John Reed, Group Operations Director
When I’m asked ‘Why should a customer choose InstaGroup?’ I have to say, from my point of view, it’s because at InstaGroup health and safety always come first. And that’s not just the safety and welfare of our workers on building sites, but the safety of our customers in their homes.
Dedicated to InstaGroup health and safety
The facts may shock you. For example, if a professional carpenter, plumber, installer (or whoever) is working in your home, and they happen to injure themselves, you as the householder could be liable for the accident.
To put it bluntly, under the current law, if a worker is hurt or disabled while carrying out a job in your home, they can sue you for compensation. Even if the worker is trained and supposedly knows what they are doing.
That’s the problem with liability — you often don’t know you’re the one responsible until there’s an accident. In some cases that come to court, householders and employers find themselves paying out £1,000s in compensation. But it’s my job as the person heading up InstaGroup health and safety to make sure that never happens.
Built-in reassurance at work and at home
With InstaGroup you can trust us to cover the moral and legal liability of our team members when they’re working in your home.
For those who like to know the technical terms, that means we effectively take on responsibility of the Construction (Design Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015) for you as our customer.
So whether our team is cutting insulation panels, working at height, using heavy machinery or making a hot drink, we have it covered for you. You are protected, and we will take on the liability should a contractor have an accident in your home.
I can tell you now that the stacks of paperwork we go through to make sure we meet every professional regulation and legal requirement for each job can be daunting. But you can be certain we’ve done all the worrying for you.
Safety starts with good training
To back up our commitment, we take training very seriously. We make sure our workers and contractors are personally responsible for their adherence to InstaGroup health and safety. All our workers must attend updated technical and safety courses for at least 2 weeks a year, every year — on top of any separate supervisor courses we require.
We’re constantly kept on our toes, and random independent monitoring of InstaGroup health and safety practices at ‘live’ jobs can take place at any time. The customer is the only one to know in advance that an audit will be taking place, which keeps the safety check genuine.
As working standards are continually subject to expert scrutiny, our teams know everything must be done right, every time. If the safety auditor reports back that standards are not up to scratch, we won’t hesitate in putting our members back through the training process.
Doing the right thing
I think it’s important to be aware that not every company will take the same careful approach as InstaGroup to meeting safety standards at work.
Take asbestos as a prime example; virtually every house constructed between 1930-1999 will have asbestos used in its construction — but workers under the age of 30 are unlikely to even recognise asbestos in a building. With our diligence you can trust that every one of our installers will be asbestos trained, and can identify and deal with issues safely.
Forward thinking from InstaGroup
We’ve worked towards building reassurance for our customers at home for over 35 years: I’m proud that today we are among the first companies to offer our customers protection under the CDM 2015 legislation.
Looking forward, I’m equally proud that InstaGroup is ahead of legislation when it comes to Mental Health. We were shocked when recent statistics revealed that over 6,000 people in our industry have taken their own lives. That’s why we instigated our Mental Health First Aid programme, to help our members who need support at crucial times. Mental Health support for employees will soon become law at work, but instigating a policy like this in advance shows just how proactive we are at InstaGroup.
We go far beyond ‘ticking the boxes’ for health and safety, and we’ll always strive to do the right thing for our workers and customers.
