Meet Elsa from the Global Graduate Leadership Development Scheme

How did you come to find yourself on the Spirax Group Global Graduate Leadership Development Scheme?

I did Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds and so I was not familiar with Spirax Group or any engineering companies during my degree. In my third year I knew I wanted to do a graduate scheme, so I made sure to go to all the careers fairs that my university held. It was here that I got chatting to another fellow Spirax Group Graduate Fredrika Persson and she told me all about the programme and how I was still eligible to apply with my Biology degree. The programme was attractive to me because of how much of the business we would experience, whether that was auditing, marketing, health and safety, sales or sustainability. As a student coming out of university with no real idea of the exact role I wanted,  I felt this gave me the best opportunity to try many different things and get closer to finding my path. 

What rotations have you done on the programme so far & how has each benefited your development?

My first rotation was in Nordic Business Development within Spirax Sarco UK. In this placement I produced a new type of audit report which would help the customer better understand how we can improve their production site and therefore improve the sales opportunities for our audit engineers. This placement taught me so much about how we interact with customers, the best ways of communicating a very technical engineering opportunity to someone who may not know anything about engineering, and I was able to visit customer sites and see how steam is used in almost every manufacturing process for all different types of products. Having started from zero in my steam knowledge I can now understand so much more having been able to see it all first hand. I was lucky enough to do a lot of presenting of my ideas and progress throughout the placement and this really improved my public speaking skills and confidence. 

My second rotation was in Watson Marlow Alitea in Stockholm, Sweden. My placement was focused on improving the quality control checks at Alitea by creating a PowerBI dashboard to analyse the customer complaints and creating a PowerApp to carry out the quality checks in the assembly site. This placement taught me so much about a production/assembly site and what it takes to keep it efficient. I was taught LEAN techniques which included Kanban, Kaizen and Poke Yoke, which are implemented to reduce waste and increase efficiency.  I was even allowed to assemble some of the pumps myself to fully understand the assembly process and therefore help the assemblers through PowerBI and PowerApps. 

I am currently in my final placement which in the Strategic Account Management team to the Life Sciences EMEA. This placement is more of a “real life” position in the team with different tasks weekly to complete. These could be anything from forecasting, pricing, new products, data analysis, site visits or  training courses etc. This placement is giving me an excellent insight into the commercial side of the business and what happens once a sale, price change or new product is agreed upon. Also being in an EMEA level team allows me to interact with many people across the business and different working cultures. 

What is your current role & what does a typical day look like for you?

My current role is Life Sciences Key Account Coordination. Often, I have to input the weekly forecast data so that our account managers can accurately put in their forecasts to see if we will hit our targets. I also make additions to our global price books and check our trade agreements are up to date within our pricing system, so the correct pricing is used. I make sure to keep in contact with all the key account managers across Europe in case they need any information from me or help with a task. 

How has the culture in your OpCo allowed you to make a difference/impact? 

I work out of the Cheltenham head office in the UK, however my whole team is remote. This makes it a very interesting experience as I get to speak to loads of different people in various parts of the business on my day to day around the office which I love, but I also get to experience the different work cultures with my colleagues virtually. We often discuss the cultural differences or funny habits we have. I also have the opportunity to travel with my team so that we can meet. Most recently, we met in France for a conference to discuss the future of the team and the year ahead which was very productive and it was great to finally meet them all in person.