Quality Assurance and Health & Safety Manager
Vestey Holdings

00:00:06:03 – 00:00:07:17
My name is Susan.

00:00:07:17 – 00:00:12:05
I work for an organization called Cottage Delight, which are part of the Vestey group,

00:00:12:07 – 00:00:15:02
based in Leek in Staffordshire,

00:00:15:02 – 00:00:19:23
and my job title there is quality assurance and health and safety manager.

00:00:20:00 – 00:00:23:05
So we specialise in traditional preserves,

00:00:23:07 – 00:00:26:13
jams, chutneys, sauces, pickles.

00:00:26:15 – 00:00:30:15
We do a fantastic range of curds, fudge,

00:00:30:17 – 00:00:31:12
things like that.

00:00:35:04 – 00:00:38:15
My job, it’s kind of almost broken up into two separate parts,

00:00:38:17 – 00:00:41:22
the quality assurance part and then the health and safety part.

00:00:41:24 – 00:00:46:16
So the quality assurance is making sure that everything we make and sell is

00:00:46:16 – 00:00:51:07
safe to eat, tastes great and won’t do anyone any harm.

00:00:51:09 – 00:00:53:23
And then the health and safety is looking after the staff

00:00:53:23 – 00:00:55:05
who actually make the food,

00:00:55:05 – 00:00:59:05
to make sure there’s no harm comes to them while they’re working on our site.

00:00:59:07 – 00:01:00:16
You can be at your desk,

00:01:00:16 – 00:01:03:16
but you can also be down in the factory, you can be around the warehouse,

00:01:03:16 – 00:01:07:22
you can be visiting your suppliers or out and about visiting customers sometimes,

00:01:07:22 – 00:01:10:06
so there’s a lot of variety to my job.

00:01:10:06 – 00:01:13:17
Yeah, it’s never dull. One of the challenges I suppose is that

00:01:13:17 – 00:01:17:20
there are times where you have to put a stop on something in production

00:01:17:20 – 00:01:19:08
because it’s not right.

00:01:19:08 – 00:01:22:22
And that’s where it does take a kind of a strong person.

00:01:22:22 – 00:01:27:16
I’m fortunate in where I am now in Cottage Delight because quality is one of the prime things for us.

00:01:27:16 – 00:01:30:16
And if me or one of my team say something is

00:01:30:16 – 00:01:34:02
not right, we’re not happy with it that is accepted,

00:01:34:02 – 00:01:35:09
it’s not questioned.

00:01:39:15 – 00:01:41:22
People skills – I would say almost first

00:01:41:22 – 00:01:45:19
and foremost – because you have to interact with a lot of people, from the customers,

00:01:45:21 – 00:01:48:21
the suppliers, and all the staff, that work on the shop floor.

00:01:49:00 – 00:01:52:00
We are responsible for making sure that

00:01:52:02 – 00:01:54:24
the procedures are adhered to on the factory floor

00:01:54:24 – 00:01:55:15
so it’s important

00:01:55:15 – 00:01:59:06
that you can explain to people, not only what they have to do,

00:01:59:10 – 00:02:02:17
but why they have to do it. Some kind of background knowledge in science,

00:02:02:17 – 00:02:06:20
particularly microbiology, is definitely useful because you have to

00:02:06:22 – 00:02:10:07
know what causes food to go off, what causes people

00:02:10:07 – 00:02:11:12
to get ill from eating food.

00:02:16:00 – 00:02:17:03
So I went to school in Ireland,

00:02:17:03 – 00:02:22:13
so the education system’s slightly different than in the UK. When I was

00:02:22:15 – 00:02:24:15
in my final years of high school,

00:02:24:15 – 00:02:25:20
didn’t know what I wanted to do

00:02:25:20 – 00:02:30:00
but I come from a farming background, so I decided that a degree in agriculture,

00:02:30:02 – 00:02:32:20
agricultural science, would probably be the one that at least

00:02:32:20 – 00:02:37:05
I would be with possibly like-minded people and then see where that got me.

00:02:37:07 – 00:02:41:04
So from that, at the end of year one, I had decided that the food science

00:02:41:04 – 00:02:44:23
element of things was more interesting than the animal husbandry, or the crop

00:02:44:23 – 00:02:46:23
husbandry, and forestry and everything else.

00:02:46:23 – 00:02:49:21
So I went down the food science route. So that’s why I did my degree

00:02:49:21 – 00:02:50:20
in food science.

00:02:54:22 – 00:02:57:05
Towards the end of my degree

00:02:57:05 – 00:03:02:11
I had to do a placement, an industry placement,

00:03:02:13 – 00:03:06:11
so that was in a dairy. I worked in the lab there testing the milk

00:03:06:11 – 00:03:07:21
coming in from the farms.

00:03:07:21 – 00:03:11:23
The following summer, I worked in a grain intake,

00:03:12:00 – 00:03:15:24
and we were testing that for moisture level – and then by that stage I’d finished

00:03:16:01 – 00:03:19:01
uni and I was ready to go into the world full time.

00:03:19:06 – 00:03:21:24
So I worked in a company that supplied herbs and spices,

00:03:21:24 – 00:03:23:13
mainly to the butchery trade,

00:03:23:13 – 00:03:24:03
and I was doing

00:03:24:03 – 00:03:28:00
testing on all the products coming in to make sure they were suitable for use.

00:03:28:02 – 00:03:31:06
From there, then I got a job in the bakery,

00:03:31:08 – 00:03:34:09
and that was quality control in the bakery,

00:03:34:15 – 00:03:38:21
looking after mainly the hygiene and all that kind of stuff.

00:03:38:23 – 00:03:41:23
I went to a different bakery after that,

00:03:41:23 – 00:03:44:09
which was a slightly larger company,

00:03:44:09 – 00:03:47:11
so that gave me my first exposure of working within a quality team

00:03:47:11 – 00:03:50:07
and having more than one person kind of responsible for the job.

00:03:50:07 – 00:03:53:23
Then for personal reasons, moved to the UK,

00:03:54:00 – 00:03:57:09
settled in Stoke on Trent and saw a job advertised

00:03:57:12 – 00:04:00:20
locally in Cottage Delight looking for a quality manager.

00:04:00:22 – 00:04:05:18
Went for the interview and got the job. I think I’ve flowed through life

00:04:05:20 – 00:04:11:16
without much of a plan and ended up where I am now. I would never describe myself

00:04:11:16 – 00:04:14:23
as being particularly ambitious or anything like that.

00:04:14:23 – 00:04:17:19
I just kind went from one job to the next.

00:04:22:07 – 00:04:24:19
So my advice would be to work for a small company

00:04:24:19 – 00:04:27:12
because there just aren’t large teams to do tasks.

00:04:27:12 – 00:04:30:23
I think with the smaller company, lots of people have to pick up things.

00:04:30:23 – 00:04:34:09
So you get the variety working in a small company and

00:04:34:15 – 00:04:36:13
experience a lot of different things.

00:04:36:13 – 00:04:37:21
So I think that’s what I would advise.