The Sapphire Times June 2022

The Sapphire Times June 2022

THE sapphire times

SAPPHIRE UTILITY SOLUTIONS

ISSUE 3 | JUNE 2022

Golf FUNDRAISER IN MEMORY OF DAVE

WE’RE LAUNCHING 6 NEW FORUMS WE DONATED TO THE WELL THIS MONTH FEEDING THE POOR FORUM LAUNCH

WELCOME TO THE SAPPHIRE TIMES 2. Perkbox gifts on Fathers Day 3. Employee Forum 4-5. Trinity 6-7. United Utilities 8-9 Customer Solutions Plus 10. Severn Trent & TM 11. Head Office 12. Our Golf fundraising event

Save money on a Fathers Day gift with Perkbox! Save 35% at Oomph on cards Get 15% off Philips personal electronics Or get 25% off personalised chocolate from Prezzy Box! Shop at https://sapphire-utility-solutions. perkbox.com

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WE’RE LAUNCHING THE EMPLOYEE FORUM This month, we are delighted to be launching our Employee Forum across the company. The Employee Forum is an important communication channel to discuss workplace matters with representatives appointed from each contract and central functions. Whilst I chaired our previous Employee Forum, we now have many contracts located across the UK delivered by over 1,100 employees. Therefore, we need to hold regional forums to ensure the effectiveness of the forums, which allows us to better engage and gather the opinions from all our employees. The purpose of the forum is to openly share good practice, ideas and challenges to assist the group in making improvements across the business area. The representatives have a key role in communicating with their colleagues and seek their views and share the outputs from the forum.

Bi annually I will chair a national Employee Forum with representation from each of the regional forums. We are creating 6 forums across the company as shown below: • North West • Andover • STW Clean & Yorkshire • CSP • Trinity • Support Services The first forums will be taking place in June and we will be sharing progress through our newsletters.

Colin Kelly Managing Director

Have a great story for our next issue? Email [email protected] to get featured!

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EVERYONE DESERVES A SECOND CHANCE

We are delighted to announce the launch of our training programme for gas service layer and main layer operatives in collaboration with Inside

Connections and FulPass! Our nine new trainees have successfully completed a 12 week training course and have started full term employment with us! Actively attracting candidates with convictions, extended unemployment, care leavers and those recently out of prison is a great opportunity for us care for our local community by providing equal opportunities for all.

A PARTY FIT FOR A QUEEN To celebrate the Queen’s 70th Jubilee last week we hosted party games,

afternoon tea and a raffle at our Wolverhampton office. The day was a huge success raising £625.72 for Emmaus, a homeless charity who provide a job and housing for the homeless across the UK. Well done to all the winners of the raffle and thanks to all who attended.

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A GRATEFUL CUSTOMER COOKED US LUNCH! Our team at LD Pipelines were treated to breakfast by a grateful customer recently who was overwhelmed by the excellent treatment her and her disabled partner received from our team. Well done to Mitch Coopers team, our site manager Paul Steward, Joe Weaver and all involved for taking extra care and effort to ensure her disabled partner had full access to the property during their work on Arleston Avenue.

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NMS LEADERSHIP EVENT

After working together remotely for a long while we were thrilled to attend a leadership event with Network Plus and United Utilities in May to work through our collective vision. We focussed on how we can work collaboratively across our three companies using the insights a digitally enabled network will bring us to improve. All of our conversations were brilliantly captured and brought to life by Sandra from Inky Thinking.

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WE WOWED THE CLIENT!

“Craig and Ian work on the planned desilt programme across my sites in North Lancs and along with John Gaskell, have massively improved the efficiency of the schedule. Their professionalism and attention to detail make working alongside them a pleasure.” Declan Hammonds, Network Controller at United Utilities

HEALTH AND SAFETY STAND DOWNS

We recently held our second round of Health,Safety & Well-being stand downs! The focus was on Home, Safe & Well Vision, 5 Points of PPE and Application, Report, Report, Report no matter how minor and within 2hrs and more!

OUR TOP THREE WOW AWARD WINNERS nust fac - Our team received a whopping 131 wow awards in April... But who’s topping the leaderboard? Carl Holdstock received 12 awards! Martin Radev received 11 awards! Paul Gregory received 10 awards!

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We’re holding stress & resillience courses on 14th & 28th June 2022

The course content includes stress, resillience and looking after your wellbeing. It’s open to all ST, CSP and IWJS teams with 68 places available.

WELCOME TO THE TEAM LAUREN! Lauren Shinebaum recently joined our team as a HR Business Partner, bringing to the business over 8 years experience within the HR sector. We are delighted to bring Lauren into our growing team and hope you all welcome her with open arms.

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YOUR HARD WORK IS PAYING OFF! We have had huge WIP and SLA improvements within our teams across our wastewater contract within the past few weeks. Well done to the whole team for their hard work and tremendous efforts.

SAY HELLO TO THE WOW AWARD WHEEL!

We recently introduced WOW awards to our colleagues at Customer Solutions Plus! Each week the scheduling and customer teams will set a particular target each week, and on Friday the winner will be selected from each team (4 people in total) and they will be able to spin the wheel. Here are our latest winners.

IMPROVING CUSTOMER

COMMUNICATIONS We recently introduced a new two way communication via text message with our customers last month to improve our customer service and so far we have had an excellent response.

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Helping our local community Our staff recently took part in a community project at Hill House Gardens in Heswall to install a water supply outside a local council building. We provided a 90-meter hose trolley and hose reel to ensure all greenery could be well kept. A solid oak planter was also designed and built by our team at the entrance of the park.

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT A big well done to the SUS Traffic Management who have recently achieved ISO 9001 National Highway Sector Scheme accreditation. “Kudos to Stephen

Shaw in particular, who really was instrumental in gaining the accreditation.” said Chris Dempsey, Traffic Management Director.

We have just gone live with our new Trailer Teams who will dig, repair and reinstate all in one visit, bringing less disruption to our customers and less carbon emissions!

All of our Repair and Maintenance teams have now had their ACE customer training. Delivering excellent customer service is key to the success of this contract.

We have welcomed lots of new faces to the team – both in scheduling and operations teams. Welcome to the new starters and hope you have a long and happy career with Sapphire!

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HEAD OFFICE

Back of the net! Chris Dempsey our Traffic Management Director has coached a kids football team for the last 8 years. Last month they won their first trophy winning the league and cup double final 4 nil!

Celebrating the Jubilee We recently celebrated the Queen’s 70th Jubilee wearing red, white and blue on 1st June and displaying patriotic messages on our media vans.

Welcome Jane Jane has recently joined our team in Bamber Bridge as Executive Personal Assistant to Colin Kelly. Jane has been a Personal Assistant for 22 years and has built her experience within many sectors including travel, education and retail. “I am excited to bring my organisation skills to the team at Sapphire and to help and support Colin to do what he does best, lead the business forward.” said Jane.

Innovation at Utility Week Live Graeme Cleeton our Operations Director spoke on the Innovation Stage at Utility Week Live on “The Hole Truth - why accelerating collaborative innovation is mission critical for the sector”. The themes included Better communication of successful schemes, Open Planning >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12

www.sus.co.uk

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