a London mental health hospital and also our Clinical Lead. Wherever she’s worked and whoever her employer, the patient has always come first. Yvonne explains that nursing is both a vocation and a springboard, and reminds women that even specialist skills can be used in other ways.

Putting patients first

Nursing gets you closer to patients than any other specialism. They see you more than the doctors and you understand their experience in the round. I loved nursing, and I still love it today. Because I don’t really feel like I’ve stopped.

I joined Sodexo in 2014 and now play a dual role: General Manager at South West London & St. George’s NHS Trust and Clinical Lead for our healthcare business. At the hospital, my 130-strong team manages catering and cleaning for 350 service users as well as providing retail spaces for staff, visitors and service users. . With my other hat on, I help colleagues to improve delivery of their healthcare services. Both roles have a simple goal, and that’s doing what’s best for patients.

Focusing on facilities

Even in the NHS, I’d gravitated towards management, and I was facilities matron before I left. People think of nursing as care at the bedside, but that’s only one part of it. There are also roles that manage people, budgets and partners, like there are in any business.

Whether you take the clinical or management path, you know that nursing and facilities must work in lock-step. It’s even more important in a mental health hospital. A lot of our service users are long-term residents, so we’re never ‘just’ serving food or cleaning the floor. We’re friendly faces, trusted by some of the most vulnerable people to come into their bedrooms, move their personal belongings, meet their families and be part of their recovery. I challenge anyone to tell me that’s not patient care.

Women in management

Back when I worked in the clinical side of nursing, there were more women than men. Then when I moved towards management, it flipped the other way. I never saw any barriers, and I firmly believe that everyone made an active choice about which way they wanted to go. But the more you stick out, the more you sense that people are making assumptions about what you’re prepared to do.

Having an incredibly busy home life, for example, doesn’t mean you won’t want to attend that seminar or take up that big challenge. More often than not, the assumption that you’d prefer not to is well-meant, but I make a special effort not to do it with my team.

Sharing experiences

"Having good mentors is great for everyone, but it’s particularly important for women."

It’s a chance to understand other people’s experiences and trace the steps they’ve taken to get where they are. That’s why secondments work well too; it can be the best way of proving that you’re capable of more. Not only to your boss, but also to yourself.

I’m in the middle of an Empower course for women in leadership, and despite being in management for some time it’s been a real eye-opener. Turns out I’ve also been guilty of making assumptions about my own career direction, like pondering the limitations of my experience rather than the doors it can unlock.

Deep impact

Working for patients within Sodexo has seen me review healthcare processes for HMP Peterborough. It’s changed the conversation about healthcare from ‘what can we change’ to ‘what do patients need’. It’s let me work with NHS Improvement on the new hospital food and cleaning standards. And it’s meant directly supporting 350 service users here in South London, plus many others in the previous contracts I’ve been involved in.

I came into nursing to care for patients, and I’m proud that I’m still doing it. But taking these skills into new areas has also helped me build my career.

"My advice for any women feeling pigeonholed too soon is to talk. Talk to mentors, bosses, colleagues and friends about the skills you have, not what you don’t. You’ll be surprised by where you can go and by how much you’ll learn on the way."