Kirsty Jones, Workshop Administrator, Llanelli
This quarter, Kirsty Jones, the Workshop Administrator for WG Davies, based at Owens Group in Llanelli volunteered to step into the spotlight and be interviewed by Janet Birkmyre.
Kirsty has been a member of the close knit team in Llanelli for almost five years now but the route she took to get there is most unusual – her background and experience prior to taking the job with WG Davies was exclusively working with children. So just how did she find herself working from the offices of Wales’ largest family-owned independent logistics, warehousing, pallet network, bulk haulage and home delivery company?
The answer is family, a theme which came up repeatedly during the interview. Kirsty told us, “My father, Mal, (Malcolm Jones, Roger’s right hand man for almost two decades) told me WG Davies were taking over the Owens contract and they needed an office administrator. I was working part time at a crèche but my son had just started school and I could work more days, so Mal asked me if I fancied an office job.”
By her own admission, Kirsty is not technically minded, “Even with my car, it is my father or my brother who sorts everything for me!”. So to find herself working with the team which maintains a part of Owens fleet of 550 vehicles and 850 trailers was, in her words, a “big but lovely change. I had always worked with children ever since leaving school and qualifying as an NNEB, I was either in a school or crèche setting.”
Few people will make such dramatic career changes, so how did it feel? “The hardest part was going from being totally confident in my job, to starting over from scratch – I knew nothing about lorries but I can honestly say that I have enjoyed it from the first day, when I was thrown in at the deep end”. There is no doubt that much of the job satisfaction Kirsty enjoys comes from being a part of the team at Llanelli, she told me “We all get on really well, there’s good banter between us. We are all friends and we work well together as a team. I have never felt like I am on my own, there is always back up or someone to ask for help.”
And Kirsty enjoys being a part of the wider WG Davies family too. As Mal’s daughter, she told me she grew up hearing about Roger, Debbie and Rachel and she recognises that, “WG Davies is a great company to be a part of, there is give and take, just so long as the work is done, everyone is happy. And Roger is so helpful, I know that if I needed something they would bend over backwards to get that – you are treated like a real person not a number.”
When she is not at work her energy is directed towards her son, Regan, who is nine, “He is sports mad, so all my free time is spent doing things with him. At the moment I am taking him to rugby and football on weekends, and we go for a walk together every day – we are like best friends, we have a joke and a laugh together.” She is also really close to her parents Mal and Ruby, and her brother Daniel, who works as an auto electrician at WG Davies in Swansea.
With such a strong family ethic it is perhaps no surprise that Kirsty was clear “The best thing about my job is working for a family business”. Her positivity and gratitude really shine through, for Kirsty believes that to be a part of a family is to be a part of something special and she has that both at home and at work. Thank you Kirsty for stepping into the spotlight.