From a young age, Sarah saw her dad’s level of leadership and dedication towards his own successful spraying business as inspiring. This set the tone and kick-started her passion to work in the same industry. Today, Sarah is driven to succeed and prove people wrong, despite working in a predominantly male environment. Here, Sarah shares her story of her rise to the top.
Sarah started working at Edsons and Company in 2014. She’s since worked her way up from a Sprayshop Assistant to the Workshop Manager. Initially, Sarah was part of a 4 man team which helped her to grow and develop her skills of working independently as well as part of a team. This experience has proved vital in her current role as she currently manages a workshop with over 20 employees.
Sarah’s role varies from day-to-day. She splits her time between tackling practical tasks and meeting her commitments in an office-based role. A major element of Sarah’s role is to consistently identify and implement new processes into the workshop, whilst ensuring that the workplace meets health and safety requirements.
Sarah sees her dad’s leadership with his own spraying business as major inspiration for her to go into her current industry. This kick-started her journey within the finishing and joinery industry to where she is today, now managing a team across four areas – Machining, Manufacturing, Spraying and Delivery. Her father’s energy, hard work and dedication towards his own business is what instilled a tough work ethic in Sarah, which she hopes to bring into her role at Edson & Company.
From the early point in her spraying career, Sarah was recognised for her dedication and commitment. This lead to a call up from the higher management team to recruit Sarah into a leadership position in the workshop.
At first, Sarah found it difficult to learn joinery, but her determination to succeed prevailed as she would regularly use her spare time going through multiple drawings to learn information and details on the projects. However, she also credits her strong management team in supporting her transition into the new role.
Many people think that being the only female in the workforce is a disadvantage, but Sarah uses this to her advantage to bring in fresh unique perspectives and ideas on projects. Moreover, the desire to prove people wrong is what drives Sarah to be successful, and feeds into her matra: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
Sarah’s rapid rise to a managerial position in a male-dominated environment hasn’t come without issues along the way. It’s an industry that moves fast and requires quick responses but learning to take her time to ensure she has all the supporting information to provide a well educated and fully rounded answer has helped her tremendously in being taken seriously in her current role.
Sarah hopes to inspire the next generation of female leaders to be confident in their roles and encourages them to always grab any educational opportunity they can. She believes that hard work and education can help women achieve a more prominent role in their career, but also highlights the need to treat everyone the same without getting too emotionally attached to decisions. “Just remember, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re the best at it.”
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