Dear Friends, Customers, Colleagues and Partners,
As the news about COVID-19 develops day-by-day and we’re having to adapt our work and home lives I thought I’d share an update about Premier Galvanizing and Joseph Ash Galvanizing.
The good news is… it’s business-as-usual (mostly).
So far our workforce of 570-odd people has been relatively unaffected, with no-one ill yet. This is great news, but maybe I should be touching wood, as realistically (and sadly), we’re likely to see some sickness soon.
Because everyone’s health and safety is our primary concern and we want to do our bit to limit the spread of the virus, we have made some changes to the way we work. These are outlined below:
- Under normal circumstances, we’re a company that likes to visit customers. It is not appropriate for us to do this right now however, so we’ll be keeping in touch with you via telephone and email. The only times we’ll visit is when we collect and deliver steel, or at your specific request – for example if you need some advice about venting. During these meetings our team members will respectfully not shake hands, they’ll decline drinks, they’ll maximise personal space, and they’ll minimise contact with surfaces and equipment, whilst getting the job done quickly and efficiently.
- We’re also following these procedures internally as well by keeping visits between our nine sites to a mimimum. We’re also conducting meetings by Skype and Facetime to avoid gatherings. And when we must gather, hand gel is used, maximum space between everyone is encouraged, we’re not touching each other’s possessions and we’re not sharing food. This applies in our mess rooms as much as our offices. Everyone has also stopped shaking hands.
- We have doubled our efforts on hygiene by deep cleaning the kitchens and toilets to prevent opportunities for germs/bacteria to settle and breed. All cloth towels and tea towels have been replaced by disposable paper ones and we’ve been lucky enough to secure a large amount of anti-bacterial wipes for all divisions. We’ve also distributed 62 wall-mounted automatic sanitiser units to all plants, and supplied all team members with individual pocket-sized hand sanitiser bottles. (Lovingly filled and distributed by some of our team members at Head Office.)
- In terms of travel and transport, all business flights have been banned, and car sharing is being avoided where possible. Procedures have also been put in place for receiving goods and dealing with visitors safely.
- To maintain smooth operations, we’ve ordered a tad more zinc in case of supply difficulties, we’ve arranged kettle maintenance back-up, and we’ve ordered a supply of laptops for those who have to self-isolate and work from home.
- Finally, and most importantly… we’ve sent our pregnant ladies home!
So, all in all, I think we are in a good place to ride out the storm, and continue to provide you with a great service and the best metal finishing quality available in the UK. We want to do our bit to keep the economy moving and we don’t believe that any plant closure will become necessary. No doubt we will have our share of temporary absences but, logically, our capacity is likely to flex similarly to that of our customers.
If you have any concerns – or if you fancy someone new to talk to during periods of self-isolation – please get in touch.
In the meantime, we wish you and your families a quick recovery from whatever Nature throws at you.
Kindest regards,
Steven Hopkins
Joseph Ash Group MD
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