Thursday 25th May 2023
Meet our team: HR Manager, Phil
Phil Wainwright celebrates his 30th anniversary with Pilgrims’ Friend Society this August. We took the opportunity to visit his narrowboat at Three Mills Residential Moorings, East London, where he both lives and works
My wife Jo and I have lived on a narrowboat for 11 years.
Our daughter needed somewhere to live with her children and so we lent her our three-bedroom house in Nunhead and found a narrowboat for us.
Our boat is called Heart’s Ease as a tribute to my sister, after a guest house she and her husband used to run.
My sister sadly died from cancer and left me a legacy which we used to buy our first boat, Sweet William. We then moved to this boat as it’s slightly larger. It was called Hakuna Matata but I couldn’t stand the song playing in my head every time I said the name so we changed it.
The boat is 6ft6 wide and it’s a bit like living in a corridor.
You get very used to stepping out of each other’s way. When our grandkids sleep over it’s chaos!
People who live on boats fall into two categories, those who’ve fallen in and those who haven’t fallen in yet.
We’re still in the second category, although we’ve both had a leg slip in.
Boat life involves a lot of filling things up and emptying things out.
We fill the water tank every week, we empty the toilet every two weeks. We fill up the coal scuttle, we empty out the ash pail.
We’re very close to wildlife.
Herons, coots, ducks, Egyptian geese, Canada geese, egrets, swans... We see them all.
One evening we heard a big splash.
A fox had fallen in and was stuck between our boat and the pontoon. Jo fished it out and it promptly bit her and fell back in. She rescued it a second time and then had to go to the hospital for some strong antibiotics.
I started working from home in the pandemic.
A narrowboat is a small space at the best of times and so this was a challenge. I set up my computer on our dining table and put it away every evening. Now I split my time between home and the office and I’m very used to it.
When I started, I didn’t think about whether I’d still be here all these years later.
It is a lovely charity to work for. One thing I was attracted to was how everything is prayed over. That’s not changed in all the time I’ve been here.
Initially, a big part of my role was to implement a computer system.
There were only four computers in what we then called Head Office (now the Support Office) and only one of our homes had a computer. Things have changed a lot.
I’m responsible for payroll.
When I started, all the homes sent their staff timesheets each week in an envelope and I typed in all the information. It’s a lot more automated now.
I’ve worn many different hats, often simultaneously.
I’ve been Systems Manager, Marketing Manager, HR Director. When we changed from being Pilgrim Homes, I was part of the team that decided on the name Pilgrims’ Friend Society – including the apostrophe that people seem to find so tricky! The name comes from the charity’s original name, Aged Pilgrims’ Friend Society.
One of the parts of my job that I enjoy most is training staff in HR. It’s much better now we can do things face-to-face again. You can have much more interaction than in online training.
At Pilgrims’ Friend Society, we’re an inclusive employer.
Through our church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Jo and I have learnt British Sign Language (BSL). Nasim, who is deaf, joined me on the Pilgrims’ Friend Society HR team as Payroll Assistant.
I’m not the longest-serving member of staff.
Maureen Sim, our Director of Operations, has been with us for 42 years.
Fun fact:
Masterchef is filmed just round the corner from Phil’s boat. The cobbled yard at Three Mills features in the show’s opening sequence.
Boat life
The highs...
Being able to go cruising when you fancy a change of scene. Phil says, “Sometimes we’ll go up the River Lea to Cheshunt. Our max speed is 4 mph though, so we don’t go anywhere in a hurry.”
The lows...
Dealing with dead things. “Dead cats, rats, foxes and fish... They’ve all floated our way. Sometimes they get stuck at the weir and start to smell. We have to nudge them through with a 10ft barge pole.”
