Blog post by Maya Drennan, Customer Service Adviser at RoS.

To mark Scotland’s Year of Young People, my colleague Antoine and I had the chance to experience a typical day in the life of our keeper and Chief Executive, Jennifer Henderson.

To give us an insight into what is involved in Jennifer’s role, it was arranged that we would shadow Jennifer and accompany her to various meetings and briefings. Our day began in the Keeper’s office where we had the chance to introduce ourselves to Jennifer and were briefed on the day’s fully packed agenda, though Jennifer assured us that it was very much a typical day for her.

The first item on the agenda was an Arrears Meeting with the Head of Registration, Stevie Simpson.

This was a particularly insightful part of our day as it made it clear that progress is being made on an issue that I am confronted with each day when speaking with customers. Jennifer explained that her vision is transparency with agents. Jennifer is currently considering publishing the dates of some of our oldest cases to give an insight into what we are dealing with.

This meeting made me feel that I now have some insight when dealing with disgruntled customers to provide a better response regarding our backlogs. Overall this has allowed me to improve my customer service skills. Following the Arrears Meeting, Antoine and I attended a meeting with the Information Security Group. This meeting was chaired by Jim McConnell and dealt with Cyber Security within RoS. This was something I had never given much thought to but as a digital organisation it is imperative that we continue to be able to protect our information as we endeavour to be fully digital by 2020.

We then moved on to a working lunch, during which Jennifer met with the Secretariat team, reviewed documents and structured future agendas.

This was a fantastic opportunity for us both to ask Jennifer questions. I asked Jennifer what she thought her biggest challenge is as keeper. Jennifer explained the objective which she feels is her biggest challenge is developing a plan which would allow customers to access relevant information at no cost, while simultaneously ensuring that RoS continues to operate as a financially self-sustaining organisation.

I found this very surprising as I assumed our arrears would be the biggest challenge. As I continued throughout the day it became very clear that RoS aims are to meet our customer needs. Currently more and more of customers demand free information however without funding in place we cannot meet these customer demands. I began to understand just how difficult this objective is for our Executive Management Team (EMT).

We headed on to an informal meeting with team leaders from various departments.

Jennifer opened the floor to any concerns or questions that each of the team leaders had. This provided me with an insight into the various issues that each department faces within RoS. The Keeper’s schedule includes regular catch-ups with various EMT members. We met with Janet Egdell and Billy Harkness over the course of the afternoon to discuss progress on land register completion and corporate objectives.

We dedicated some time to getting an overview of Intake 2-day Settle, Jennifer settled a case. This was another highlight of the day for me personally. As I never anticipated Jennifer would take a hands-on approach to understanding the duties we do. This was followed by a briefing from Rhona Mackay in regards to ScotLIS and our stakeholders. Rhona and Jennifer discussed how our Customer Relationship Managers support our customers to issue our existing products and new products such as ScotLIS.

Our day was then rounded off with meeting with Business Continuity Manager Lorraine Harper.

We received an overview on the plan that we have if we ever suffer a loss of premises, IT systems or people. It was very interesting to see the forward planning and how RoS plan to deal with various situations. Overall, I found my day shadowing the keeper to be extremely rewarding. I enhanced my own knowledge and understanding across various business areas and shared my experience with my team. I gained a real insight into Jennifer’s role and the daily duties her role entails.

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