Charlie Hadley joined as a Data Coach for our Data Academy, a hub for our 700+ data colleagues to network and upskill together. As someone who has a chronic illness and also spends time creating data courses for LinkedIn Learning on the side, Charlie chooses to work part-time at Admiral.

Can you tell us about your role and how long you’ve worked here?

I joined Admiral in October 2022 as the first Data Coach in the Data Academy, which also launched a little earlier in 2022. As a Data Coach I’m responsible for designing and delivering training courses for our extensive UK data community of over 700 colleagues who work with data. So far, we’ve been focusing on BigQuery, Looker and data storytelling, and I’ll soon be working on extending our course catalogue and coaching abilities.

The Data Academy is also responsible for levelling up data skills across the entire business. I’m excited to have started a Data Skills for All programme for a few departments already. In the programme we introduce and explore how to make, and communicate, data-driven decisions using common sense analysis and data storytelling. It’s awesome to see folks become more confident and enthusiastic about using data as they progress through the programme.

On top of the training courses I’m also working on career progression paths, people development pathways and I’m available for data coaching sessions for anyone who gets in touch. I really enjoy my role at Admiral, I get to work with interesting and incredible people doing all sorts of things.

Sounds very interesting! What’s your working pattern?

I work at Admiral four days a week, from Tuesday to Friday. I commute to Cardiff from Bristol once a week for team days and infrequently a second day to deliver a course. On average I’m at the office 1.5 days a week.

Why did you choose this pattern?

There are two reasons I chose this pattern: spoons and self-employment.

You might not be familiar with the spoon analogy. It’s useful to describe how folks with chronic illness have a limited amount of energy, and daily tasks might take more energy than for other people, resulting in less energy to do enjoyable things. I have chronic illness which means I have fewer spoons, so I find that working four days a week means I have enough time to recover and to have a much better work-life balance.

I also do a little bit of self-employment teaching data skills, which includes making occasional courses for LinkedIn Learning. These courses are focused on reproducible research and Open Data which are two topics I’m very passionate about. I really love that Admiral supports me in working part-time to meet both of these goals.

How do you find working part-time in a data role?

I’ve been supported so well with working part-time. Meetings and work deadlines are always made with the understanding that I’m never available on Mondays. There have been two occasions where I voluntarily moved my non-working day as I saw it would make things easier, but my manager made sure I was happy with this, and I was because of how supportive Admiral has been.