RoSPA AWARDS 2017 - AVIDETY
BARRIE BROWNING
Managing Director Barrie Browning has over 20 years’
experience within the electricity sector. He is passionate
about people development, innovation and process
improvement while driving a positive safety culture.
“I am ultimately responsible for leading the business
and am supported by Paul Parfitt, Operations Director and
Jonathan Phillips, SHEQ Manager.
“I hold a general NEBOSH Certificate, passed with
distinction, and an IOSH Safety for Senior Executives
qualification, amongst other technical electrical
qualifications.”
As Managing Director, Barrie is keen to maintain
connection; actively communicating from a grass roots
level to the board room, on a daily basis. Under his
leadership and since its establishment in 2014, Avidety has
experienced significant growth, thus leading the way in
health and safety to achieve a RoSPA Gold Award accolade
on its first submission.
“Maintaining a safe environment and workforce satisfies
both moral and legal obligations. However, it means more
than that; our conscience is clean in knowing that our
staff return home safely to their loved ones every day. Of
course, maintaining an exemplary safety record also proves
to be an enabler for unparalleled results and business
growth, while keeping our staff engaged.
“Promoting a positive safety culture is a win-win scenario
and I believe that it will allow Avidety to remain on top of
our game.”
JONATHAN PHILLIPS
SHEQ Manager, Jonathan Phillips, is responsible for
supporting the safety, health, environmental and quality
related efforts for Avidety, such as participation in all SHEQ
improvement process activities. These include achieving
accreditations and maintaining them through auditing
processes and validating system effectiveness.
“I champion and support SHEQ programs, campaigns
and initiatives, by challenging all employees to be active
participants in pursuing SHEQ excellence. I provide positive
reinforcement and coaching by promoting consideration
of SHEQ implications across all company projects and
activities.
“Some of my qualifications include: Supply Chain
Management; a Diploma in Waste Management; Route
Cause Analysis; NEBOSH General Certificate; Behaviour
Safety Coach; Manual Handling Trainer; and COSHH Risk
Assessor.
“In addition, I’m a Technical Member of IOSH and am
currently studying for the NEBOSH Diploma.”
RoSPA GOLD AWARD 2017
Achieving a RoSPA Award was something Avidety was
keen to accomplish, as the accolade would celebrate their
effort in safety aspirations.
“We applied for the awards with the intention of
measuring our performance, and as you can imagine, we
were extremely happy with achieving Gold on our first
attempt! The Award shows that all our hard work, day to
day, is of a good standard and has been verified by an
external company.
24
30
HSE INTERNATIONAL
“The process of achieving the award was very interesting
from our point of view.
“We had a list of questions that we needed to answer
within an allotted amount of words, describing how we
complied with the question being asked.
“From completing the questions, we could determine our
strengths and also the areas where we can improve moving
forward.
“The Award also gave us a great platform to engage with
our workforce - celebrating everyone’s involvement in our
safety achievements; from externally communicating our
commitment to keeping our employees safe from harm.
“RoSPA was our first award of 2017 and since then,
we have obtained a 100% score on our Achilles B2 audit,
ISO9001/14001 and OHSAS 18001, along with SSIP for
Safety Schemes in Procurement and CHAS contractors
Health and Safety Accreditation.”
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Avidety has experienced rapid growth - since January
2017, the company’s workforce has tripled in size.
“We enrol our employees into medical health care cover,
which ensures peace of mind while they’re at work.
“We also provide employees with training and
information during their induction on occupational health
and wellbeing. Topics include manual handling, noise
induced hearing problems and hand arm vibration.
“We also provide information on the control measures in
place for avoiding and reducing the likelihood of health and
wellbeing issues, including the importance of maintaining a
healthy lifestyle. One of our initiatives is to enrol employees
onto an Employee Rewards Programme that includes a
variety of benefits such as reduced gym memberships.
“In addition, we’re planning to begin an Occupational
Health Screening Programme to monitor the occupational
health of our employees.”
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
When it comes to corporate social responsibility, Avidety
has a written policy describing what it will do regarding
customers, employees, investors, suppliers, the community
and the environment.
“Avidety recognises our impact on the environment,
taking proactive measures to continually improve it. A
way that we do this is to promote cultural awareness of
environmental issues by providing our employees with
training during their induction. They can then better
understand how their actions impact the environment.
“We encourage car sharing when travelling to and from
work, thus reducing the amount of emissions released
from vehicles. Our vehicles are also linked to a tracker
system that reports driver performance – idling, excessive
acceleration and braking statistics in particular. This allows
Avidety to target a training programme for those who need
to improve driver skills and reduce emissions.”
With intentions of becoming paper free, Avidety have
issued field engineers with hand held devices suc