Hear from our HR Manager Phoebe Danvers and find out why the RCR is a great place to work and the opportunities for life-long learning.
I’ve always considered maths as one of my strong suits, but even I’m struggling to keep count of the number of new people coming through our doors. We now have over 100 employees at The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) and with so many great people here, it’s hard to keep up. Over the last year, we’ve expanded teams across the entire organisation and recruited for a huge range of roles – so the question I hope to answer is, ‘why is the RCR such a great place to work’?
First, let's start with some background, which I hope makes me well-placed to explain why we’re an ambitious organisation. I’ve worked in the HR team here for six years and took over its management just under two years ago. It’s been an absolute privilege to see how the organisation has developed and evolved over such a relatively short time (at least compared to our 48-year history as a Royal College!). When I joined the RCR, we had 51 staff and now we’ve doubled in size.
Although the growth we’ve seen is no mean feat, the increase in size has never been what has impressed me most about the RCR. Instead, I’ve been so proud to shout about how our growth has allowed us to deliver greater value to our members. As organisations grow, it’s not uncommon for people to start to get detached from the mission at hand, but that’s never happened here. Everywhere you look and everyone you speak to is delivering amazing things for our specialties and that’s what has kept me here all this time. We’ve been able to attract ambitious and hardworking people to join us and play their part in improving patient care in clinical oncology and radiology.
Life-long learning
Of course, encouraging great people to join us isn’t all we focus on in the HR Team. It’s important to nurture and develop our people – and we do this by creating several cross-organisational learning and development plans. We provide everyone with at least two opportunities each year to sit down with their managers and create a bespoke training plan.
I’ve been able to enjoy this commitment to life-long learning during my time at the RCR. The College also contributed to my professional CIPD qualifications. They supported me to attend courses and align my knowledge and thinking to best practices within the HR field. We empower employees to be at the top of their game and show outside the box thinking.
Our commitment to EDI
Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) has always been a part of what we deliver at the RCR, but it’s fair to say we haven’t always had as much of a focus in this space as we could have done. It’s important to acknowledge this because it’s allowed us to develop into the strong place we are now, where EDI is front and centre of everything we do. When you ask anyone at the RCR what they most enjoy about working here, nine out of ten times the answer will be ‘the people’. The inclusive environment in which we work is incredible. Everyone here has respect for one another – no matter their colleague’s backgrounds. This means that we’re all able to collaborate and share ideas with our teams, as well as enter into healthy debates about the right ways forward.
EDI will never be something that stops. We know that it takes us all to commit to continuous learning of the topic to keep nurturing our inclusive culture. We focus on an EDI topic each month and expand our knowledge with talks from guest speakers, quizzes, book clubs, podcasts, videos and more. This mindset ensures we’re recruiting diverse talent and creating an environment to welcome all staff and volunteers.
Brilliant people
The RCR is a wonderful place to work. I wouldn’t have been here six years if I didn’t think that. The College has everything you need to be able to progress in your career and deliver amazing things, plus a fantastic range of benefits. You also get to work alongside brilliant people, who will support you, challenge your thinking and push you to grow and improve. Whichever team you work in, your focus will be the same every day and you’ll have moved us a little closer to improving imaging and cancer care for all.
As you can see, there’s been a lot going on over the last few months. I hope I’ve given you a clear overview of why the RCR is a great organisation to work for. We make a difference and have fun doing it – and I find that’s a pretty fulfilling way to spend 35 hours of my week.
