Employee Profile Piece: Colin Gilchrist
What do you do Circular 1 Health?
My official title is Digital Productions, what I do varies hour-by-hour, right now I am developing a number of web pages to enhance our customer journey, making it as easy as possible for visitors to find their way around and get what they need quickly. Later today I could be expanding on our Google Ads campaigns, editing Youtube ads or designing an infographic for one of our laboratory processes.
Other elements within my role include sharing insights on approaches to business resilience – I set up LinkedIns’ Crisis Management in Social Media in August 2012 on the back of situations I’d been asked to support.
I also deliver internal film production for our Academy and training for new starts as well as editing and sending out our C1H Weekly Bulletin, 56 to date and counting!
What do you love about your job?
I feel very humbled to love the job I do for such a ground-breaking and revolutionary business. We are genuinely giving our customers the confidence to go about their jobs and be in their communities in the knowledge that we’ve got their back.
The team I work in, the people I meet in the business wherever I go, I am always greeted with smiles and happy faces, how can you not love that? Of course, there are challenges and situations that create anxiety and stress, the culture of this business is that we look at these as learning points and opportunities to improve, I can not tell you how refreshing and amazing that is.
What drove you to work for the business?
I was tasked by the founder to design our identity. Stuart MacLennan then asked me to be part of the business, aside from designing and building the website, all those swab instructions and patient forms… anything with our identity, it came from my desk. In the early days there was data management, running to Argos for freezer bags (a story for another time) anything non-scientific I was part of.
What drives me now is the knowledge and belief that we are on an important crusade to make the world a better and healthier place. Our preventative health model, our ethos around sustainability, our Academy set-up to not only support our Laboratory hiring, it also supports employment in the local community. This is an amazing business and I’m delighted to part of it.
What was your experience prior to joining C1H that has helped the business?
In the 90s I worked in retail, latterly running stores for and as a Buyer for Burberry. In the 2000s and into the 2010’s I was part of and latterly ran, a successful web design and digital agency while also setting up and working in a number of start-up businesses from film/TV production, software (SAAS), in agency, medical and property all within the role of design and marketing.
I picked up a passion for the circular economy in 2015; getting in touch with the writer/director I brought and showed the film “The True Cost” to an International Festival (see Youtube). I continue to be an advocate of business sustainability, B Corp and the advent of net-zero business activities.
This experience has allowed me to support across a number of areas for Circular1, from graphic design, web, film, business resilience, customer journey and doubtless more to come.
Do you have a dream for the business, what would you like to see happen?
The ripples of this business in the western world will be seen for years to come; how we changed and continue to support the healthcare system in countries both good and in need. Providing an integrated test network that identifies well in advance, potential viruses and illnesses in individuals. Thus, allowing you and I to take precautions and ease the pressure off both GPs and the health service. We are allowing everyone to be happy and healthy in their work and communities for longer.
“The Circular One” is also a truly net-zero preventative health provider, the first of its kind around the world (when you consider the amount of waste generated by pipette nibs to masks, gloves… the list goes on), this also is our lasting legacy.
