Two of our amazing colleagues took top places with their ILM Level 3 Awards

The course has been designed to give staff members the authority in a team, giving employers the ability to trust these members to run projects and be quality team leaders. The ILM Level 3 qualification has been specially designed to give practising or aspiring first-line managers a solid foundation in their formal development as a manager.

Two of our team members achieved outstanding scores when they took part in the ILM Level 3 course earlier this year. Both reached top ten places on the course, for all time. One of these colleagues was Danielle Whichelow, our Group Commercial Airtime Support Team Leader. When Danielle was promoted to GCAS Team Leader, she was offered the chance to take part in the Team Leadership ILM Level 3 course.

When Danielle first joined AST Networks in 2014, and quickly transitioned from her role in Activations and Billing, to a Senior Airtime Advisor role in the new GCAS team, when Paula Foster (Commercial Airtime Services Manager) created it. Then in March of this year, Danielle had proven herself so much, that she was promoted to Team Leader.

“The job and industry are ever changing and there is always an opportunity to learn – no day is ever the same. I am looking forward to any courses in the future that will benefit both myself and the team.”

Throughout her progression in the company and during the course, Danielle said that she received a huge amount of support from the GCAS team, plus they helped make her transition to Team Leader easy.

Jack Bilyard, our Group Software Solutions Team Leader, also finished the course in a top ten place for his work on the ILM Level 3 course. He decided to take on the course as he was, “interested in going down the project management and management route in general, [so] this was an excellent opportunity to learn about an area of work that I’d not had any exposure to before.”

Jack joined AST in 2012 as a Technical Administrator, focusing on customer and internal support. After taking some SQL courses, he moved to a Technical Support/Junior Developer role. Still continuing with support, he gained a good knowledge of every AST Networks system, particularly the My AST Portal. From this work, he found that he enjoyed co-ordinating people and troubleshooting, so spoke with Emma Church (Group Software Solutions Manager) about going down the route of project management.

“It has become clearer that I want a ‘career’ and not just a job. Through working, I have found that I am better at some aspects than others, so it is important that I spend my time and energy developing where I am best suited, which is what I am now attempting to do. It helps that I enjoy my job.”

Now as a GSS Team Leader, Jack is undertaking project management qualifications later this year, and a large part of his role is now based around looking after AST Networks apprentices, currently a team of five.

Congratulations to both of our incredibly hard-working colleagues. Taking a top ten place, of all time, for a course that has been running for a long time is a huge achievement.