In the Loop

lo p in the

June 2021

Oplo People Magazine

Get your head in the cloud!

We’ve launched Financial Cloud Page 13

Page 17

Pet competition winner announced!

Page 4

An interview with Georgina McCaul

Internal Promotions

Congratulations!

We are excited to announce the internal promotion of Chloe Smail to Collections Team Leader for Car Finance.

Chloe joined Car Finance as a Customer Relationship Manager back in 2018, and quickly progressed from Early Collections to Recoveries and then into a Senior Collector role. Recently Chloe has taken over the management of the Early Collections Team and excelled in the continued development of the team and the control of Early Collections performance to exceed budget and targets.

New starters

Welcome!

to the new starters who have joined in June!

Anthony Mould Customer Relationship Manager Georgina McCaul Junior Mortgage Lending Analyst Ian Stuart Customer Relationship Manager Amna Shafiq Junior Value Analyst

We are delighted to announce the internal promotion of Hannah Bryce to Training and Competency Supervisor for the Consumer Lending Division.

Craig Williams Secured Sales Advisor

Hannah joined the Personal Loans Team as a Completions Assistant back in 2017, and soon after progressed through to a Senior Underwriter.

Recently Hannah has played a big part in delivering much of the teams' training and onboarding of new starters, in which she has excelled.

Kelsey Fryett Customer Service Advisor

Please join us in congratulating them in their new roles!

Emma Winstanley Risk Manager

Andrew Holton Customer Service Advisor Christopher Ryan Head of Consumer Collections

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Aura: Personalised meditation for your employees Over 3,000 on-demand mindfulness sessions for meditation and restful sleep What’s Aura?

How does it work?

Aura is an app that gives your employees

Choose a mood or topic you’re interested in

access to more than 3,000 meditation,

(e.g. stress, anxious, sleep, tales for kids)

mindfulness, sleep and life coaching tracks.

It’s a great way to help your team deal with stress, anxiety and trouble sleeping.

It works a bit like Spotify, but for mindfulness. The more you use Aura, the more it gets to know you – delivering personalised recommendations and putting the perfect session at your fingertips.

It’s great for all levels of experience with a mix of shorter and longer tracks. You’ll find quick, three minute meditations, alongside full hour-long sessions.

How to redeem: Your employees just need to search for “Aura” on Perkbox We’ll give them a code to swap for three month’s access to the app After three months, they can come back for another code

www.perkbox.com

Aura will recommend an audio track – as short as three minutes. The recommendations are based on hundreds of millions of data points from their users.

Listen to your track and rate it when you’re done. Aura will learn what you like and continuously improve your recommendations.

A

Georgina McCaul Junior Mortgage Lending Analyst

Tell us a little bit about your background and where you have come from?

Accounting and Finance and did my placement year at Home Retail Group as a Data Analyst. After graduating I went to JD Sports Fashion plc to join the Space Planning team as Branch Merchandising Analyst for three years before I got this exciting role at Oplo.

Three words to best describe you?

Conscientious, Caring and Creative.

If you could travel to one destination right now, where would it be?

Paris, great energy and food.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I wanted to be a chef!

If you could have any superpower what would it be and why?

Control the weather, nothing worse than when you have something exciting planned and it rains!

Introducing our Oplo People Facebook Group Losing emails? Missing your co-workers? Lacking interaction with other Oplo People? We've got the answer!

Welcome to Oplo’s closed Facebook group, an environment where you can share pretty much anything you like (as long as it’s in keeping with our rules).

We want this page to help bring our Oplo People together. Maybe you have a fundraising idea you’d like to suggest, or a personal achievement to share with your colleagues. It might be to update everyone with news of a traffic jam so that people can find an alternative route home.

This is a fun forum which has been created to connect us after a difficult year. It’s a positive and non-judgemental area where you can engage or just keep up to date with your fellow colleagues at Oplo. We hope you enjoy being part of the group and find it a useful addition to business.

Click here to join!

Here are some guidelines on what is expected when you join the group: 1

Be kind. Insulting or bullying of any kind isn’t allowed, and degrading comments about things such as race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender or identity will not be tolerated.

2

No advertising. Don’t use the group to advertise yours or someone else’s business, page or website.

3

Talk to the admin team. If you have any questions or concerns or are experiencing issues in the group, please turn to one of the admins for help.

That’s what we’re here for!

4

Posts that get the group excited are; honest, positive; passionate; and relevant. Remember – A picture speaks a thousand words – keep it sharp, snappy and on point. And give us a great image!

5

Ask questions – start the conversation.

6

Solve problems – help each other out.

Don’t just stick to ‘likes’ on the posts get involved, give your recommendations.

7

Be positive – celebrate each other’s posts. If someone is posting for the first time let them know what was great about their post.

8

Be informed – use search and see if anyone else has posted and the answers are there.

9

Be genuine – that’s what makes this place brilliant.

Ready to make an Impact Everything you need to know about Oplo Impact

Impact If you sw itch to an through EV Octopus , O will fund plo the cost of your home ch arging st ation!

Our top 5 facts about electric vehicles Transport currently contributes one-third of all the UK’s carbon emissions, in 2020 there were over 31 million registered vehicles on the UK roads alone, the majority being diesel and petrol. This is why electric motoring has become so important over recent years.

Here are our top 5 facts about the benefits of electric motoring: 1

The construction of EVs to support the battery means that the advancements in suspension can give you a comfier ride. Not only that, but the quieter operation of the vehicle gives a more relaxing experience.

2

The charging of EVs is efficiently handled and recycled by energy providers, it is also much cheaper than diesel or petrol.

3

There has been a 500% increase in the number of EV charging points in the last 5 years.

4

You might think that the lack of fuel would slow you down, but no, many EVs have a quicker 0-60 acceleration speed!

5

In approximately 9 years time, new petrol and diesel vehicles will be banned in the UK!

If you’re interested in switching to electric motoring and reducing your carbon footprint then we can help. Through our partnership with Octopus we’re offering you a direct contact who will be able to advise you on your switch, just follow this link https://calendly.com/rahul-mccourt/oplo-personal-contract-hire-consultation?month=2021-06

Impact

Why do we take such care with Oplo workspaces?

So how are we putting this design ethos into place?

According to the Health and Safety Executive, 18.9 million working days were lost in the UK due to stress, anxiety and depression. We care about that. We want to safeguard our employees.

We are sensitive to the needs of those coming back into an organisational workspace after working from home. Our agenda is around light, space, energy, efficiency, recyclable materials and the overall impact on the senses and the mind.

What are the real advantages of a considered physical space?

We can hardly find any disadvantages! Spaces that allow employees to breathe, function at their best, are energy-efficient and pleasant give advantages in every direction of our business, most of all in the way they support our interaction with customers.

Employees at our Blackpool Office can enjoy their breaks in our ‘Harmony Courtyard’ or take time out in our ‘Reflection Space’.

Both of these areas use natural materials, soft colours and the intelligence of plants. The building is also constructed to maximise airflow and the amazing views from its coastal location.

Our experience tells us that how someone feels at work impacts all aspects of their life.

First and foremost, it affects how they interact with customers and also what they take home with them to their families and friends. There can be no greater social or economic impact than the positive health and wellbeing of an employee. Just our opinion…

Did you know?

Our Blackpool HQ uses LED lighting.

Did you know that a traditional lightbulb only converts about 5% of the energy it uses into light?!

Impact

Seed Balls - how are yours doing?

We would love to see how everyone's Seed Balls are coming along… where did you plant them, how much have they grown, have you seen any bees yet?

Share your photos on our Oplo Facebook group!

If you think a bee is struggling the best thing to do is gently put the bee onto a bee-friendly flower.

Alternatively, mix 50/50 white sugar and water to give the bumblebee a one-off energy boost.

What To Look Out For From Oplo Impact: Beach Clean

Sunday 18th July, South Pier, Blackpool.

Leighton Hall

Team building days, volunteering days, planting trees and bulbs, wildlife programmes, Oplo family and health & wellbeing days.

Cycle To Work Scheme

Coming soon!

Bounce Back – Resilience

New partner coming: we’re engaging with a psychologist of 22 years (BSc Psychology, P.G.C.E, MSc Educational Psychology).

This partner will be developing workshops which are intended to help, develop and sustain resilience and keep people going through tough times. These workshops will give you the tools to bounce back from adversity despite challenging times This has been especially relevant through the recent pandemic where everyone has experienced so much loss, not just of people, but of routine, opportunities and social interaction.

Facilities‚ ll your oflice nfids! here for a We're here if you: • Discover any issues with the offices that need reporting, such as leaky taps, air con malfunctions, or lights not working • Require any hotels, trains or meeting rooms arranging • Need buffets and refreshments for meetings • Require provisions such as tea, coffee, sugar & cleaning products • Need COVID lateral flow testing kits • Have questions regarding car parking at Head Office • Want to know more about recycling and waste management • Need to place a stationery order If you need us for any of the above, please just send us an email to Facilities@myoplo.co.uk and we’d be happy to help!

In the meantime we are pleased to announce we have signed a new lease for another office in Albion Wharf, Manchester, which will be used as an IT Innovation Hub. Both of the Manchester offices are being refurbished and will be ready at the beginning of August.

Our Durham office at Chester Le Street will also be having a mini refurbishment, this will include fresh paint throughout, Oplo glass posters, and new plants!

When life gives you lemons….

When placing a cupcake order the delivery driver did not take care of our order (as I am sure we have all experienced on one occasion)! We ended up with a lot of slightly squished cupcakes so Debbie Waterman thought outside the box and contacted The Learning Tree Nursery at Whitehills…

And we think the kids loved them!

! o l p O m Go tea

We launched On Monday 14th of June we launched our new collections platform ‘Financial Cloud’.

As you may have seen, to celebrate, we sent out branded cupcakes to all our offices and displayed ‘Financial Cloud’ balloons all around HQ! Congratulations to all involved in the successful launch of Financial Cloud!

We hope you all enjoyed the cupcakes!

Understanding You’ve all heard that we launched a new collections platform this month. We even got cake to celebrate! But do you actually know how it was created and what it does?

We asked some of our Financial Cloud experts to give us a little insight into the new system...

Financial Cloud is a collections system designed to manage our collections accounts. It has been created to improve the customer journey, the customer communications, and the customer outcome.

How did we do it…?

The project squad who worked on the system were a true mix of Oplo people from around the business. This allowed for a greater understanding of how the Financial Cloud needed to operate throughout Oplo.

They worked together collaboratively, in a non-hierarchical environment, having daily team calls to solve problems, and challenging one another’s skills without judgement. Everything was a team effort, triumphs, and mistakes alike.

Thick skin, a good sense of humour, copious amounts of alcohol and a hot tub was everything needed for the project team to get this system live!

What does Financial Cloud mean for Oplo and how did we deliver the project?

On the customer facing side of the business, there was a huge amount of time invested in training everyone on the new system to gain a thorough understanding before it went live. Our teams fully embodied the brand values during the launch, and here’s how…

The project squad shared their extensive knowledge of the system.

Short training videos were produced which agents could watch from home. These were essential to aid understanding of the new system.

The new system enables agents to improve the customer journey by using call flows and frameworks. The agents are given key areas to cover and directed to probe only when necessary. This gives a more consistent and improved customer journey, meaning they receive the right outcome to help them.

New ideas and enterprising ways of working were discussed and implemented among the collections team and the project squad, all with the purpose of making the new system a success for our customers and employees.

The teams involved offered amazing support to the launch by ensuring a technical expert was available at each of the sites for testing, ensuring a fair launch for everyone.

Everyone really came together to make this launch a success, which is exactly what Oplo is all about.

Competition please!

ll o r m u r D

The winner of our pet competition is…

Frank! At just 19 weeks old he is already a cheeky chappy, and very cute.

Congratulations Samantha Howarth and Frank you've won 12 trees planted in your name and an eco pet hamper!

Winner!

2nd place!

And in joint 3rd place we have Sarah Chapmans mum and daughter duo, Lexi and Poppy (top), and two of Holly Wadeson’s fur babies, Tinks (bottom left) and Cassie (bottom right). You’ll get 3 trees planted in your names, plus an eco pet prize!

In 2nd place we have Mosely and Inca, Ajay Mitha’s troublesome twosome.

We’ll plant 6 trees in your name and send over an eco pet prize!

3rd place!

There is a new business on Whitehills Business Park…

g ntroducinSculpt IRide, and The Juice Club!

“We have recently opened at Units 5 & 6 on Whitehills Business Park! If you don't know anything about us, we are a boutique Gym, Spin & HIIT studio with an on-site coffee and juice bar, as well as a variety of brunch options. This is open to everyone from 7am.

We also have lots of exciting things coming!! For example, over the next couple of weeks, we will be introducing our sandwich and salad bar, which will provide everyone with a delicious (and healthy if you like) option for lunch.

If you would like a tour of the full Gym (including the spin and HIIT studios) please feel free to pop in at any time during the day. Or, if you would prefer to book a time, please email us on info@uk-sculpt.co.uk We look forward to seeing you all soon!”

The Sculpt, Ridueice Club Team &J If you would like to follow them on Instagram, their handles are: @uk_ride @sculpt_uk @thejuiceclub_uk They also have an app on the App Store, ‘RIDE & SCULPT’, where you can view their timetable and book all your classes (plus order your pre or post workout smoothies!)

YourExtra Mile Understanding At Oplo we take time to get to know you and understand your situation. We look for the possibilities, not the problems. Want to thank someone for showing a unique level of understanding or compassion?

Fair We believe that everyone deserves an equal opportunity to better themselves. We’re always open minded and even handed with our customers and with one another. Has your colleague gone above and beyond to help you better yourself by being open minded and accepting?

Enabling We give hard working people the tools to help themselves. We’re always helpful and practical in our approach. Has a team member supported you in powering your potential, enabling you to achieve a goal?

Enterprising We’re entrepreneurial and authentic. We genuinely believe that when you fulfil your potential everyone succeeds. Why not congratulate one of your colleagues on showing great initiative within the team or towards a customer!

“Understanding” “I would like to thank Tiff Howarth.

She is always so nice to chat to in the office and gives great advice. Always a smiling face see in the office every morning.”

“ I would like to nominate Matt Davenport for some overdue and deserved recognition. His humour and motivation keeps the sales team going. He is always positive and has established himself as a key member of the team! He keeps us laughing, even when morale is low and is needed in the sales team.”

Fiona Quarmby

Jonathan Green

“Secured Sales Team for being understanding whilst waiting for Clearscore to go live. They have been a great help supporting the audits and packaging, Thank you.”

Michelle Mills

“Fair” “I want to thank Keely Niland for all her hard work over the last few months. She always goes the extra mile no matter how busy she is. She does a fantastic job at all the admin tasks and never complains. She is always available to support the team and train new starters. I couldn’t fault her work and attitude, well done Kee. Keep smashing it!”

Helen Travis

“Francesca Chadwick for taking on a lot of senior tasks over the last few months and also stepping up taking lead during my time off.”

Phillip Eastham

Your Extra Mile

“Owen Atherton – For being extremely open-minded with our new system deployment.

Owen has offered his assistance with all tasks that required completion and has provided constructive feedback to management where he feels it is applicable. Owen has spent time creating help sheets for himself so that he finds it easier when navigating the system on our first few days of going live.”

Chloe Smail

“Enterprising” “Vanessa Stell – For stepping up and supporting both myself and the team in recent months. Vanessa is always looking to help others out and is very proactive with all tasks that she is set.”

Chloe Smail

“Brue Reynolds and Mark Hardman for helping with GLabs over the last few months and being the subject matter experts over the next few days.”

Phillip Eastham

“Enabling”

“Andrew Burns and Alec Houston for going above and beyond and getting stuck into supporting us with the Data Tape work.”

Nathan Kenny

“We would like to nominate the Personal Loans Collections Team. For the last few months there have been a lot of changes and I feel that as a department everyone has pulled together and we have achieved some very good results. Keep up the hard work team!”

Jenna Wilkinson

“I would like to nominate Bruce Reynolds and Francesca Chadwick They will both always go above and beyond of what is asked of them.

They will not hesitate to take on extra responsibilities and they will always assist the senior staff where needed, they will go that extra mile”

“I would like to nominate the Home Loans Lending Team. They are such a fabulous bunch of people and are a great team to work with! Hardworking and lots of laughs along the way. Think we have done a pretty amazing job over past 6 months being taken away from our normal sales advisor roles and getting involved in helping out with other departments, on packaging smashing BMO’s and S&V’s and helping out on audits. What a team! It has been amazing working alongside other departments, getting to know you all and gaining an insight more into what they do, thank you!”

Jenna Wilkinson

Islay Horton

“Within the QA and Complaints Teams we have had quite a few new faces join us in recent months and to ensure their knowledge levels are developed as to how each business and team operates, we have reached out to different parts of the business to spend time running through key processes.

The business without exception have been very accommodating with these virtual visits, enabling the QA and Complaints Team to really understand what they do. I would therefore like to thank (and my apologies if i miss anyone) Christine Duggan, Debbie Fitzgerald, Matt Gargett, Shaun Wood, Anita Haley, Vanessa Stell, Cheryl Williams, Claire Gallagher, Katy Heaps, Hannah Bryce, Amber Langley, Catherine Dunbar, Jenna Wilkinson, Steve Catterall and Salma Ahmed.”

Rick Keeble

Your Extra Mile