Sheila Currie

Greening the
Workplace Officer

I jumped at the chance to do a job where I can make something new happen and where I get to work with people across all our teams and all our offices.

I know a lot of people say there’s no such thing as an average day, but for me it’s true. And that means I could be working with individual members of staff one minute or making strategic proposals to Directors the next. I could be at a team or a one to one meeting – maybe developing ideas, presenting results or training staff. Or I could spend the whole day writing complex documents – while answering the kind of ad hoc queries that always pop up.

I'm also branch convener for the PCS Union and so could take calls from members with personal issues, liaise with management about cases or policies, support local Union Reps and generally promote the issues relevant to our members.

It is a challenge. Making change happen always is. Sometimes it takes a lot of energy to keep all the different strands moving forward at the same rate - corporate strategies to make our own operations as sustainable as possible, clear targets and actions for managers and teams, providing guidance on sustainable choices at work, and recording and reporting on our progress.

The strong shared sense of commitment to high quality public service and to the natural heritage is very important to what we do and to making this a good place to work.

Balancing the needs of people, the environment and the costs is what it’s all about – and when that works it’s very satisfying.