Rob Sims is head of health, safety and environment for Safran Seats GB, a world-leading manufacturer of aircraft seats, and his expertise spans health and safety, project and operations management, human resources, learning and development, inclusion and diversity. This includes a 23-year career in air traffic control and flight operations management with the Royal Air Force, as well as coordinating the provision of health and safety for the global engineering organisation, Airbus Ops Ltd. Rob is winner of the Women’s Engineering Society Men as Allies award 2019 for his inclusion and diversity projects and initiatives.
“We need to constantly innovate and listen to our customers to remain competitive. To achieve this, we must cater for all ages, cultures and disabilities in our engineering and production, the only way we can do this and be innovative is to have a diverse workforce.”
Career to date
I was raised in Suffolk and joined the RAF at the age of 16. I then served 23 years initially as an assistant air traffic controller and then a flight operations manager, with a variety of bases both in the South of England and overseas, seeing action in the Gulf and Iraq wars.
In 2011 I joined Airbus as H&S (health and safety) and training coordinator within Design Engineering. In 2020 I joined Safran Seats GB as H&S team lead and was promoted in 2021 to head of health, safety and environment for Safran Seats, Great Britain.
My role today
In simplest terms, I am responsible and accountable for all health, safety, and environment for Safran Seats Great Britain sites, from incident and accident investigation and subsequent corrective measures to ensuring legal compliance, liaising with national and local authorities. I line-manage a great team and look to help them develop. I am also the lead on COVID-19 precautionary measures.
By the nature of my role, I have been in the office throughout the pandemic. I ensure that we adhere to both Welsh and UK Government legislation and that we follow social-distancing and preventative measures.
I liaise with Safran Group and national authorities on our COVID cases and conduct internal track and trace. We have been audited by the HSE four times and have had no “pick-ups”, but our precautions are only as good as our workforce following them, so I am regularly auditing and communicating good practices.
Diverse talent is the best kind
A diverse workforce within a manufacturing environment helps us as a company appreciate the many different cultures and how they envisage air travel both now and in the future. We need to constantly innovate and listen to our customers to remain competitive. To achieve this, we must cater for all ages, cultures and disabilities in our engineering and production, the only way we can do this and be innovative is to have a diverse workforce.
Diversity of thought is how we can constantly look towards continuous improvement. If the decision-makers are all of the same “mould” we will only have one train of thought, if we have different genders, ages, backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles within our workforce we will have a variety of thoughts which will increase our innovation and ultimately our attractiveness as a company.
Winning the Women’s Engineering Society Men as Allies award
I was a member of the Airbus Balance for Business group, looking to champion equality across the company. My award was for the work I did in regard to two major projects: Maternity, Paternity and Adoption and Bullying and Harassment. I also delivered neurodiversity awareness across the company and championed LGBT+.
Being an ally
Within engineering and manufacturing, there is still a gender imbalance. To be creative we need to keep striving to increase gender imbalance and change the perception of these industries. Different genders give different perspectives, from problem-solving to design to new ways of working.
Having recently joined Safran Seats, I am excited by joining Women@Safran and hopefully, I can learn from the present members and I can contribute with my previous experiences and projects.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-sims-24ab6a1a8/
