The Candidate
Briony used to work as an environmental health officer, before moving away from the sector to focus on running her own business. However, once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she decided she wanted to return to the world of public health. While a permanent role wasn’t what she was looking for, contracting seemed like it would offer her the flexibility she was looking for and give her the opportunity to trial a return to local government without having to commit to anything.
The Requirement
One of the first steps for Briony was to try working through an agency, but she couldn’t find one she was happy with at first. She found that things weren’t being done correctly, meaning she had to phone up to sort things out, which took her away from actually doing her work. This initially put her off signing up with another, which put her plans to contract on hold for a little while. However, Bill from Vivid had been in touch with her, and Briony was impressed by his honesty, so she decided to give Vivid a try.
The Solution
We set Briony up as a contractor with Vivid. This meant we would take care of invoicing, pay and admin, leaving Briony free to work the jobs she wanted to. Setting this up was a quick, easy process, and Briony was impressed with both the speed and how we kept her informed the entire time. From here, she was free to start contracting straight away.
While communication had been an issue with previous agencies she worked with, Briony found that we would do our best to spot problems before they occurred and fix them, keeping her in the loop so she didn’t have to waste time if there was an issue. That meant she was free to enjoy working in the public health sector while also being able to be flexible about which roles she took on.
Briony found this flexibility to be a major advantage, enjoying the ability to move on from a role if it wasn’t right. She found that Vivid was able to help her out with this, as we put our contractors first. When she found herself in a contract that wasn’t at all what was advertised and came to us for help getting out of it early, she was surprised how willing we were to help her out where other agencies would have told her she had to complete the job. We were able to end that contract early for her and get her into a new role straight away.
*Briony Norris, Environmental Health and Health & Safety specialist
