This is the second in a series of 4 posts about employing my own team. Having had personal assistants in my life for 7 years when I went to university I thought the transition to living away was going to be relatively easy.  Unfortunately, starting university with a team of personal assistants I found this wasn’t the case.

We had 4 months to plan my move to uni after I was offered a place.  It was suggested that there was an agency on campus who provided personal assistants and they might be able to help.  Mum and I met with them and in the period before I moved into halls we agreed job descriptions, person specifications, training plans and expectations.  We were probably too trusting and naïve because at the start we allowed the agency to recruit and place with me staff they thought would be suitable, I had no say in this and met them on their first shift.

I started uni 2 weeks before other students returned and Mum moved into the on-campus flat with me, sleeping in another student bedroom.  The idea was she would provide the basic training and we would be up and running.  Gradually in the first week we became aware that the staff we were training were not going to be part of my ongoing team, 2 of them were assistant psychologists who were team leaders and they were just covering the role whilst the students who would be working with me returned from their summer breaks.

The very first person, Gemma, stayed with me nearly 4 years but reduced her hours very quickly due to her home commitments.  Another of the early team members was the lovely Jess who remains a friend today, we recently saw Ed Sheeran together in a mud filled adventure. The rest of the team came and went, it became clear they applied to the agency to do academic support on campus, and if the agency thought they might be suitable with no prior training they were asked to work with me.  This put a huge burden on both Mum and I,  Mum because she never got to go home, but ended staying in a flat nearby, and me because I was constantly having to train 24 hours a day and never got any respite.  There was never enough cover and people didn’t understand the job they were being asked to do by the agency until they arrived.  Frankly being a PA is not for everyone.

After the first term we agreed a different way of recruiting and I became involved in the process, along with Mum.  This proved more successful and Lianne a post-grad student joined the team, and she stayed much longer than any of us initially planned.  But by then it was clear that the way we needed to employ personal assistants needed to change, I needed people who would be with me in holidays, it was too tiring to have a constant stream of people through my door, sometimes as many as 4 different people in a day, it was chop and change. To facilitate this I took the decision to live long term in York rather than returning to Surrey in the holidays so we could recruit full time team members where working witth me was their working life.

In the May at the end of the first year we employed a case manager to set up my own full time team.  The plus side of this was getting personalized job descriptions, policies and procedures, basic training plans, recruitment and supervision of the team, oh, and setting up the payroll.  Initially we were led on employment decisions by the case manager, but over time realized we should trust our own judgement.  It became clear that whilst I needed ‘nice’ people, they also needed to be people I had things in common with, those who shared my zest for life and who would be prepared to empower me.

Twelve months after setting up my first directly employed team then Mum and I took over full management of the process and we said goodbye to the case manager. Five years later we have no regrets, this was the right decision for me. We do recruit regularly, people move on, often having been with me for a couple of years to gain experience to do a post-graduate qualification, maternity leave or occasionally its not the job for them. Others have stayed much longer and having stability in the team is reassuring.

Running my own team does have its challenges, but I would rather know I’m in control than feel like a bystander in my own life.  Agencies work brilliantly for lots of people I know, others run their own teams like me.  Running your own team does mean having to have the time and commitment to making it happen, in the final piece in this series I write about having a team leader role.

Coming next: my interview process