Members of our team recently headed over to Ashgate Hospice in Chesterfield to spread some Festive cheer, by serving some of the unsung heroes who give up their time and support to ensure that the hospice is a friendly and welcoming environment all year round.
The hospice is a local charity that provides specialist palliative and end-of-life care to patients with a life-limiting illness and their families across North Derbyshire. Ashgate Hospice is not an NHS hospice and all the care that it provides is free of charge. In order to continue providing care when people need it most, Ashgate relies heavily on fundraising and community support from local businesses like us.
The team were on hand throughout the day to serve hot drinks including festive hot chocolate and non-alcoholic mulled punch along with a selection of Christmassy sweet treats of mince pies and chocolate Yule log. All home-made by the generous staff at our MVIS head office. Guests, patients, staff and volunteers were also able to take time out of their day and enjoy the Christmas classic ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ shown on the big screen as the Day Hospice was transformed in to a cinema room especially for the event. MVIS work throughout the year on various projects, finding new and exciting ways to raise funds for Ashgate Hospice including charity walks and a 10 week long, in-house Bake-Off competition where all bakes are sold with all profits going straight to the charity.
Jon Larkin – MVIS North Delivery Supervisor: “It’s always important to give something back to the local community. Whether that be time or support in other ways. It’s a pleasure to come to the Hospice and see the amazing work that takes place every single day and the wonderful people that make it all possible. The hospice is a vital part of the local community, many of us know people who have benefitted from the incredible work Ashgate do and to support such an amazing cause right on your doorstep gives us all immense pride”.
David Storer- Ashgate Hospice Events Organiser: “A massive thank you to you guys for coming over and providing all that stuff, as well as providing the cinema set up. The hot chocolates went down a storm with staff from across the hospice. Can I also just say thank you from all of us here for everything else you do for us throughout the year. From Bake-Off sales to the VMS you provide for us, it is all very much appreciated and the GIK, money you raise, and sponsorship of next years High Peak Trail, really does make a huge difference”.
To find out more about Ashgate Hospice and how you can make a difference this Christmas, just click the link: shorturl.at/EGSU8
Here at MVIS, we understand that the key to a thriving business starts and ends with those on the inside. Each of our departments is a vital cog in what we do and what we have been able to achieve and work towards in our forever adapting business.
Since day one we have prioritised the mental health of our team, arranging regular staff meetings for us to reconnect on a professional level but also organising events and casual meetups to get to know each other not only as colleagues but develop personal relationships outside of the working environment. In 2019 we partook in a local event where small businesses came together for the “Corporate Games” this sporting event allowed us to work as a team to win points and even saw us winning the final score due to our teamwork. We believe that these types of team building social events help us bond and develop a deeper appreciation of the team as a whole.
We continuously work towards being a socially responsible organisation and have taken this very seriously. Our Corporate Social Responsibility commitment sees us focusing on prioritising our efforts in giving back to society and the environment.
With this, we have developed our “Safe Mind Safe Body” initiative which is there to encourage all of our staff to work safe and smart, be it on site, in the office or in the warehouse. Our staff’s morale is vital in maintaining our award winning customer service which is why we have trained mental health first aiders at hand who are always there if any of our staff need to blow off some steam or need some advice.
This past year has been difficult for every business, but we understand that it is people’s individual lives that have been affected too. Because of this, we have been keen to ensure that moral is a topic that we don’t shy away from. Each morning we engage in a daily call via Microsoft Teams to not only share our daily workload but to allow people to maintain a sense of stability, as we appreciate that working from home can be difficult to separate work life from home life. We have also sourced an external means of offering advice and discussing personal issues an this is, Peninsula’s services, giving us a well-rounded approach to our team’s wellbeing. And in addition, another service we have sought out at the end of 2020 is the Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Outside of the working hours, we have organised multiple ways for our team to be able to unwind. These activities have meant that we can maintain our strong relationship between staff members. We have done this by engaging in regular online games, birthday parties and chit chats. This is something that we have been able to use to our advantage as it means we can try and maintain a degree of “normality” but in a COVID safe way.
As a successful business, employer and member of the wider community, we believe it is our Corporate Social Responsibility to help the people and businesses in our local community. We provide a mixture of practical and financial support across a range of areas.
Safety
The safety of our customers, employees and the general public is one of our top priorities. The very nature of our products help to bring safety to the UK’s road network, for events and emergency situations.
At the heart of our business operations, safety is a core foundation that our organisation is built upon. Principals of safety are felt at every level of our business, from our staff to our products and service. Perhaps one of the most socially responsible priorities, our emphasis on safety serves as the base point we that we judge all aspects of our business on.
Safety training plays a huge part in this, with the danger presented in many aspects of our line of work potentially being life threatening in on-site environments and in manufacturing roles.
Some of the training we either mandate or offer to our staff are:
Manual handling
Role related safety training
Fire Warden training
First Aid training
Near Miss training
Employees & Training
We encourage our staff to undertake as much training as possible, increasing the safety and job satisfaction of our team members. As a result, we boast of one of the industry’s best trained workforces and continue to support employees in training and qualifications with no limit to their advancement.
We also prioritise mental health, wellbeing and physical health in our approach to staff.
A few things we do to ensure this are:
All employees receive literature detailing the mental health first aid protocol ‘ALGEE’
We offer the services of 2 mental health first aiders to lean on when their mental health is suffering
We encourage staff to enjoy their downtime when possible, discouraging employees to take their work home with them and support staff in personal endeavours where applicable
Offering a wide range of free fruit each week for our employees, as well as free healthy lunch options for all employees if they want them
Employees are encouraged to take part in corporate fitness and sporting challenges throughout the year
Assisting an employee back to work after an extended illness we work with them on measures such as the reduction of hours or responsibilities if they feel they need them
We promote an open, inclusive and friendly company culture that rewards hard work and dedication
Offering a generous employee benefits package
We promote a culture of competitive pay in our organisation not only to reward our staff for their hard work, but also to keep them and help prevent poaching
Community Outreach & Charity
We take pride in our community outreach efforts, which have seen us offer our products, time and financial support to a range of community causes as and when they occur.
Some of our community activities include:
We regularly reach out to businesses affected by local emergencies such as flooding with the offer of our products to support with reopening, community information or security
We run an apprenticeship scheme to support the careers of local youngsters
Regularly provide work experience for students from Matlock’s Highfields school
We also take part in local volunteering activities that benefits the community as a whole. For example, we work closely with our local community school in the form of annual mock interviews and critical thinking challenges for the students
Taking place throughout the year, our charity initiatives reach their peak during Christmas time. Each year, as an organisation, we pick a homeless charity to raise money for from our Christmas jumper day, which staff bring funds to take part in. Throughout December, we also hold a food bank collection which is donated before Christmas to a local food bank.
We remain opportunistic in this with charity taking the form of attendance at charity events, responses to local emergencies (both in financial support and services) and even advice.
Supporting the Ashgate Hospice, we raise money for the charity by running our in house baking competition, The Great MVIS Bake Off, partaking in the Treecycle, the Sparkle Walk and sponsoring the High Peak Trail. Before Christmas staff members volunteered to host a movie night for the team at Ashgate.
Having initiative to clean our offices, we are proud of our offices, this is why we take part in a litter pick in our surrounding area to ensure that the offices and roads around us are clean and maintained.
We support local sports individuals, in recent years we have sponsored many athletes over the years including Karl Johnston, a world champion Kickboxer, and the Matlock Town Football Team supplying them with a VMS outside the pitch.
Environmental responsibility
The very nature of the majority of our products have a strong environmental focus. Our specialism being in solar power provides us a position of privilege to offer environmentally friendly products to organisations looking to minimise their carbon footprint and environmental impact.
Understanding the carbon footprint of our service, we strive to ensure that we minimise our emissions output wherever possible. Some of the steps we have taken are as follows:
Our delivery model sets out to deliver multiple units at a time where necessary. Working to reduce our carbon footprint, we can offload up to 3 x VMS A units in one delivery, up to 2 x VMS C units, or up to 2 x Solar IP units.
We have taken steps to help reduce our energy consumption over recent years and continue to commit to this through new innovations. Technological upgrades such as movement sensors and timers in our lights, hand dryers and eco-friendly heating solutions have been installed in our head office
We have a number of initiatives in place that helps the wildlife in our local area. Amongst these include a bee hotel and a hedgehog home that is maintained by our staff.
The importance of bees to the environment and global eco systems are well documented, and our choice for hedgehogs is close to our industry, with an estimated 1/4 of the population of hedgehogs being killed on UK roads each year.
We also maintain an on-site flower bed with plants monitored by our team in an effort to give back to the environment and bring some natural beauty to our local area.
