2013 Charity of the Year

Brainwave have been named as Groundlevels Charity of the Year for 2013. Brainwave works with families to deliver individual home based therapy for children with disabilities or development delay to reach their full potential. This could be anything from a child feeding themselves or walking, to recognising colours or counting. Brainwave works with children with brain injuries such as Cerebral Palsy, genetic conditions e.g. Down's Syndrome and Autism.

Always striving to support the community, and with a key focus on support the ongoing education and development of young people, Groundlevel is proud to be working to help support the great service that Brainwave provides. We have set ourselves the challenge of raising funds to cover therapy programmes for two children, this is no mean feat and our staff' are already thinking of creative ways to raise money.

April 2013 News

As a direct result of the unprecedented success within the education sector, we have undergone a review of our internal structure. Our education sector clients will benefit from a dedicated team of staff, headed up by Amanda Syverson; all staff employed to work on schools will undergo a CRB check, safeguarding training and regular internal briefings.

We are delighted to announce the recruitment of Angela Beeley as our new Schools Development Manager, returning to Groundlevel after a short return to teaching. Having spent a number of years teaching, Angela is extremely well placed to develop our relationship with school leaders, able to fully understand their requirements and expectations. Joining Groundlevel in May 2013, Angela will be reporting in to Amanda Syverson, HR and Business Development Manager, and the management team will be underpinned by our specialist teams in the grounds, cleaning, window cleaning, reactive, electric and projects departments.

The most recent schools to have joined us in April are Oakwood Primary, and Atherton St Georges for grounds maintenance. We are also delighted that Lowton St Mary’s have expanded their contract with Groundlevel to include total building maintenance as a direct result of the successful delivery of grounds maintenance services to this school. Further, our projects department is busy surveying and quoting for refurbishment works to a number of local schools.

Proud sponsors of Warrington RUFC, Groundlevel are delighted to extend congratulations to the Warrington Under 11’s Lancashire Cup Winners 2013 who are now off to Twickenham on 25th May.

Having progressed through the group stages, the young team defeated Fleetwood 29-0, Manchester 26-0, and Sefton 19-0, before meeting Preston and succeeding 21-0. In a closely fought final, Warrington defeated Waterloo 7-0.

Prestigious Property Management Company, Premier Estates looks to Groundlevel for project works to their City Peak development for the refurbishment of a number of apartments.

Following a successful tender process, Groundlevel secures in excess of £100k of decoration works with valuable client Trinity Estates.

We would like to extend our sincere condolences to the family of Andrew Gee who tragically lost his life in an accident whilst holidaying in Spain. Andrew did some fantastic work on the Groundlevel website and was a friend of the company for a number of years.

Employee Engagement Survey 2013

Since our first survey was conducted in 2012, the business has undergone some major changes and taken strides to improving both as a service provider and an employer. The results of this year's survey reflected the boost in staff morale and also generated some further suggestions for continuous improvement.

Since the 2012 survey, and as a direct result of staff feedback, a number of changes have been made, including the following:-

• Introduction of an appraisal linked bonus scheme, and a review of staff and salary structures
• Social events providing an opportunity for all staff to come together
• Increased training opportunities such as asbestos awareness, first aid, PA1 & PA6, NEBOSH, safeguarding, customer services and more
• Improved communication in the form of regular team meetings, company briefings and monthly newsletters
• New vehicles and equipment have been purchased with a plan to further invest through 2013

It is pleasing to conclude that 77% of staff are satisfied or very satisfied with their working environment compared to 65% in 2012. This suggests that the decision to move our grounds department from their previous location to our head office at Knutsford Road was a positive change for all involved.

88.46% of staff are satisfied or very satisfied with their levels of interaction and communication with their line manager. The same amount of colleagues feel that their line manager is competent in leading and motivating their teams; this is an accolade to our management teams. This compares to 57% in 2012 and demonstrated that our managers are continually striving to develop their relationships with their teams.

In 2012 57% of staff felt that communication was adequate within their teams. The latest survey reports an increase to 88.46% which is extremely pleasing; this result is likely to be a direct result of the introduction of regular newsletters and also increased team meetings across all departments, clearly a huge step in the right direction.

In 2012 only 28.57% of our employees were satisfied with the training and development opportunities available to them. Since then we have become more proactive in encouraging our staff to take advantage of the opportunities to develop and have offered a number of courses including:- safeguarding, first aid, project management, cleaning and hygiene, NEBOSH, asbestos awareness and many more. This has obviously been recognised by the staff with 46.15% now reporting that they are very satisfied in this area.

Team spirit and interaction is important to Groundlevel, and this is reflected in the opinions of those surveyed with no staff being dissatisfied in this area and 92% reporting that they are very satisfied with their relationships with both colleagues and our valuable clients.

There is a lot of positive feedback to take from the 2013 survey, and some fantastic suggestions for further improvement. We are delighted to report that 88.46% of our staff are satisfied or very satisfied with Groundlevel as an employer (compared to 57.14% in 2012). With the engagement of our colleagues, we are confident that we can further improve upon this in the next twelve months.