Success at the double: business boost and career development
7 Aug 2025
Faced with revised engagement measures for service users, Ingeus’ Justice team in West Yorkshire knew how to get the job done: call for Katie… both of them!
The duo – Quality, Audit and Custody Lead, Katie Barrass, and Partnership Manager, Katie Guest – were tasked with finding ways to boost attendance at potentially life-changing support sessions among people leaving the criminal justice system.
The project was undertaken as part of the pair’s training with the company’s Continuous Improvement Academy (CIA). The Academy seeks to support both business and personal development and create change agents across Ingeus.
Both are now graduating from the CIA, where Katie B learned new skills to obtain a Lean Six Sigma process improvement Yellow Belt.
Her role in the project involved speaking to front-line colleagues about ways to encourage service users to attend their first session with an Ingeus advisor within 20 days of their initial assessment.
She says: “My Yellow Belt training helped me to look at things differently. Rather than coming to conclusions myself, and risk jumping straight into solution mode when faced with a challenge, I learned the value of enlisting colleagues in coming up with the answers.”
She held one-to-one sessions with the region’s teams to support them in ways to achieve the new target, including team meetings to make sure everyone understood what was expected.
While the project proved to be a major success, Katie’s Academy experience also gave her a solid foundation for her own personal development ambitions.
She is due to start an Ingeus-sponsored data analysis apprenticeship ] and says: “Initially I was a bit nervous because I’d not done much learning-while-working before my Academy training, so achieving the Yellow Belt qualification gave me the confidence to know that I can.
“I joined Ingeus three years ago and wanted to develop more within my role and use the CIA to progress. This course seemed the most appropriate. The mix of online classroom meetings and independent learning modules made it quite easy to fit in around my day-to-day work.
“Now I’m hoping to move up to the next level and be a project leader within the team. I’d definitely recommend undertaking Academy training, it has really adjusted the way I approach issues.”
Working alongside Katie Guest, who achieved the more advanced Green Belt at the CIA and undertook the strategic side of the project, was a bonus, she says, with the pair complimenting perfectly each other’s roles.
“It was valuable to have her to check in with. We have regular meetings and she helped me with advice on how to liaise with staff while she was getting buy-in from stakeholders. It was great to have that kind of support.”
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