The SHP Awards’ judging panel has selected a Winner and Highly Commended for SHP’s Rising Star 2023 award – let’s take a look!
The SHP Rising Star Awards celebrates young, high-performing health and safety professionals. Some of the brightest, most passionate young stars of the profession going above and beyond to improve occupational health, safety and/or workplace wellbeing.
The Rising Star Award is brought to you as part of the wider SHP Awards, which, for 2023, is in collaboration with The HSE Recruitment Network.
This year, the judges have announced their Rising Star Winner, but, two other excellent nominations came very close and those finalists are our Highly Commended.
Laura Aucott of HSE Recruitment Network
Laura Aucott, Associate Director at The HSE Recruitment Network said: “The Rising Star Award is a fantastic way to recognise new and up-and-coming Safety professionals who are already making a difference and impacting the Safety industry in a positive way. Over the years I have seen previous Rising Star Award winners go on to do great things, and I have no doubt that this year’s winner and highly commended entrants will continue this trend.
“The passion that our top entrants showed was so clear, through their innovative practices and involvement in large-scale and notable projects and I can’t wait to see what they do in the future.”
We’d also like to extend our thanks to our esteemed judges for their time and varied insight for these awards.
Samantha Cartwright
Samantha Cartwright is a Health, Safety and Wellbeing Advisor at Luton Airport. She is a passionate advocate for workplace wellbeing and psychological safety, driven from personal experiences of mental health and sadly losing a loved one to suicide. In 15 months of her time at Luton, she has developed new initiatives such as a monthly wellbeing awareness plan, wellbeing newsletter and online hub.
To revive her workplace’s Stress Risk Assessments, Samantha created a new Psychosocial Wellbeing Procedure including delivering mandatory management training on wellbeing. Under Samantha’s lead, Luton Airport will be one of the first airports in the UK completing an ISO45003 audit for psychological safety. In 2024, Samantha plans to include psychological factors into the airport’s incident investigation procedures to help prevent accidents and reoccurrences.
The judges were extremely impressed that, at 23, she is advocating for mental health, creating wellbeing programmes driven from her deeply personal and inspirational story, and leading a first for Luton Airport with the ISO45003 audit – fantastic achievements for this year’s Rising Star. Judges called the psychosocial factors within incident investigation procedures “a game changer”, and described her vulnerability and personal mental health story to be a “superpower”.
Here’s more from what the judges had to say:
“I know how difficult it is to even start the (wellbeing) conversation and even to get managers involved. To get that commitment for her to take it this far and run these initiatives must have been a massive challenge.”
“You can talk the talk but she is walking the walk.”
“Really commendable (achievements) and an incredible journey.”
“She’s not just an influencer within her organisation, she’s looking at the industry too.”
“Her nomination is brilliant.”
Alanah Campbell is an EHS Advisor at West Fraser. To begin her HS career, Alanah self-funded all of her courses. An advocate for women in health and safety and part of IOSH’s Future Leaders committee (a community of over 7000 members, dedicated to empowering new and aspiring professionals), she continually aims to promote the profession to others, moving the stereotypical view away from health and safety ‘being about clipboards’.
Alanah works hard to help make environments safer by explaining to people on-site why something may be unsafe to do, and makes sure there is full awareness and understanding across the board, while also being an approachable colleague. Her nominator said ‘she was made for health and safety’ and that ‘she has an incredibly bright future ahead of her’.
Judges were impressed by Alanah’s self-funding of health and safety courses, varied knowledge of the sector and focus on confidently communicating with others in her workplace. They also highlighted her career, particularly to be working within forestry and timber, on top of being part of IOSH Future Leaders.
Judges also said:
“Alanah is amazing for self-funding.”
“She is very determined.”
“Anyone interested in investing in themselves is worth investing in – it takes a lot to have a commitment to take money out your own pocket, to fund your own career.”
“Not only is she really passionate and driven, but she’s also championing working in unusual industries as well.”
Courtney Bayne
Courtney Bayne is a Health and Safety Advisor at Dundee City Council. Joining at 17 as a Modern Apprentice, she worked her way up to her position, where now, at 22, she provides direct support to the Council’s Corporate Services and Chief Executives’ Directorates as a qualified HS adviser. Courtney has driven forward many improvements within the organisation, one in particular includes improving the stress management process to make sure mental ill health is treated the same as physical ill health.
She has also been a part of a variety of public events, providing advice for incidents with potential public consequences, one being an attempted escape of a wolf pack from the city’s wildlife centre! Courtney is said to embrace every new challenge with enthusiasm, growing from strength to strength. Recently, she was also selected as a speaker at the IOSH Scotland Conference to encourage employers to hire Modern Apprentices for the next generation of health and safety.
The judges commended Courtney for her inspiring journey, joining the health and safety sector at just 17, and loved her obvious passion and drive for the role by pushing forward organisational improvements, and working on major projects, not forgetting the attempted wolf pack escape!
The judges added:
“Courtney’s great, she’s keen and she’s got that drive.”
“She’s working on big public events where there is bigger risk too.”
“I think it’s amazing at her age.”
“Courtney’s got very varied experience, which is really difficult in our industry…as a safety professional that’s going to stand her in really good stead as she goes through to chartership.”
