People are sometimes a little surprised to meet the towering 1.6m tall, female High Bay Warehouse Manager at Coca Cola Amatil (CCA).
But Vireeena Peacock easily takes this in her stride. “There are few role models in this area,” she points out, “and the good part of this is that I am fairly free to develop my own style. To an extent people don’t have a real expectation of how I will behave.
“There are three other women in my team,” Peacock adds, “so we women are now less ‘unusual’. I also like to think that having a more gender-balanced workforce makes the environment a little less ‘rough’ and more inclusive than that usually associated with logistics sites generally.”
A CCA employee of 12 years, Vireena Peacock has been High Bay Warehouse Manager, since the site was commissioned in late 2007.
Since operation began this year, Peacock’s responsibilities include identifying and rectifying OH&S hazards, ensuring the team, incorporating CCA employees, contractors, Swisslog specialists and transport providers have the resources, training and support that they need and developing, implementing and monitoring methods for ensuring inventory accuracy.
“My role also encompasses ensuring that the equipment and site are kept as close to original condition as possible in order to maximise the operational life of the MHE,” Peacock says, “and reviewing major issues and problems in order to understand root causes and as far as possible eliminate them.”
“Automated warehousing is still relatively new and each warehouse seems to be quite unique in what it has been designed to do,” Peacock observes.
“This creates some challenges in determining what ‘good looks like’ as we don’t have a lot of other sites to compare our methodology and performance to.
"As a result we are constantly challenging ourselves to think of new ways to look at our performance and how it can be improved.”
Vireena Peacock says the people are the best aspect of her job. “In an automated warehouse there are very few people by comparison to traditional warehousing.
"This means that each individual in the warehouse has a far bigger role to play and can have a significant impact on the performance of the warehouse and the experience of the customer.”
“Leading a relatively small team also means that I have the opportunity to get to know each individual quite well and to understand their aspirations and motivations,” Peacock says.
“This enables me to provide a level of personal guidance to each person in helping them to achieve their goals. I am fortunate to lead an exceptional group of individuals who are professional, customer centric and fun to work with.”
Vireena Peacock has achieved both a Master of Education (Leadership) and Graduate Certificate in Management while working with CCA.
“I have participated in a number of diverse programs internally,” she says. “The training and development opportunities that I feel have been the most influential have been the on-the-job experiences that I have had working across a broad selection of roles within CCA, such as initially working in the quality area in PET blow-moulding.
"I have also worked in National Learning & Development, Human Resources, Customer Service Management in both CCA’s contact centre and Equipment Service functions and finally Business Improvement before moving to the High Bay Manager’s role last year.
“I’ve also been fortunate to attend external programs such as Green Belt Six Sigma, Mentor Training, Industrial Negotiation, Coaching, Call Centre Management Programs, DiSC and Genysys Psych training programs, OH&S, Employee Relations training, Workplace Assessment and Internal Auditing.”
Of the future, Vireena Peacock says she has never been very specific about the direction that her career should head.
“This has enabled me to take advantage of some very different directions. I have found through experiencing many different roles that I gain greatest enjoyment from developing people and seeing them succeed and that I am best able to do this when I have a team of people to lead and work with.
"So working with people is highly desirable for me in the future as it is now.”
Add a comment