A QHSE Journey: from Apprentice to Award-Winning Trailblazer
Paris, France | Dec 5, 2024
Meet Catriona, a young QHSE professional making a real impact with her passion for excellence and wellbeing
QHSE advisor Catriona has no regrets about foregoing university. When she left college at 18 with A-levels in business studies and double sports, she knew she was more of a learn-on-the-job sort of person. With an interest in quality passed on from her mother who has worked in the quality profession for her whole career, she applied for a two-year Internal Audit apprenticeship with Viridien’s Quality department which she completed in 2022. Only a year later, in June 2023, she won the Emerging Talent Award category of the International Quality Awards run by the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI).
What attracted you to working for Viridien?
The ethos of striving for excellence and continuous improvement is something I liked about Viridien, especially as someone interested in business improvement. The company has a strong commitment to QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety and Environment) across the organisation and is always open to ideas on how to improve.
What does a QHSE advisor do?
I am responsible for Quality and HSE at our Crawley, UK site and I also remotely support some of our other centers. Some might say that Quality and Health & Safety are two different roles, but they overlap. An important part of Quality is people and Health & Safety aims to look after our people so the two can go together. I work in many different areas, such as client feedback, managing the health and safety of a site, promoting wellbeing, reviewing business processes, and implementing new approaches and ideas within QHSE.
Please describe a typical QHSE week; how does it make a difference?
Quality and Health & Safety bring different challenges each week. What I like most is dealing with situations at different levels, whether working with individuals or on global projects. Where I feel I have made the most difference is in how we view the importance of wellbeing. It takes working with many different stakeholders, rather than one department, to make a real difference. I take Viridien’s ethos of ‘Striving for Excellence’ and apply it to the service and support we offer our employees, not just the clients. We are still at the beginning of that journey, but I enjoy the challenge!
How does your work help to deliver improvements in the QHSE scope?
I’ve helped to develop new digital solutions and approaches for HSE that have successfully improved the data and output we get from our systems and processes. For example, by improving data collection in HSE, we can better identify where we need to improve our systems and address any potential gaps that could damage our reputation or our compliance with laws, legislation, and standards.
One project I co-led with my manager was implementing the Your Safety Check system. This system allows any employee in any office to conduct a quick assessment against key topics of safety (wellbeing, housekeeping, etc.). These assessments help us build a global picture of Viridien's approach to safety, identifying key focus areas for improvement. The introduction of this system has already led to improvements in travel, wellbeing and our safety reporting tool, PRISM.
On the Quality side, I assisted in updating the scoring system for our client Project Evaluation Forms from a 5-tier one to a 6-tier one by adding the ‘Outstanding’ category. As around 70% of client feedback scores were scored as ‘Excellent’, by having this extra category we can better identify best practice across the businesses and share the lessons learned to improve the service we deliver to our clients.
Tell us more about the wellbeing initiatives you have led
I led the rollout of the Mental Health First Aider initiative across the UK. We have 23 Mental Health First Aiders and are about to train another 14 people. We organize many different events to promote resources available to staff for supporting wellbeing. Recently, I recently took on the role of leading the Wellbeing Employee Inclusion Group in the UK. I hope to continue my efforts to help Viridien improve the support we give employees around wellbeing.
I’ve also been involved in the development of the growing selection of wellbeing e-learning courses available on our inhouse training platform, including scripting the latest course ‘Understand and Improve Your Sleep’.
What do you find the most challenging and rewarding about your job?
As the job has many different aspects, having to spin many plates at once is challenging. While this can sometimes be a little overwhelming, it’s what I love most about my job as I would hate to do the same thing every day. In QHSE I also get to help people which is very rewarding, and I like seeing the impacts of the improvements or initiatives I have helped to roll out.
So many valuable experiences working here have helped shape who I am today. I have a very supportive manager who has pushed me and opened doors for me in all different areas. Viridien is a great place to work for younger people because you get a sense that the management wants to support and develop you.
How important is ‘excellence’ and ‘going the extra mile’ in your personal and professional life?
I have always had a strong work ethic and wanted to do the best I could in what I put my mind to. Growing up I struggled with education due to my dyslexia, so it meant I usually had to work harder than my peers to get good grades. This ingrained grit and determination in me from a young age and I think it is important to ‘go the extra mile’ when working towards a goal. As my career develops, I want to continue working in a job where I feel I am adding value either by helping people or improving business processes. I also want to have some more qualifications under my belt in HSE and Quality to expand my knowledge.
What advice would you give someone wanting to pursue a career in QHSE?
Keep your eyes open to the opportunities around you. It can be daunting starting in your career, especially in QHSE which isn’t spoken about at school. You go from the education system where everything is mapped out for you to the working world where you have full control which is exciting but sometimes hard to navigate. Taking each opportunity as a learning curve even if it doesn’t work out is important. I recommend always trying to expand your knowledge of different topics, I like to read industry magazines and look at other organizations’ approaches. Try to build positive working relationships and expand your network. Getting involved in things outside of work in your profession, like the CQI, can have a big impact and let you grow your knowledge outside your organisational context.
