My Agilisys journey: Shivam Kaushal

Shivam Kaushal discusses his role as Health and Safety Advisor at Agilisys. What is your role within Agilisys? As Health and Safety Advisor, my role involves keeping Agilisys compliant with health and safety law and, most importantly, it involves ensuring everyone who comes into work returns home unharmed. My role covers the whole Agilisys portfolio […]

Shivam Kaushal discusses his role as Health and Safety Advisor at Agilisys.

What is your role within Agilisys?

As Health and Safety Advisor, my role involves keeping Agilisys compliant with health and safety law and, most importantly, it involves ensuring everyone who comes into work returns home unharmed.

My role covers the whole Agilisys portfolio and has enabled me to get involved with our current ISOO14001 accreditation process – the international standard that specifies requirements for an effective environmental management system.

Tell us about your team

I work in three different teams! I am part of both the Facilities and HR teams and I am part of a network of health and safety coordinators across Agilisys – whose role is to ensure that management systems make sense and work well.

How did you get to where you are now?

I started out with an internship as a Junior Project Manager in one of our client sites, Elevate. However, I wasn’t sure whether project management was my ‘calling’ and I was ready to leave Agilisys at the end of my internship!

I always wanted to try health and safety and was luckily offered a 2.5-day project management role, as well as a 2.5-day health and safety role. This gave me the best of both worlds in terms of learning new skills and further developing my career.

From there, I met the previous Agilisys Health and Safety Manager, who was close to retiring, and worked very closely with him for almost a year and a half. Following his retirement, I was then offered my current position as Health and Safety Advisor.

What do you enjoy most about your job and working at Agilisys?

For me, I would absolutely say the autonomy. I am lucky to be in a position early on in my career where I ‘manage’ the whole health and safety management system for Agilisys. I have the space to challenge what we currently do and have the opportunity to improve current processes.

I am always at heart of that process of constant evolution and making decisions – which can be very daunting when it’s a tough conversation, but also very rewarding!

What would you say to someone thinking about starting a career in health and safety?

Firstly, I would recommend it. This is because of the varied nature of the work, and the many different skills you draw upon everyday – often all at once.

I would also tell them to be prepared for some tough conversations. There will always be some who may not understand what you are trying to do and ultimately that it’s your responsibility to keep other employees safe. However, once you can start to explain ‘why’ something needs to be done and open yourself up to listen to ‘why’ someone may have concerns, it gets a little easier – especially when you have a good support system around you to bounce ideas off.