With more than 20 years of experience across frontline support, care operations and executive leadership, Becky Speight brings a deep understanding of the realities facing social care providers to her new role as Director of Health and Social Care at Sona.
Becky started as a Mencap support worker and built a senior social care career supporting individuals with learning disabilities and autism across supported living, registered care, day opportunities and community services. Her experience includes serving as Operations Director and Regional Managing Director at Dimensions UK, and most recently as Chief Operating Officer at national charity Hft, leading nationwide Operations and Quality.
She also brings first-hand experience of Sona itself. As Director of Operations at Style Acre, Becky led the implementation of the Sona platform from the provider side, giving her direct experience of introducing workforce technology into a busy care environment and understanding what it takes for technology to work in practice for the people using it.
Becky said: “I’ve spent more than 20 years working across health and social care and one thing has remained constant: the pressure on services and the people delivering them continues to grow. Technology has a huge role to play in changing that, but it has to work for care teams, not create more complexity for them. When I started as a support worker, so much of what we did was on paper, or if you were lucky, a spreadsheet. We’ve come a long way since then, but sometimes I think we’ve digitised the complexity rather than removed it. The opportunity now is to think differently, to take work away, simplify things, and give people more time to focus on the people they’re there to support. Having experienced Sona as a customer, I know the difference the right technology can make, and that’s what excites me about joining the team.”
At Sona, Becky will lead the company’s strategy for health and social care, bringing her experience of running services and working through complex operational challenges into how technology is built and used across the sector. She will work closely with care providers and Sona customers, helping shape the development of the platform around the realities of delivering care, while also contributing to wider conversations around workforce, funding and digital transformation.
Her experience spans workforce, quality, technology, transformation, organisational design and operating models, giving her a broad understanding of the factors that shape how care is delivered and where technology can make a practical difference.
Paul Watson, VP at Sona, said: “Becky brings something incredibly valuable to Sona because she understands social care from every angle. She has been on the frontline, she has run services, she has led operations and quality at executive level, and she has sat on the other side of the table as a customer implementing Sona. That combination is rare, and it gives her a very clear understanding of what providers actually need from technology – not just what looks good on paper, but what makes a difference when you’re running services day in, day out. As Sona continues to deepen its work with the care sector, having that experience and challenge within our own team will be hugely important.”
Becky’s appointment comes as Sona deepens its focus on social care, with a particular emphasis on interoperability and bringing together the information providers need to make better decisions. This includes helping organisations better understand the relationship between commissioned hours, workforce capacity and support delivered, surfacing the right information to plan effectively both for the person and for the sustainability of the business. Becky’s extensive operational experience in social care brings an important provider perspective to that work, grounded in the realities of delivering high-quality, person-led support at scale.
With Becky bringing provider-side experience into the business, Sona is looking to push the conversation around technology in care beyond simply digitising existing processes, towards creating smarter, more sustainable ways for providers to plan their workforce, run their services and support their teams.
For further information about Sona and its digital workforce management platform, visit https://www.sona.ai/
