New job pays more in satisfaction

Nine months ago Norman Hanson's days were spent alongside the tracks of the MG Rover factory watching parts coming in and out.

As a logistics operator with some 20 years experience he worked with spanners and hammers and was clocked in by 0800 every day.

Then in April his working life came crashing down around him and he feared he may never work again when he was one of the 5,000 employees who received their redundancy notices.

Now Norman Hanson has a job "100 miles removed" from what he was doing. He is an entertainment advisor for a firm which maintains individual television units next to the beds in Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

Instead of spare parts he now moves among people - chatting to them, demonstrating the equipment, answering their queries and even running errands for them after he has officially finished work.

"Two months ago I didn't think it was going to happen"
Norman Hanson

There is a visible change in his demeanour for the first time since his redundancy. He smiles all of the time, is enthusiastic about the future and cannot stop talking about all of his patients.

Mr Hanson, 48, said: "The hours are funny working in a hospital; I have to work Saturdays and Sundays and I'm working Christmas Day but my family say it is so nice to see a smile on my face."

But he admits: "Two months ago I didn't think it was going to happen."

Losing his job put him in a "state of shock" and as the only wage-earner supporting the Selly Oak home he shared with his wife Melanie, 48, and 16-year-old son Joseph it also affected them.

His wife was forced to take a job as a cleaner while Mr Hanson signed on, and Joseph had to miss out on things like chocolate biscuits.

"We were very close to leaving for the South West. I'd been on the internet looking and I was still firing off CVs - it had to be about 50 to 60 I sent altogether. I sent 13 in one week and I never had one reply.

"Then I saw the advert for this job and I didn't think I'd got much chance of getting it but my wife said 'Apply for it, you've got as much chance as anyone else'."

So he applied and got an interview, in the same week he had another for the post of a fork lift truck driver.

"I didn't think this particular interview went very well," he said.

"I thought there was too much difference from working in a factory to working in a hospital, meeting and greeting people," he said.

"The other people who were being interviewed at the same time had experience of doing something like that but my CV mentioned nothing like it.

"Enjoying work is more important for me now, rather than working for the money"
Norman Hanson

"It was a real surprise. I went to the interview on Monday and the manager phoned me up on Tuesday and asked when I could start."

Mr Hanson has found his bedside manner has come more naturally than he ever thought and, just two weeks after starting, he is known by name by many of his patients, for which he got a mention in his firm's newsletter.

"It's 100% different from Rover but it's good work," he said.

"It's been a big change to my life. When I first got made redundant I was in a state of shock. Over the months it settled down and we worked out our finances."

Despite taking a pay cut of about 40% and using none of the skills built up over 20 years at Rover, Mr Hanson has no regrets.

"Enjoying work is more important for me now, rather than working for the money," he said.

"I love the job, it's 100 miles removed from what I was doing before and no I wouldn't go back."

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