Winter wisdom

GRITIT is a specialist Winter Gritting company, servicing a wide portfolio of clients including numerous retail, education and healthcare sites: all sectors that have been especially hard hit by the COVID-19 crisis.

Compliance Director Steve Webb has been the driving force behind the operational and business changes required because of COVID-19 to guarantee employee and client safety. He explains: “Our cautious approach has centred around various immutable foundations, namely:

• Proactively communicate to each client on a 1-to-1 basis
• Follow and disseminate government advice to all employees as soon as it is updated
• Rigorous COVID-19 safety procedures followed across the board
• Emphasize employee wellbeing and health
• Provide every means possible for operational staff to ensure the safety of client sites and follow client requirements

As the COVID-19 events started to unfold, we took a calm, structured approach with clients, namely a clear missive from the top to contact each client individually to inform them of the measures that we were taking as a company, what to expect from us in the weeks ahead and how we’d help clients during their own difficult times.

As the pandemic unfolded, Government advice changed weekly, sometimes daily, and we have followed and disseminated this advice out to our teams, from social distancing to facemasks, and from self-isolation following non-domestic travel to personal hygiene measures. We will continue to do so for the foreseeable future – corporate COVID-19 advice is now part of the “new normal”.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, we have made a point of it to follow client requirements, including signed declarations from our operatives, which were made possible at speed.

THE UPCOMING WINTER SEASON

We are not alone in wondering how the upcoming season may be affected by COVID-19, especially as the threat of a second wave looms on the horizon. This is why we have ‘wargamed’ sets of highly detailed operational contingency solutions, anticipating possible “what if” scenarios in the months ahead such as the imposition of further local lockdown restrictions in specific areas, or imposition of transport restrictions.

Our internal operator staffing plans also cover standbys for every single operator and route we have, to make sure that regardless of events, we always have teams of GRITIT Winter Gritting professionals available for all our clients. The measures that we have taken means that we can safely continue the crucial work of keeping Britain’s commercial, public, emergency and critical infrastructure safe and operating during the entire winter, 24/7, 365/365.”