Spotlight on SAGE.

SAGE has been on an exciting journey of growth since being established in a backyard shed. As the company has grown to more than 450 employees, variety on the job and growing career opportunities are a common draw card for women to work at SAGE.

In the lead-up to International Women’s Day, we spoke with four women across the business about why they entrusted their careers to SAGE.

Rachael Fahey General Manager, Marketing

Time at SAGE: 10 Years
Plays piano as a mindfulness practice

What led you to SAGE?

I had worked my whole career in hotel marketing and I was looking for something that was completely different when I was approached about the position. It was the first dedicated marketing role in SAGE 10 years ago.

SAGE was specifically looking for a hotel marketer to bring a new perspective to their marketing.They specifically wanted someone that bought a strong customer focus, typical of hotels, rather than a technology and engineering background. They felt that for our business, a deep understanding of our customers and their needs should drive our marketing efforts and would help us to differentiate our service.

What have been your career highlights since coming to SAGE?

I've recently graduated in the inaugural class of the SAGE Academy, along with 17 other senior managers in the business. The three year part-time Diploma in Management and Leadership has certainly united us as a leadership group. We've been learning and challenging ourselves and applying what we've learned back into our business to make it even better.

The curriculum was developed based on the SAGE business systems, so it's highly relevant to what we're doing. There’s no part of the learning that you couldn't directly apply to your role and to your team. I think that's a pretty good indication of how we approach lifelong learning and career development as an organisation, its pretty inspiring.

Emma Christie, General Counsel

Time at SAGE: 4 years
Starts the day with an early morning run

What does a typical work day look like for you?
I usually get up at 5:30am and go for a run. Then I do school drop-off and get into work by around 8:30am. We start the day going through contracts that need to be reviewed as part of upcoming tenders and responding to queries about contractual obligations with clients or sub-contractors. We often have meetings with project managers to discuss any contractual issues or questions they have in relation to their project contracts.

On the governance side, I look at what sort of changes are coming up in the legislation area, and whether we need to create new policies or update policies to comply with legislative changes.

How has your role changed since coming to SAGE?

The role has changed dramatically. When I first started I was predominantly reviewing contracts as part of tenders. And obviously, with the growth of the business and the acquisition of new businesses, it's really changed into being involved in acquiring those new businesses, but also dealing with our compliance related issues.

Read more: SAGE acquires roadside maintenance group TCS

How would you describe the culture at SAGE?
Very friendly. Very team oriented, very supportive of one another. It's probably, in terms of workplaces I've worked in, got the most positive culture. People recognise each other for their contributions in the business, through Yammer posts and social media. There's a lot of people working well together within different teams and different sides of the business.

Samantha Kali, Principal Engineer - Energy

Time at SAGE: 11 months
Enjoys the thrill of a closing tender deadline

What led you to SAGE?
SAGE presented an opportunity I couldn't refuse - to experience my career in yet another unique way.

To provide a little context, I have worked in the power industry for all of my career but ended up working in the same field in very different ways, simply by sticking to one philosophy - always follow innovation.

Being one of a group of the first female engineers on a large coal-fired power plant back home in South Africa was where my passion first developed. This led to being a project engineer on Greenfield power plants, consulting engineer in NZ and then internationally, step change from power generation to the distribution network and from power distribution to the renewables energy sector.

To refer back to your question, what led me to SAGE, it is probably the only job that requires me to use all of the above, every day, and provides innovation in overdrive.

What do you see as the opportunities moving forward in your career?
Energy markets worldwide are changing rapidly due to the developing renewable technology, government policy and investments in renewable energy. Being at SAGE puts us in a unique position as being system integrators across all the emerging technologies and the different business sectors.

Moving forward in my career would mean being ahead of the game in the energy market and new technology environment as they develop. Ultimately I see myself involved in design and implementation of completely self-sustaining smart off-grid green energy systems.

How do you see collaboration playing out in your day to day work?

Collaboration is a very important part of my day-to-day work. That's where all of the best ideas actually come from.

I am really fortunate that my job requires me to interface with almost every division of the business in SAGE and having that integration with the different sectors provides me with the bigger picture across the business streams. That ultimately helps to properly align our new energy division with the existing business.

On a daily basis, collaborations might involve:

• State managers to ensure the level of technical compliance in energy project opportunities meets specifications
• TheNational Energy Manager for assisting in the business development process and to ensure proposals achieve the required balance between technical rigour, specified requirements and budget
• Thenational engineering team for contributing to a workplace build on innovation, design support and mentoring
• Principal engineers across the business to define and maintain consistently high standards of technical execution
• Technical proposal support to the estimation group and state-based delivery teams to ensure successful project outcomes on key opportunities in the energy sector
• Technical input for SAGE Group marketing activities.

How would you describe the culture at SAGE?

One of the nice things about working at SAGE is the people. I find my current working environment to be very interactive and collaborative.

I work with a diverse group of people who are very respectful and supportive of each other, but still challenge each other enough in the right environment, which keeps us energised and motivated to achieve our project and business goals. I have worked in many different environments, but the talent and quality of people I encounter at SAGE makes coming to work every day a whole lot more fun.

Read more: Engineering Australia's Energy Future

Alysse McDonald, Junior Analyst, Nukon

Time at SAGE: 9 months
Thrives on the variety of consultancy work

What led you to SAGE?
I was studying Electronic Engineering at Flinder's University and I had placement with another company who worked with SAGE. And I did my Honours project which was also combined with SAGE. And through that I met my boss now. There was a job becoming available that we talked about and he encouraged me to apply. And it was something I was interested in, so that’s how I got here.

I don't like to limit myself. Coming to Nukon, I knew that they're always looking for new things and constantly improving and expanding what we do here, so that definitely stood out for me.

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What kinds of support do you receive from the team you work with?
If I don't know what I'm doing everyone will lead me in the right direction. Occasionally they will say, ‘You can figure it out’. But they don’t leave you spinning your wheels too much. There is space to allow yourself to make mistakes and sort it out yourself. When we're doing things it'll kind of be like, ‘alright, have a look, see what you can figure out, and follow us’.
How would you describe the culture at SAGE?
Everybody's so helpful here. (laughs) Yeah. I always feel bad asking for help but they’re like ‘No, no,’ they love to do it.

The rapidly expanding nature of the SAGE Group creates exciting opportunities for development at every stage of the career cycle. Women across the business are integral contributors to our knowledge base and key to creating a smarter future and a better world.

Interested in learning more about the opportunities at SAGE? Connect with us on LinkedIn to see the latest job listings.