Over the next few months, we want to introduce you to the owners at Scott & Fyfe – the employees!
Now in the fourth of our employee profiles, please meet Peter Thomson, employee owner, chair of the Employee Forum and much more.
Can you please tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
My job role at Scott & Fyfe is project technician of knitting and development and I am also chairman of the Employee Forum. The forum is a group of nominated employees who are tasked with driving engagement within the company. This manifests itself in many ways including improving communications, organising social events and improving the working conditions.
How long have you been working at Scott and Fyfe?
I have been working here for almost 16 years now and in that time I have covered a lot. I was brought in primarily to develop the knitted product range for the company as they had not been heavily involved in knitting to that point and I had a strong knitting background. My role then expanded into more development work where for example, I worked on a projects developing woven and extruded products such as our flexible micro drip irrigation solution and a range of stitch bonded products for the Composite POD.
Have you seen many changes during your 15 years at Scott and Fyfe?
In regards to change, employee ownership has been a big change in the company over the past few years and it really was a step in the right direction as it is beneficial for both the company and employees.
Another key change over my time is that the company is now more innovative, we tap into the resources that we always had but never used. An example of this would be that we now take advantage of the varied skills of our employees and this has resulted in drastic changes from the markets we go after to the way we now recruit new and different types of people.
Is there anything interesting about yourself others might not know?
There's lots, I was previously a member of the Arbroath Royal British Legion Pipe Band as a part of the drum core. I never set out to join this but whilst taking my son to his lessons there was a space available and a need to fill it so I stepped in. After that I kept going back and enjoyed it thoroughly for many years. In doing this we became Grade 4B Champions in 2001 and I was fortunate enough to play my last gig centre spot on Murrayfield for a Scotland Vs Italy match!!
I also used to break and school horses alongside my day job which is fairly different.
What has been the highlight of your time at Scott and Fyfe so far?
We used to make a side impact air bag product and the previous owner of Scott & Fyfe wanted to film the whole testing process which was to increase the pressure until the bag burst. So he brought in his camera and three of us tested this constantly from 9am to 3pm with no breaks, painstakingly increasing the pressure by 0.01 bar at a time. Finally the bag burst at 3pm… only for us to realise he hadn’t taken the lens off of the camera so had shot nothing the entire day!! I think his exact words were “well guys, I will see you again tomorrow morning” I have never laughed so much in my life.
