What is the role of an Employee Director at i4 Product Design? 

The Employee Director role is an elected role by the employees of the company, to be an active and engaged member of the board for i4PD.  I must ensure I listen to the questions and concerns of the employees as owners of the company, and my role on the board is to represent the interests of the employees.

How did you become Employee Director?

Every 2 Years the employees of the company can vote for who they wish to become the Employee Director. Everyone is eligible for the role as long as they have been with the company for a year. Within the same vote employees can also say if they would like to run for the Employee Director role themselves.  I felt passionate about this and so I issued a manifesto to the employees with reflections of my time at i4PD. It provided ideas on how we could focus our time to make positive change and how I would take their much needed input going forward to make a plan of action.   The first round of voting resulted in a tie with another employee but I was successful on the second round of voting.  I was delighted to have been voted to represent our team.  

What is your vision for the company?

i4 Product Design has already experienced significant change in a few short years, moving to a multi-disciplinary consultancy with in-house Regulatory affairs expertise.  This has allowed us to take on more complex, multi-disciplinary, long term projects, especially within the medical and bio-medical science industry.  These are exciting projects to work on as they are life changing for the end user. As our experience and expertise in this area keeps growing, we must also focus on our continuous improvement of our processes and execution, to continue to deliver success for our customers and the best results possible for their end users.

In the future I would like to see an increased focus on creating products that are less harmful to the planet and so reduced energy consumption, recyclability and serviceability are already in the minds of our engineers.  i4PD’s in-house 'Batteryless electronics' project is a great example of this.

Summary of your background

I have a background in Product Design Engineering which is where my career started out. I graduated from a Business Leadership Program in a previous company where I gained experience in both Project Management and as a people manager. I have been working as a Project Manger for 7 years now and have worked on many different types of developments, all within highly regulated industries.  I now mainly project manage medical product developments.  Additionally I now operate as a QMS auditor at i4PD which I love because I am someone that feels passionately about making things better and more efficient and have worked on many improvements to processes and guidelines over the years.  My experience in implementing change has meant I am able to be vocal about the wants and needs of others which works well in the Employee Director Role.

What is your approach to being Employee Director?

My approach initially is to start by listening.  I conducted small group sessions, asking the same set of questions that covered a broad range of aspects to understand what currently worked well within i4PD, the team's vision for the company and how we could achieve it.  This information was then collected in a way that reflected how often the same topics came up while protecting the anonymity of the feedback.  This was to help spot the areas that may need focus.  This was shared with everyone in the Board and everyone in the company so they could see the results.

The findings have also been shared with the board.  My goal now assess which focus areas already have strategy teams assigned to them to improve that area, where the gaps are, and how we can tackle these head on.

What interests you?

Just now with young children in the house, my time is spent with the family, often outdoors and enjoying our holidays by the seaside or the odd trip away to Europe.   In a few years I will get back on the water, as I am longing to teach my son to sail when he is old enough.  But you can also find me in the garage making gifts, decorations or trying something new with my laser cutter.