Great Round Up To A Fantastic Year!
Summary:
- 2023 has been hectic yet rewarding at Claritas Solutions
- We have been absolutely thrilled to welcome many new staff members throughout the year
- We welcomed Sami Baroudi, Jack Barlow and Harry Connew as our latest recruits back in October
- We also had the immense pleasure of welcoming back to Claritas Thomas East.
- Achieving Great Place to Work accreditation highlighted Claritas is a family-oriented workplace and we put our employees first.
- We caught up with Dan and Kirsty who both celebrated their 10-year anniversary this year
- We hope 2024 will be just as busy and rewarding
2023 has seen a lot happen at Claritas Solutions. We have got stuck into raising money for our nominated charity Martin House Children’s Hospice, the first year we have done this; had a fantastic couple of days over in Manchester for the Digital Transformation Expo (DTX); our MD Glenn Scaife was nominated in LDC’s Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders programme for 2023; most recently we received a 4-star Business SDG Rating and were awarded with the esteemed accreditation Great Place to Work-Certified. It’s been a busy and rewarding year and we look forward to what 2024 will bring.
Alongside all this excitement we have also been absolutely thrilled to welcome new staff members (and a returnee) to our team! As with all our new starters we ask them a few questions to get to know them a little better. Here are some of the things they shared with us, their interests, and what makes them tick!
Back in October we welcomed Sami Baroudi, Jack Barlow and Harry Connew. Joining as 1st Line Technical Consultant, Sami is a bit of gamer, likes learning languages and about different cultures, and for sports he enjoys boxing. An interesting fact… Sami spent 15 years in the Middle East yet he actually hates the sun, he much prefers English weather! When asked about the reasons why he joined Claritas, Sami expressed “I joined Claritas because I’ve always had a passion for tech, my dad was an IT manager and since I was a kid I was always into troubleshooting devices and having my own PC setup. There’s a lot to learn at Claritas and I’m excited to get started, the team is welcoming and always open to answering questions which is great!”
Jack Barlow has worked in IT for about 6 years now and is self-taught. Prior to working in IT, Jack had many jobs, from being a builder, joiner, electrician, salesman, barman, carer, video editor, scuba diving instructor and many other jobs before finding his feet in IT with no initial experience but a willingness to learn. When asked what he was looking forward to over the next few months Jack said “I’m looking forward to getting to know the team, the clients and most importantly learning all I can with the technologies that Claritas offers and uses.” Jack joins us as 2nd Line Technical Consultant.
Next up we welcomed Harry Connew to the team. Harry joined us as 2nd Line Technical Consultant and said of his IT background “Since a young age I have loved computers, since the moment of taking my family computer apart at the young age 13, to which my parents weren’t too happy about! I soon found that more fun could be had by putting them back together and fixing them, so I have now worked within the industry for over 6 years. Working my way up from a Saturday job to 2nd Line Technical Consultant.”
We also had the immense pleasure of welcoming back to Claritas Thomas East. Following a recent adventure to Mexico to live and teach English, Tom has returned to his position as Technical Author. In Tom’s words “I initially joined Claritas because I felt like I had enough experience as a Technical Author to shape a company’s documentation as I saw fit and Claritas provided me with the opportunity to do this. After six months in Mexico, I came back to Claritas for a couple of reasons – I missed the people, and all of the recent changes within the company seemed positive (also, the new hoodies are cooler and I wanted one…).” We can confirm the new hoodies are pretty cool. Over the next few months Tom is looking forward to bringing all of the current documentation up-to-date and creating new documentation for the PC Web and SovereignCloud projects. More long-term, he’s looking forward to populating and maintaining a knowledge base, which can be used to host all of our documentation in one (easy to navigate) location.
Welcome (and in Tom’s case back) to the family! We look forward to working with you and to getting to know you better!
Yet there’s more…so not only did we have the joy of bringing new talent and skills into the team, we also celebrated some incredible staff anniversaries! At Claritas, we pride ourselves on creating a family-oriented workplace and putting our employees first. We believe this is reflected in the sheer numbers of long-standing staff. We currently have 15 members of staff who have been at Claritas for 10+ years, with 5 of those close to and over 20 years! We caught up with Dan and Kirsty who both celebrated their 10-year anniversary this year to tell us more about what they enjoy most about working at Claritas.
Support Developer Dan expressed he found it is quite hard to pinpoint that he most enjoyed about working at Claritas. “While I might not be the most outgoing and chatty person, Claritas have a friendly bunch of people that make it easy to talk to and have a laugh with. I also enjoy my role, and while I am looking to progress into Development I enjoy working in Development Support, building relationships with the clients and helping them with their issues. It fills me with pride and a sense of accomplishment, of not only rectifying an issue, but also knowing that I have helped someone. For me, this is what makes a job worthwhile not only enjoying your work but the people you work with.” When asked to describe his 10 years in three words Dan said ‘everchanging, interesting and inspiring’.
Kirsty is our Finance Director here at Claritas. Kirsty’s overall responsibility is for the finance department and the running of its systems and procedures, including but not limited to managing, cash flow, payroll, invoicing, supplier payments, budgeting, management accounts, VAT reporting and other legislative duties – the list goes on. On what she enjoys the most here at Claritas, Kirsty has said “The people here make it a genuine joy to come into the office. My team especially keep me on my toes.” Three words Kirsty would use to describe her 10 years at Claritas are ‘fun, interesting and rewarding’.
So all in all, 2023 will be a year to remember for Claritas, along with making our clients happy and delivering some momentous projects like rebranding, a new website, raising money for our chosen local charity Martin House and the pleasure of welcoming the next generation of fresh new talent. We know that 2024 will not fail to disappoint as we look forward to celebrating more anniversaries and welcoming even more talented individuals to our growing family!!
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