Molly Marshall worked at GSK (Glaxo SmithKline) as part of her BSc Business and Economics degree (now called Business Management with Economics).  Here she tells us about her work with them.

Photo of Molly Marshall Standing in front of a window
Molly Marshall Photography – Nick Harrison

Molly, you said you’d been working on a project and I wondered if you could give me some more information this. What are you actually doing?

Two years ago there was an incident at GSK in a different country where a trailer crept forward and, unfortunately, a pallet rider fell down and a guy was crushed and died so it’s now mandatory that every GSK site looks into automatic wheel chocking and different systems which can prevent trailer creep.  That’s the project that was given to me.

What do you feel you have brought to that project?

I’ve brought organisation and people management skills.  I’ve done data trending and things that my team couldn’t have done such as surveys, asking the operators themselves; it’s been good on that front. This project is completely my project. You kind of get thrown in at the deep end but I know there’s always support in my team. If I need senior support they’ll happily come to a meeting with me. It’s good.

So how have you worked with people from quite a different background.

You have to build that relationship with the operators before you try and implement anything because otherwise they’re like, ‘Who are you? What are you doing changing the way we work? We don’t even know who you are.’ Whereas, if you build the relationship with them first for a few weeks and then you bring in changes, they’re a bit more open about it. Yes, that’s a big thing to learn that you have to build those relationships because you can’t go in guns blazing and be like ‘we’re doing this now’ cos they’ll try round and go ‘no’.

What advice would you give to someone about a work placement?

I would say enjoy it, take the opportunities to go into other departments even if it’s just for an hour or just shadowing someone else; there’s always someone on site who will happily accommodate that.  When you apply, don’t rule the company out because they don’t get back to you straight away.  This takes time, it took me over three months from start to end.

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