Supporting women's employability with Jan Iceton

Meet the Mancunian -9.4-Jan Iceton- transcript

Intro

Hello, listeners, and welcome to Season 9 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester. I'm your host, Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, offering you a warm Mancunian welcome. This season is extra special as I'm collaborating with the Spirit of Manchester Awards, celebrating the city's voluntary and community sector. Throughout the season, I'll be featuring interviews with award winners and nominees, shining a light on the incredible work happening across our city.

Every Tuesday I bring you the stories of Manchester's community champions. Individuals working for a range of causes and making life better for the people of Manchester. My hope is to inspire you to discover your own purpose, whether through volunteering or getting involved in the social impact sector, while also celebrating good causes and spreading positivity.

You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or my website at meetthemancunian.co.uk. Stay tuned for a season full of inspiring social impact stories.

Introduction to Jan Iceton and Her Passion

Passionate about supporting women find employment. In the fourth episode of Season 9, we hear from Jan Iceton, Board Chair, Smart Works and Spirit of Manchester Award winner for partnership and collaboration.

[00:05:02] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks Jan for joining me today.

[00:05:05] Jan Iceton: Hi, good evening.

[00:05:06] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Really nice to have you today. Tell us about how you found your passion for supporting women. Where did that start?

Jan's Professional Journey and Support for Women

[00:05:12] Jan Iceton: I had a successful professional career Manchester, nationally and then internationally towards the end. And I always did try to find amazingly talented, fantastic women, and to promote them and develop them and to help them remove career barriers to their progression. So, I think I've always been passionately supportive of helping women who I think have been overlooked for promotions and things like that, not just all women, but those who I think will actually, you're contributing an awful lot, but you perhaps haven't found your voice just yet. So, I was always involved in all of that.

And I'm the middle of three sisters and we all love, not necessarily fashion, but we all love style and trying new things and trying to stay relevant with our young, cool daughters. So, I've always had an interest in those two strands that come together so beautifully with Smart Works.

[00:06:07] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And I like that very much about talking about supporting people to find their voice. It's so powerful, isn't it? Because you can just see a transformation when people find their voice and their confidence and their place in the world.

It brings us very well to Smart Works and how did you get involved and what does Smart Works do for Greater Manchester?

Getting Involved with Smart Works

[00:06:27] Jan Iceton: I got involved five years ago. A very good friend of mine was a stylist for Smart Works. And we always laugh about this, she contacted me and said, Jan, I've found the most perfect thing for you to get involved with.

And I'd been really lucky, Deepa, I'd had a successful final career job with a company that we then sold, a really high-quality tech company based in Chorley. So I retired, I hate that word, but I haven't found another substitute for it just yet. I retired quite early in my early fifties and after a few months. I think my friend thought I was probably more restless than I actually was. And she said, I've found the most perfect thing for you. And I said to her, I remember I said, I'm not looking for a job.

And she said, Oh, don't worry. You won't get paid. It's a voluntary position. And she explained what Smart Works does and what she does as a stylist, which is integral to the service. And I was immediately, bitten by the opportunity. And I said send me all the paperwork. And then very quickly, I found myself as chair of the charity across Greater Manchester.

[00:07:37] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's a great story and more power to your friend who got you involved.

[00:07:41] Jan Iceton: She's still a stylist now, actually.

[00:07:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Oh, lovely. So tell us more about Smart Works. What does it do? What does it offer the women in Greater Manchester?

Smart Works' Mission and Services

[00:07:50] Jan Iceton: Smart Works Greater Manchester, provides support, inspiration and empowerment to all unemployed women aged 16 to 66 across the city region who are actively looking for work. They have to be unemployed and actively looking for work, a woman or identifying as a woman, and that's the only criteria.

We work closely with referral partners, such as all the job centres, the working in skills providers, local charities, community interest groups. And we're there really to provide support that isn't there generally across the third sector to these women.

Some of our women, high percentages of our women have been unemployed for five years. They've applied for 30 plus jobs. There's something stopping them. breaking through that barrier, whether that's their self-confidence or whether it's their ability to explain the value that they bring to an employer.

The Styling and Coaching Process

[00:08:47] Jan Iceton: So Smart Works provides a number of really clear services. The first one is job search coaching. So a woman is at the very early part of her journey into work. She might not have a CV. She doesn't know what a cover letter is. She's got a whole series of lived experiences but doesn't really understand that they are core competencies that an employer might really value. So that's a coaching service that we provide with our fantastic coaches across the service.

It's online, it's really easy to access and a client can contact us through the job centre on a Tuesday and we can set up coaching on say Wednesday or even a Thursday. Such is the flexibility of our coaching volunteers.

And then when the client has an interview lined up, she's invited to come into one of our centres. There's one in Manchester city. There's one in Stockport town centre, and all of our services can be provided fully virtually for women who are unwilling or unable to travel.

And that's when the client comes in for a two-hour appointment. And the first hour is with a stylist and the stylists are kind, authentic, women who just want another woman to have a shot at success in the job market. And they love clothes. They don't want to impose their style on anyone else, but they want a woman to feel and look the very best that she can feel. And so the client is with the stylist for an hour.

And really Deepa, we break down barriers in that hour. We have fun, the client relaxes, she knows that we are just interested in her being successful in this daunting thing that's coming up called an interview. And the client always typically asks for black pair of trousers and a white top because she thinks she wants to blend in. And then we have to gently encourage the client to perhaps pick out a red blazer or a bright blue dress, something that suits her style and her colour preferences.

And then there's always a moment when the client looks in the mirror and you see it in her eyes and she thinks, wow, I've never looked like this or this is the way I always wanted to look or this is the way I used to look before life ground me down. And then when the client's picked her outfit, the stylist will package it all up in beautiful white tissue paper with some free goodies and things in a bag to make it feel extra special.

And then with her shoulders back, her head held high and her ears listening to the advice, she then goes for the one-hour coaching session. And we always do it that way around. It's powerful. It works. It's proven. And the clients are much more receptive to the coaching because by then they trust us. They know that we only want the very best outcome for them.

Impact and Success Stories

[00:11:42] Jan Iceton: And then when the client gets the job and 63 percent of the clients who come to us get a job within a month. The client is invited back for a second dressing where it's a really fun appointment, ideally with the same stylist, but we sometimes can't arrange that.

She comes back to us for an hour just with a stylist and she gets another five to eight pieces of clothing to give her a full capsule wardrobe for when she enters the workplace. And that is Smart Works.

[00:12:10] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I just love it. I've been, as I said to you before we started this interview, been following it for a long time. And I think it's such a lovely concept, that boosts to confidence and like you said, sometimes helping people, just giving them a little friendly lift up just puts them in the right space, so that when they go confidently to interviews, they are then hopefully successful. It's really great to hear that 63 percent actually get their job immediately in the first month.

[00:12:37] Jan Iceton: It's been higher than that, but it's a tough world out there at the moment, isn't it? Post Covid, the cost-of-living crisis has been grinding people down. And we'd love it to get back to where it was around 73%, and we're confident that we will. But to put some scale on that, last year we supported 883 unemployed women.

 63 percent of them getting a job is a pretty hefty number and this year we will support 1,104 unemployed women across Greater Manchester to get the job. And there are aspects of the charity that we run it really tight, like a bit of a commercial organisation. We've got six members of staff. Eight members on the board of trustees, and all of the services are delivered by around 50 amazing, talented, committed volunteers who make the services really special for all of us.

Challenges and Outreach Efforts

[00:13:31] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Sounds really interesting. And you said it's a tough world out there, so what are the challenges you've had to overcome to continue to offer these services?

[00:13:39] Jan Iceton: You would think being a charity that we would say funding and if my treasurer the wonderful Allison listens to this she will say always mention the money Jan. And money is important, and we'll talk about that in relation to our series in the Spirit of Manchester collaboration with AJ Bell Futures Foundation.

Money is important to us, but we work really hard as mainly as a board of trustees and our fundraising manager. We work really hard to seek out grant funding, corporate funding. But really, and this is why this podcast is so important to us, it's finding clients. It's reminding the job centres the work coaches and the charities and the third sector organizations, reminding them that we've been there for nine years, and we are really successful and our doors are still open.

They're all busy people, aren't they? They've all got other objectives. So we constantly work on our outreach. So it's finding all unemployed women across Greater Manchester. And for them to find their way to our door, they can contact us directly. And as long as they don't mind us asking which job centre they're noted to, then that's all it takes for us to then invite them into the service.

So the main challenge is Maintaining awareness of the service to the clients that we want to reach.

Expansion and Future Goals

[00:15:03] Jan Iceton: And we opened in Manchester in April 2023, because we've been based in Stockport for eight years, and as across Greater Manchester. It's pretty hard from Rochdale, Oldham, Bury, Bolton and Wigan to get all the way to Stockport.

It's the only part of the Greater Manchester geography that isn't on the tram system yet. So, it served the southern boroughs and parts of Manchester City itself quite well, but it really didn't serve the unemployed women that lived in the northern parts of Greater Manchester. So that was a massive strategic objective for us, because we are a charity.

To open premises slap bang in the city centre of Manchester, we need a big premises, Deepa, because we carry 3, 000 items of clothing in both of our centres. So we need not half a football pitch, but it's a pretty big space. So anyway. So , it's mainly those two things, finding clients and finding money.

[00:15:59] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I do hope that the podcast can help you reach more women who might be interested, or even people who want to support women in their life and give them a bit of a boost.

[00:16:08] Jan Iceton: Thank you.

[00:16:08] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What would you say is the biggest impact you've made so far? You've talked a lot about the fact that people have found jobs. Are there other ways you want to talk about impact or share some stories of people who have benefited?

[00:16:21] Jan Iceton: We help all sorts of women who've been in different circumstances. For example, last year was a typical year for our client base. 53 percent are from ethnic minorities, 30 percent are lone parents, 40 percent have been unemployed for a year, 11 percent for over five years, and 18 percent had a disability.

We support all women across all different communities and intersections of communities. And some of the barriers that they face are confidence. So we really work on confidence. And the idea is very much that the confidence and the self-esteem and the self-belief that you gain through Smart Works and then getting a job.

Hopefully it stays with that woman. We'll signpost other organisations that can help her after she's got a job. We work quite closely with Queen Bee Coaching that are part of the Pankhurst Trust. And other organisations that go on to support women once they're in work. But our job is done at that point, but we do believe that financial independence starts with getting a job.

That's the fundamental principle of the charity. And if we can start to help a woman on that journey towards financial independence, and she's looked after by a good employer then we've done an awful lot to overcome some of the hardships that she's probably had in the last five years when she's been looking for a job, or the last one year, but doing 30 hours applying.

There was a young client in our office the other day, Dorcas, who is a client reference of ours. She was only young and she'd been spending 30 hours a week looking for a job. And clients don't really get feedback as to why they don't get a job, particularly if they go out at the first cut. So we ask employers always, make sure that you give feedback to clients.

Make sure you offer to reimburse travel expenses if it's an in-person interview and the like. But she'd been really working very hard and she just wanted had lost her way in the whole application process and felt if you spend 30 hours a week for six months applying for work and you don't even get feedback, where do you actually think you're going wrong? Because you don't even know what you're doing right. Do you know what I mean? It's just such an overwhelming sense of, dread to apply for the next one.

Anyway, she came to Smart Works. We worked, our coaches worked their wonder on her. She left our service with a bright green suit from one of our biggest supporters, J. D. Williams. She looked amazing. And then when she went into her coaching, our coach ended the session with Dorcas saying, actually you come across as a really confident person. And she says in one of our videos, she's what? Me? Confident? She couldn't believe that she was coming across to us by the end of her first dressing appointment as a confident young woman.

So she's now got a job as a sales and marketing assistant. And we do try and keep in touch with our clients through social media. And we invite them to, to follow us, to be part of our community because there's all sorts of things that we do, content that we put out and events that we do that will just keep them connected with us. So that if they're feeling a bit low and that special Smart Works magic is starting to rub off because they've been in the workplace for six months. If they come to one of our events it will go back into their soul pretty quickly and they'll get another big boost.

[00:19:50] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I love that about the special Smart Works magic and also the boost the soul. And everybody needs those little infusions. So, it's great that you're doing that.

Partnerships and Awards

[00:20:01] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And congratulations on being nominated for the Spirit of Manchester Award. What is being nominated for Spirit of Manchester Award mean to you?

[00:20:10] Jan Iceton: Oh, we were beyond thrilled to be recognised by the organisers of the Spirit of Manchester Awards. And to be recognised for our partnership with AJ Bell Future Foundation is extra special because that organisation, we’d had some funding from them. I remember the first time was their wage war on COVID campaign when COVID, the first few weeks of COVID and everybody had to close.

And they did a salary sacrifice scheme across their board of directors, which wasn't really talked about and celebrated as it should have been, but they donated funding to us. And we were, one of the few Smart Works across the country that's managed to stay open. As soon as non-essential retail opened, our doors were wide open. We followed every safety protocol in the book, which was rigorous and extensive. We had no cases in the centre, but our relationship started with them around then.

And then they created the Future Foundations, which is their charitable trust. And it was established just as we were thinking about opening the new centre, in the city centre, and as a board of trustees, we were really nervous because we needed to raise double the cash for the charity.

Premises in the city centre aren't cheap, although we have an amazing landlady who looks after us as well as she can. That's Rose Marley at Cooperatives UK, who also got a mention in the nomination. But AJ Bell said, look, we're really interested in what you're trying to do, and we really believe in you.

Because the purpose of the charity is to help people who have faced significant life challenges by providing them with opportunities to build a better future through self-advancement. And, that’s really what Smart Works does. So there was a real affinity with what the Charitable Trust was trying to do, what Smart Works does.

And honestly, they saw what we were trying to do in Manchester, and they said, if we donate. I mean it totals over 75, 000 that they donated through one way or the other in 2023 and halfway through this year, they enabled us to open the centre in Manchester four to five months earlier than we would have done.

We'd have still been rattling tins and trying to raise money from other sources, but Future Foundations took the pressure off all of that. And we agreed with them that if we open five months early, we try to support between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and ninety unemployed women from within Manchester City in the centre.

And when we did our impact analysis for them, because we're very big on data. We're a great charity to partner if you like data and analysis and things like that. We'd actually supported 180 women, and we delivered over 210 appointments in that time that they'd funded directly for us. So, they volunteer for us, they've done over 80 days of volunteering, they've hosted events for us and we work closely with AJ Bell on their Money Matters narrative which is all about helping women to really understand the importance of building financial resilience.

It's something that was okay about through my career, but plenty of my peers pay into the pension fund. They stopped paying at the pension fund when they got pregnant and went on maternity. They took careers breaks and didn't really have conversations with the husbands about there's no equity anymore in between what I have, as a financial value and what you have, even though we're both professional partners.

So I really believe in both AJ Bell Money Matters and I massively believe in and I'm hugely grateful to the Future Foundation for their donation.

[00:23:56] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Shout out to them and to you too for all the great work you're doing.

What advice would you have for people looking to start a similar movement in their local community, if they want to support young women or women who are, looking to get back into work.

[00:24:12] Jan Iceton: What has worked very well for Smart Works is to find typically a former businesswoman who really gets this, who really understands. When I wanted that promotion, I put on my bright red blazer. I stood tall. I understood my skill sets and I felt confident, and I owned the room. And that's what helped me smash through the glass ceiling, break down a barrier and get to where I deserved to be.

And there are women like that in every community, across every city or town, across the world. Finding those women who have that passion and want to build something with purpose. They may have retired early. One of our trustees, she's the chair of Smart Works in Newcastle. She's a full-time single working mum, how she finds the time to do the role of chair of Smart Works Newcastle, I'll never know. But I do know because she's passionate and once it gets to you lot of women who've got, these types of business skills know what to do to organise and to lead and to get funding to support the charity.

And an absolute understanding of what clothing can do for someone's confidence is really fundamental. Because that bit's the pathway to building the confidence to listen when you're doing coaching and skills training for interviews.

[00:25:33] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's like a three-step process. First, the person comes in, you make them comfortable, then you style them, then you coach them and, hopefully then you bring them back and give them a capsule wardrobe so they can be successful.

So that's really good advice. And also to finding businesswomen who have perhaps either retired or have some spare capacity. Lots of people work part time or flexible working now to be the champion.

[00:26:00] Jan Iceton: You know that expression, if you want something done, ask a busy person.

[00:26:04] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is a good expression, that is true.

Signature Questions

I now come to the signature questions I ask all my guests, and one of them is if you could choose a famous landmark in Manchester to represent you, which one would it be and why?

[00:26:19] Jan Iceton: Oh, there's just so many. And it's gone now. I was going to say the Hacienda. I'm of that generation. I didn't go every week. I couldn't afford to, I was a student. But for me, Manchester, a lot of modern Manchester was built on the music scene and on the passion of people to be in the music scene.

In your age, your ethnicity, whether you were employed, whether you're professional, whether you're a manual worker, unemployed, nobody cared. Everybody came together, had fun and there were so many things that spun out of that movement, if I can call it a movement rather than a place. I think it's got to be that.

Or the Arndale, just because the Arndale is the kind of iconoclastic building in the middle of Manchester. And when I first started to work, I was on the Fujitsu graduate training scheme, and I worked on the 17th floor of the Arndale for about 10 years, and I absolutely loved it. I was from a small town in the northeast of England, and I found myself smack bang in the epicentre, as far as I was concerned, as the coolest city in the world.

You probably expected something more like Gorton Monastery, something more cerebral than the Hacienda and the Arndale.

[00:27:38] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: No, it's about what's meaningful to you, isn't it? And I've heard a lot about the Hacienda from my music guests, and I know it's a building block, I think, now.

[00:27:48] Jan Iceton: Sadly it is, but of the era it's imprinted on everybody. And also the other thing that it's not a building, it's the bee. I love the Manchester bee. When I look around my desk now where I'm recording this with you, I've got bees on my phone cover, bees on my lampshade, I've got bees everywhere. I don't yet have a bee tattoo, although I do have some very cool friends who do.

[00:28:13] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Oh, that sounds very nice. Yeah, the Manchester bee is very much part of the podcast as well, so I've got a little bee avatar for myself, so it's good fun.

What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:28:27] Jan Iceton: I mean for me really what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm a firm believer of that. For me that represents, learn from it. Listen to the lessons that whatever it was you've gone through has taught you and really try and turn the negatives, either quieting them down so they don't deflect you from your journey or use them to galvanise you.

Try and convert them into superpowers to move yourself forward. I do, I reflect, I am quite a good reflector, but I don't let it, I don't reflect at the expense of forward propulsion I do to move forward. So that's probably why that one speaks to me. And I do think we all own our own journeys.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to make ourselves happy, to make ourselves feel fulfilled. We're not there to get that from anybody else. I like to try and find that from within. It's an old one, but it's a good one.

[00:29:29] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think so. I think, that whole thing of life happens, but can you pick yourself up and be resilient and bounce back and, like you said, move forward.

[00:29:38] Jan Iceton: Met Baroness Newlove a year or so ago, and she's just a wonderful example how, out of nowhere, the most horrendous thing happened to her when the husband was murdered outside the family home, and she's moved on and she's carved this amazing, light for many of the people to follow. She fights for causes that are so important for safe, personal safety and equality.

And I think if someone like her can follow something like that and become a stronger, much brighter light than she ever was really, then I look at her and I just think, wow, It's easy to say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but then when you meet someone who's really had a trauma like that, and it is true, then I'm just amazed by people like that.

I get so much energy and stimulation and happiness from seeing people like her.

[00:30:38] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Definitely. I think it's something I try to keep telling myself. And, I am basically an optimistic person, but it is important to keep going.

Final Thoughts and Contact Information

[00:30:47] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: How can people get in touch with you? Where can they find you and where can they find Smart Works?

[00:30:53] Jan Iceton: It's really straightforward. They can contact, or they can follow us on Instagram, which is at Smart Works GM, or on LinkedIn, which is at Smart Works Greater Manchester. The website is www.greatermanchester.Smart Works.org.uk

But they can call the centre and the phone number, it's 0161 974 0699 and that covers both Manchester and Stockport.

So that's all they have to do.

[00:31:25] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'll make sure I include all this in your show notes so that they can, people can find you. And like you said, you're trying to reach out through the podcast, and I hope you get many more women coming to you.

[00:31:36] Jan Iceton: Oh, thank you so much. It would be wonderful. And, we support women right across the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester, but wider, anybody around the country can be supported by Smart Works, if you're living in Holland, you're an unemployed woman and you really want some help, then all you have to do is go onto the Smart Works charity website. And there's a way of accessing the virtual service.

Bizarrely, I didn't think this could be true, but the feedback from last year on our data says that our virtual service is equally effective as our in-person service, which blew me away. I didn't think that would be the case, but we still do much prefer a client to come in and see us.

That might be just what we want. And the sense of purpose that we get from seeing a woman's face when she looks in the mirror and she's wow, this time I just might get that job.

[00:32:27] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: More power to you. Such a wonderful service that you're offering. And I'm not familiar with very many services like this in other parts of the world, so I do hope more people get inspired by this podcast or by any other way that Smart Works is creating awareness. To maybe emulate or collaborate.

 Thank you so much, Jan. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

[00:32:49] Jan Iceton: It's been delightful. Thank you so much, Deepa.

Outro

Thank you for listening to the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester. I hope today's episode has inspired you to reflect on your own purpose and how you can contribute to making positive change wherever you are based.

Next week on Tuesday, 19th November, we hear from Tracy Torley talking about tackling food poverty.

I'm truly grateful for this amazing community of listeners. Your stories inspire this podcast and I look forward to hearing more of them. If you'd like to share your story or connect, visit my website at meetthemancunian.co.uk or find me on social media  @Meet the Mancunian on Instagram and Facebook, @MancunianPod on Twitter (X), and@MeettheMancunianPodcast on YouTube.

Thank you again to my wonderful listeners. You inspire me. Together we are a community dedicated to uplifting Manchester and supporting Mancunians. Remember, we can make an impact together.

Thank you for tuning in and being a part of this incredible community. Your involvement helps amplify the voices of those making a difference. Together, we can inspire even more positive change in Manchester and beyond. Remember, no act of kindness is too small and by working together, we can truly make a meaningful impact.

Thank you for listening.