This week to celebrate International Women’s Day we have been sharing the stories of our female staff to highlight the challenges and successes of women in the geo-environmental industry. Finally, we hear from Stacey, Senior Geo-Environmental Consultant, and Claire, Assistant Geo-environmental Specialist to our new southern office.
How does it feel to be a woman working in the environmental sector?
Overall, I think it’s more evenly distributed with male and female consultants and engineers now. However, there are more men in top positions within companies. This may change over the years as more women climb the ranks, but it may be because women have had to make sacrifices for family and as a result their career progress has been stalled. I can relate to this myself as a working mum. It is tough! I am required to attend site across the UK which involves overnight stays away from home, which means I must balance childcare and work.
But I, like most women, am empowered by it and use the skills and resilience I have built up over the years, to persevere and achieve greater things. I love the idea that my daughter looks at me and thinks ‘my mummy wears a hard hat and hi-vis to work, just like grandad, and that it’s completely normal.
What’s your favourite memory while working for GGS?
I have quite a few but if I had to choose just one then it would have to be travelling to Poland to attend a conference. It was my first time in Warsaw, and it was winter, so it was freezing cold with deep snow. We stayed in a beautiful hotel and had some time to look around the city. A former colleague of GGS who was Polish also attended, so it was like having our own personal tour guide to show us the local cuisine and translate everything! We made a lot of contacts during the conference, spoke to people from all over the world and the evening cocktails went down nicely too.
What do you like about working here?
I like the flexibility and the motivation for career progression. Having flexible hours means I am able to attend my daughter’s school shows, do the school run and work from home, all without affecting my career progression. GGS motivates you to get better qualifications and push yourself to be the best at what you do.
Being new to both GGS and the industry, I was a little concerned about being a woman entering a traditionally male dominated trade. I was very pleased to find that GGS has such a strong representation of women in roles across the company and offers such an inclusive work environment.
Being managed and mentored by women who have experience of the environmental sector has been empowering and I hope to be able to represent women in the industry to such a high standard myself in the future!
GGS has understood my challenges of being a mother returning to the workplace and has given me the tools to successfully find a good work/homelife balance.
The following pages include news articles, videos, guidance notes and white papers on a range of ground gas related topics which we hope you will find of interest. Please browse through but if you can’t find something on your particular issue of interest, we’d be very pleased to hear from you so we can put that right.
This webinar will highlight when and where telemetry is a valuable addition to the monitoring scope, including case studies.
