Sangeeta, an agile coach with WorkSafeBC’s Enterprise DevOps (EDO) team, shares her thoughts on her career journey, bringing InnoFest to WorkSafeBC, and why working here has been such a great experience.

Can you tell us about your background and career path at WorkSafeBC?

After getting a degree in computer science and business information technology from Scotland, I went to BCIT in Vancouver and got a diploma in computing science. From there, I started my career in IT as a programmer analyst.

I worked at the Save-On-Foods head office and several smaller start-up companies before starting at WorkSafeBC as a senior scrum master.

Later, I enrolled in the one-year release train engineer training program, which is an in-house initiative WorkSafeBC started a few years ago. I feel the training program prepared me well for the real-world release training engineer role and set me up for success. I’ve since moved into the agile coach role, and now I work with multiple teams across EDO.

What do you enjoy about working here?

I love that I have a voice, even in such a large organization, and am given the autonomy to bring my ideas and experiences to inform how we do things. I feel comfortable suggesting change and experimenting. I also feel there’s a culture here that encourages continuous improvement, having a growth mindset, and inclusivity.

We also often make room for fun! Collaboration and autonomy are encouraged. I enjoy the team camaraderie and working with like-minded people, as well as the opportunity to influence growth and an innovative mindset.

What’s one of the most interesting projects you’ve worked on here?

I was part of the team that introduced InnoFest to WorkSafeBC. InnoFest is WorkSafeBC’s name for a hackathon — it’s an event where teams from across the organization work together to develop creative solutions to help us work in new and better ways.

I had helped organize hackathons in previous companies and wanted to do something similar here. It was fun and exciting because it's something that gets people collaborating and bringing ideas from different areas.

At the same time, it was challenging because it was the first time WorkSafeBC was going to try something that I was proposing and helping to bring to life. But it was something I was passionate about organizing and doing. And because it was so successful that first year, we got approval to do it again the following year, in an even bigger way. The success of the event and seeing our vision come to life was definitely very exciting and rewarding.

How has your experience at WorkSafeBC influenced your skills and career goals?

I cannot say enough about how WorkSafeBC has helped my career. When I first joined the organization, I had to learn a lot of new Microsoft tools quickly, such as Azure DevOps, which is used to track our progress and anything that we’re doing in our backlog, and other tools like iObeya, since we started working in a hybrid environment.

I feel I’m in a win-win situation: I'm learning, growing, and happy, and my leaders are also happy.

Why should people see WorkSafeBC as a tech company of choice?

We’re always looking for new, creative ways of doing things, especially when it comes to new technology that will help us better serve our stakeholders. For example, one major trend affecting the industry and WorkSafeBC is AI technology. We’re going to be looking at how we can maximize this technology to better serve our stakeholders.

At my new employee orientation, Anne Naser, our CEO, reminded us that WorkSafeBC may be more than 100 years old, but we were hired because we bring fresh and diverse perspectives to the table. That just underscores how I always feel supported by my leaders and how invested they are in us. We’re encouraged to constantly be curious and to look at how we can do things differently in the future.

To learn more about opportunities in our Innovation and Technology (I&T) division, visit our careers page.