To tie in with International Women’s Day, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of the women here at Registers who, through their roles, are making our business transformation happen! In this article we speak to Ruth who’s been with us for over thirty years and currently works as a business change manager. Find out about the successes and challenges that have brought her to where she is now!

Hi Ruth! Tell us about what you do here at Registers of Scotland?

I’ve worked at Registers for some 33 years this September and — as you can imagine — I’ve seen our organisation change phenomenally over the years! My current role is to help the business prepare for any changes to technology, processes or re-organisation. I work with the managers, IT development teams, business analysts and product owners to understand what is being delivered, what the ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ processes are and who is being impacted by a change.

What was your journey towards your current role?

I’ve worked in most areas of the business during my career: registration, reports, sasines, customer services to name but a few, and have been a manager for the biggest part. Around three years ago, I got the opportunity to become a product owner within the Digital Transformation Programme. I loved the challenge of working with our various teams to deliver a new scanning solution which allowed us to start moving from a paper based registration process to a digital one.

It was from this experience that I was asked to undertake my current role. As a business change manager, I influence how change is transitioned into the business, ensuring we think about how the people who are being impacted can be best supported through to a successful implementation of the change.

What challenges have you faced along the way?

I really enjoyed my role as a team leader within registration; I was completely within my comfort zone. I love working with teams to achieve whatever target we are set. When I moved to the product owner role, I was totally out with my comfort zone. As we all know, RoS loves an acronym but what I didn’t think about is that in IT, they use different ones!

I listened to colleagues talking about ‘MVP’ and ‘API’ and didn’t have a clue what they were. I felt like I had made a huge mistake leaving an environment that I was at ease with and moving to a new role that made me feel confused and a bit lost. Not only did I have to learn a new role, but also a new language. Thankfully after a couple of weeks, things started to make sense to me as I got to grips with my new environment and I really enjoyed my role.

What one piece of advice would you give to others that you wish you’d realised earlier?

Always push yourself to try something new and go out with your comfort zone to challenge yourself — the rewards can be very satisfying.

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