16th February 2021
Stories from an Inspiring Leader – Sarah Brain
Sarah Brain, Free Services Manager, AbilityNet
Sarah always takes a person-centred approach to her work and considers the needs of all individuals in her decision making. Sarah balanced her concern to ensure we were able to continue to support disabled and older people to get online in this critical time but also to think of their safety as many will be particularly vulnerable to the virus. Similarly we have a lot of volunteers that are retired and there was a need to safeguard their health too. Sarah was able to mobilise a switch to online support with training and guidance for our volunteers and also a move to online communities for our networks including a range of webinars and online meetings and social events organised by our Free Services Marketing Manager and Community Relationship Manager.
Sarah showed courage by taking decisive action about safety whilst maintaining the lifeline of our support services. She was also not afraid to take an innovative approach to ensuring volunteer engagement was maintained. We hold an annual volunteer event to train and engage our 300 strong volunteer base and this was moved at short notice to be an online volunteer’s week with daily training and talks to the volunteer community. Sarah managed to coordinate this amidst many other priorities and the feedback was fantastic. When we ran our twice annual volunteer engagement survey engagement had actually increased since last time and many of the comments received mentioned the focus on keeping them informed and included as being a big plus of volunteering at AbilityNet.
Endorsement
“Sarah quietly just gets on and delivers a phenomenal amount and is one of the nicest people you could ever hope to work with.”
About Inspiring Leaders
The extract above is taken from the Inspiring Leaders 2020 initiative which recognised exceptional leaders during the Covid-19 pandemic. You can download the full eBook with all the leader stories here.
Inspiring Leaders was created as a vehicle to recognize people who stepped up to help individuals, teams and organizations navigate personal and business challenges, and make a contribution to make their business, their community and the world a better place.
Due to the success of IL 2020, we have brought it back in 2021. We are now open for nominations. For more information about how to enter Inspiring Leaders, dates and fees – click here.