I used to have a fear of failure, not anymore

says digital champion Caroline Lindsay

In a psychologically safe culture, any one of us can speak up about what our work needs at any time and anticipate being heard, respected and included. This is the experience of Caroline Lindsay, technical Project Officer in our Estates Team. "For many years I had a fear of failure that held me back", she says, . "I've always had lots of energy and ideas, but I would worry that I'd get things wrong or be missing something obvious and so I wouldn't always act on them. I don't suppose I'm alone in that!"

Caroline's role supports a large and diverse team of tradestaff that is distributed across "the three Ayrshires". "They're on the move the whole time and work shifts and on-call rotas", she says. "They are not in front of computers and because of this, are not naturally in the loop for quite a bit of organisational communication. It was also very difficult to get a sense of team and connectedness. This is not only a problem for morale, it also means you're back and forth between different people all the time trying to close the loop on pretty basic administrative routines".

Caroline saw an opportunity when she heard about the work her colleague Nicola Lynch had done to connect domestic staff using MS Teams, "It was clearly transferrable to our team", she says. "Nicola's a digital champion so I joined the network and asked Iain Harley, the network lead, for support on how to get the basics of Teams under my belt. I can't believe how quickly it all happened. Between Iain and Martin Duggan in IT security, who were both amazing and so helpful, I quickly learned everything I needed to install Teams on everyone's phones so that they could connect on the move without having to access a PC".

To implement change is not about kit alone, however. "It's about people", says Caroline. "Our teams did not know this would work or what it could do, and naturally were wary of it. I was confident  that they would benefit from it  but I could definitely understand where they were coming from. You could be weeks trying to persuade people but sometimes the best way to learn is to try it out. We agreed to pilot it and see what everyone thought after a few weeks. This is where my line manager Rhona Robinson - Senior Estates Manager - made all the difference. Not only did she have my back to take the risk and try it our, she encouraged me to learn and develop and suggested that I enrol for our Ayrshire and Arran Improvement Foundation Skills (AAFS) Course. She know I could tackle this pilot project as part of that and get the benefits of applying and having structured support. That was a fantastic opportunity for me".

Caroline's primary motivation is teamworking and ways to help people connect, belong and feel included. "Exclusion can feel very lonely", she says. "It's not difficult to feel bottom of the chain when your not built into a communications loop, and on top of that when your generally only called on when there's a problem. It can lead to people feeling disenfranchised and not very valued. I can't tell you what a difference this has made. We've got teams on everyone's phones across the South and almost all of the North sections now and we start East next month. I can quickly and easily get information out to people every day, and everyone can connect with each other too. There's a lot of everyday stuff that you would expect to see, which is great, however, I can also flag up opportunities for them to get involved in things that are happening in the organisation, such as the pop-up workshops that were happening in Ailsa the other day. Everyone is really enjoying it and it has stripped out layers of unnecessary communication between this person and that person to get things done.

Caroline is positive and enthusiastic about the difference she can make as a digital champion. "This is only the start", she says. "If we can connect people on the move like this, and so easily, imagine what we can do when we have more of Office 365 to play with.