For our latest spotlight interview, we’re shining a light on Gwen James, ieso’s Talent and Events Manager.
Gwen told us about her role at ieso and what her current focus is, what a clinician can expect when they work as an affiliate clinician for the ieso network, and the clinician opportunities that are currently available.
Hi Gwen. Can you tell us about your career background and your role at ieso?
Absolutely! My pathway to becoming Talent & Events Manager was very indirect – I definitely fell into this career rather than seeking it out, and I’m so glad that I did. From a very young age, I wanted to be a GP and had this as an end goal while at university, before doing a complete 180 and realising that wasn’t what I wanted to do at all. I considered a few different options including joining the funeral service or going into sales. I went with the latter and began working as a Sales Executive for a clothes branding business. I discovered ieso by complete chance whilst scrolling through job boards. The mission really stood out to me, so I applied and joined the company as a Patient Services Coordinator back in November 2019.
I had a fantastic recruitment experience – by far the best I’ve experienced – and as a result of this my interest in the recruitment field began to grow. I spoke to our Head of Recruitment at the time to find out more about the role, and due to ieso’s focus on developing internal employees, I was given the opportunity to move over to the recruitment team in July 2021. My career has grown from there, and I’ve been managing recruitment at ieso since January 2023.
My role now has two primary focuses – the recruitment of both employees & ieso-affiliated therapists; and managing internal events, from Christmas parties to employee conferences. Alongside this, I get involved with some other projects including managing an internal progression programme that I established in 2021, working with the culture committee, and also leading on equity, diversity & inclusion initiatives both in-house and throughout the recruitment process.
It sounds like recruitment is an important part of your responsibilities – are there any particular roles you’re working on recruiting at the moment?
It is indeed! Though we have a number of roles in progress, my primary recruitment focus is currently to increase our video therapist capacity so that we can treat more and more NHS patients over the next few months. I attended the BABCP conference in Cardiff earlier this year where I met many of our current affiliates and to get the ball rolling on growing the network, and we have also recently reviewed our offering for video-based high-intensity CBT therapists.
What can clinicians expect when they work as an affiliate for the ieso network?
Our high intensity therapists (HITs) are all self-employed workers, which means appointment flexibility for both our clinicians and our patients – therapists can offer appointments on our platform any day of the week, at any time of day, to work entirely around their own schedules. Video therapy sessions are paid at a rate of £53.54 plus holiday pay of £9.36, totalling £62.90 per 60-minute session. We also offer a workplace pension to those who are eligible. Outside of this, we have a fantastic team of supervisors who are on-hand to help, alongside a bespoke free CPD & resources hub and a dedicated smart support system. We also offer opportunities to get involved with our ground-breaking research & trials, and our affiliates are the first to hear about any new research findings that we have unveiled.
If you’re a high-intensity CBT Therapist and would like to learn more about providing online video therapy as part of ieso’s network of affiliate clinicians, click here.
