Bernie Marshall (Head of Directorates Finance) has been heading up some work on how as a Directorate we can be more social, and more sustainable. She has been very busy and kindly offered to give us all an update on how she and her teams have been getting on.

Getting Social

The Finance and Planning Social committee is up and running – with the first social planned for next Thursday at the Red Lion from 4:30pm – it would be great to see a lot of you there, it is ‘Thirsty Thursday’ after all!

Nicola Green (Planning) and Erica Cook (SBS Man Accts) have also joined the fold to help us plan a calendar of events that you can dip in and out of.

Recently we all met and made a decision on what we are hoping to do – the calendar will be coming your way soon.

As well as the social calendar, I’m also working on an all-team event with Louise Love (Corp reporting) and Sandra Kaye (SBS Man Accts). We have been looking at suitable events such as an ‘It’s a knock out’ style of event or a well-being month. Ideas welcome from the whole Directorate…please get in touch with any of us.

And it’s never too early to start thinking about our Christmas party, so Tracey Makinson (purchase Ledger) has kindly volunteered to take this on and come up with some ideas, watch this space!

Getting sustainable

We have been on a recruiting mission to get some more green champions to help with this work for the Directorate.

We have 2 new Green Champions; Fiona Jones (Directorate Man Accts) and Rachel Devaney (Head of Strategic Procurement), who join Rosalind Wastnidge (Fin Accts) and James Rainbow (Strategic Procurement), but we can never have too many people being sustainable so we still need more of you to volunteer- if you would like to know more about being a Green Champion please contact me or Rosalind Wastnidge.

Our green champions will be carrying out a ‘green’ audit of our workplace in the near future.

We will also be working closely with FD and all the work they do to concentrate on a couple of campaigns that we can all get our teeth into and really make a difference.

As part of our work on sustainability, Wendy Kay (Purchase Ledger manager) has been on a Veolia visit and recommends this to anybody who is interested.

And finally, for those of you in 1-11, remember to turn those lights off in the kitchen and meeting rooms when you leave them, or I’ll be after you!