ORIGIN has always been a very staff centric organisation. Being in the service industry, our staff are our lifeblood and we are consistently finding ways to help each individual member of our organization develop skills and grow in their personal journeys.
The development of career paths for employees
This encourages them to pursue more personal development and improvement. ORIGIN has the culture of promoting from within in order to encourage more drive towards upward mobility. One example is our recent recruitment for a supervisor. We chose to extend the opening to existing technicians with minimum training qualifications based on internal training grades. This gives technicians the chance to grow in their capabilities, and take on more new challenges.
Opportunities for dialogue and interaction
Monthly meetings are also carried out with staff to ensure consistent dialogue among all staff. This also helps to develop a lively atmosphere of feedback and idea exchange. Staffs also are able to understand better most recent developments and changes.
Reemployment of older staff
Another initiative is the move towards reemployment. This allows older staff to have a new lease of life in their career with ORIGIN, and the company also benefits from the experience and work ethic of older staff.
Workplace health and safety
Due to the nature of the industry, exposure and constant contact with pesticides, handling of machinery and coming into close contact with pests is unavoidable for our front line staff: our technicians. To ensure that all our pest control technicians are amply armed with the necessary knowledge and equipment to protect themselves and to carry out their work in a safe and secure manner. Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA) which covers environmental aspects such as proper use of personal protection equipment, classification and mode of action of pesticides, fire drills, chemical spillage drills, safe work practices for use of various equipment as well as incident and accident reporting. The company has also consistently striven to raise safety standards, and our technicians have to complete our internal training modules over and above the National Environmental Agency Pest Control Technician’s course before they are allowed to work independently in the field.
Promotion of work life balance
ORIGIN consistently tries to engage our employees through the development of schemes to improve work life balance. In view of transparency, ORIGIN engaged The Work life Professionals to help conduct an employee feedback exercise with the sales department, and selected employees from other departments, to find out their needs in terms of better work-life balance, and how this could be put into place. Eventually, the suggestions were adopted to allow the sales department greater convenience on information access when out of the office and allowed them to work from home, thus save on travelling time, expense and inconvenience. The manning of our 24/7 hotline is also done on a rotation basis among all executives regardless of rank to ensure that there is enough rest time for all.
Employee Satisfaction
The company has also committed to conducting internal staff surveys yearly to ensure that all employees have a chance to share their suggestions, and opinions on areas of improvement in terms of operations and staff welfare. This survey allows the company to undertake greater accountability to our staff, to ensure that their needs too are amply met and that the working environment within the company helps facilitate better overall operations instead of hindering it
