International Women's Day - Meet Maxine, Our HSE and Facilities Officer: Ensuring Safety and Compliance at Allett
Maxine joined as our HSE and Facilities Officer here at Allett in August 2022
As Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) facilities officer Maxine is responsible for ensuring that our workplace meets health, safety, and environmental regulations. Her day-to-day job involves a range of activities to ensure the safety of employees and the environment.
Here are some common tasks that Maxine may perform on a daily basis:
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Conducting safety inspections
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Developing safety policies and procedures
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Providing/overseeing safety training
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Investigating accidents and incidents
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Managing environmental compliance
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Conducting risk assessments
Have You Got Any Hobbies?
My hobbies are walking and gardening. When not at work you will find me in the garden or walking my border collie Lady who has just turned one. Every day after work I like to go walking. Living around Cannock Chase and Hednesford I am inundated with places to walk with friends. I spend a lot of time in the garden. I do all my own hanging baskets, garden borders and the lawn using a Allett Classic machine (we do like nice stripes in the grass). We have just upgraded to an Allett Kensington. I have close family some of which live in Spain who I visit for holidays.
Where Did Your Passion of Lawncare/Gardening Come From?
My passion of gardening came from an incredibly early age I spent hours in the garden with my dad who was a very keen gardener. He was so enthusiastic about his lawn.
It was especially important seeing the stripes, cutting and cross cutting on a weekly basis weather permitting. We were keen to grow plants from seeds and had a vegetable garden too which included fruit trees blackcurrants, apples, and pears.
Have you had any challenges being a female working in health and safety?
I had a challenge joining a new company as Assembly/HSE Manager I had difficulties in the early days with the production Manager we had a difference of opinion on working practices to the extent I started looking for a new job because there was no pleasure going to work for the daily disagreements we were having.
Then I decide to challenge him, and we had an intense argument which resulted in use both working together extremely well taking on projects.
I very quickly realised he was provoking me to evaluate my strengths and weaknesses. From then on, we went on to undertake on a project and implemented an environmental management system for the business making substantial cost saving on energy and waste. My working life was extremely rewarding because we had a better understanding of each other, and we had a good working relationship which we both gained respect within the business.
During the winter months I spend the cold rainy days planning my garden for the summer ahead. March I will start raking the lawn clearing any fallen leaves and cleaning up from the winter winds and poor weather. I like to see the garden wake up with the introduction of the winter bulbs this generates your motivation to start work pruning the trees and preparing your lawn for the first cut which always makes the garden look tidy.
April, I plant the hanging baskets ready for the garden to burst into colour with the blossom in May and this will continue into the autumn. To give the best results and nice lawn stripes we use a Allett petrol mower with the verticutter and scarifier to remove the thatch and keep the lawn in top condition. The lawn and plants are feed water and deadheaded to promote new growth.