International Women’s Day

Organisations can inspire inclusion through actions such as recruiting, retaining, and developing female talent or supporting women into leadership or decision-making roles.

To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, we are shining a spotlight on some of the women who help shape Aliaxis, looking at their experiences in the company as a woman and highlighting the importance of inspiring inclusion towards personal and professional growth.

Here is what Sandy had to say in the first of two recent interviews:

Sandy Shattock – Head of Sustainability and Quality

1.    What inspired you to pursue a career at Aliaxis? 

I like that Aliaxis is a business with a purpose, to tackle the worldwide challenge of access to clean water and sanitation. As a sustainability professional that resonated with me. I also really enjoyed the interview process at Aliaxis, I could tell that I would be joining a company that valued individuals for their differences, a place where I could be me.  

2.    What does a typical day look like for you?

Working on both sustainability and quality means lots of variety. I have two clear goals. One is to support my hard working team who are focussed on ensuring we manufacture a great quality product that meets our customers’ expectations. The other is to make sure Aliaxis UK contributes to making a more sustainable world. To get this done I get to work with colleagues from across the business including product management, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, IT, engineering, etc to look at how we can make our products and operations more sustainable.  

3.    As a woman in the industry, how do you see the inclusion landscape evolving for future generations?

Having more women working in STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering and Math) roles and in industry requires the whole career pipeline to be inclusive. And that pipeline starts in schools. The industry has been focusing for many years now on reaching out to students, as we can only recruit the person who applies for the job! The key is, that we need more of our girls to believe that they can study STEM subjects and a great career awaits them if they do. Industry can play its part in making sure that their brilliant workforce is visible to inspire young people, that they continue to participate in promoting STEM subjects in schools, that we have apprenticeship roles that appeal to young women, that we train and develop the skills of our female colleagues and so on. Aliaxis has so many inspiring women working in technical roles at all levels including C-suite. We are doing really well but there is still more we want to do.   

4.    Can you share a significant achievement or proud moment from your professional journey?  

I have to confess that I don’t tend to look back on my career much, so I don’t have a particular moment from the past to share. I am interested in “what next”. I’d like my next proud moment to be when we  can announce that Aliaxis UK has zero carbon operations.  

5.    Are there specific women who have been role models or mentors for you in your career? 

I am lucky because there have been so many. My first work placement while I was doing my degree was with an amazing woman who was an environmental manager. I was inspired not only by how well she did her job but also by her courageous ambitions for her own career. Then in my first job for a small campaigning charity, our managing director was a woman who was a fantastic leader. From observing her I learned a lot about managing people. Lots of other women have been important too, such as a director when I was in the civil service who coached me on how to apply for a senior management role and the operations director who gave me my first opportunity to work in manufacturing. The lesson here is that our behaviours and actions can have a great impact on our colleagues in ways we might never even know.