customer service

Customer service is what our business has been built on since we launched in 1971. Our success comes from delivering a professional service with a family business ethos – something that sets us apart from our PLC competitors.

Our customer service commitment

• We are proactive, working to understand our clients needs and what’s important to them

• We establish clear points of contact early on and brief our team on client codes of conduct

• We are quick to identify problems and find solutions

• We keep our customers informed at all times, whether working on the public highway or private property

• We follow the ‘Considerate Constructor’s Scheme’ and closely monitor our performance

• We are good neighbours, working with the local community to minimise disruption and expedite our works

We have a dedicated Customer department to help our water clients to deliver excellent customer service. Our customer liaison staff and planning team ensures that our stakeholder management plan is delivered effectively through timely, proactive communication with customers and key stakeholders.  This reduces the number of escalations and unwanted contacts ensuring a consistent message is delivered throughout the duration of any project.  

C-MeX

We recognise that our people are often the public face of our clients’ businesses so we do everything we can to keep our clients customers happy. 

For water company clients, this means we directly impact their C-MeX, a key performance output based on how customers feel about the service they receive. 

We make sure we have a positive impact on our clients’ C-Mex evaluation by proactive engagement throughout the duration of works, being open and transparent and keeping customers well informed, responding in a timely, professional manner, completing works to the satisfaction of impacted residents and businesses.

Safety is a core value of Browne and has been for 50 years. We believe that sending our people home safe and well every day is the single most important duty we have as a business.  

We have built  a strong collaborative safety culture where leadership is encouraged at all levels with a particular focus on influencing behaviours and looking after each other. Our behaviours flow from our values and our family business culture.

Working with industry-leading businesses, we have demonstrated our ability to meet the industry’s most stringent health and safety standards and built long-standing relationships based on these shared goals. We have a principal objective of ‘target zero’ incidents in our business and operate a Health & Safety management system that we regularly review, setting new areas of focus and targets annually.

Industry-leading standards

• We are certified to ISO 45001

• We also maintain SSIP accreditation (Safe Contractor / CHAS / Exor) as well as UVDB ‘Verify’ (Category B2)

Employee training and review

• Our externally-recognised behavioural safety programme along with regular work shops and safety alerts ensures that safety is always front of mind with our team.

• We identify training needs against our competency matrix and set minimum training standards for operatives (EUSR SHEA), supervisors (SSSTS), and operational managers (SMSTS or IOSH Managing Safely).

• We ensure our supervisors are equipped with the necessary leadership skills to run safe sites, and all staff complete our Cultural Behavioural Safety programme and Crossrail’s Frontline Leadership programmes

Employee engagement and support

• We engage with our people and encourage involvement through an active employee safety committee, local project health and safety meetings, and daily task briefings as part of our commitment to effective co-operation and co-ordination. A recent safety innovation relating to cycling was recognised at the Thames Water annual safety awards.

• We are active members of a number of safety organisations that share safety improvement ideas with our fellow contractors and clients including Thames Water, South East Water and Affinity Water.

• All our staff have access to our occupational health programme.

Health & Safety Calendar 2020

The wellbeing of our employees is of paramount importance to us here at Browne. That’s why our people receive training, regular communication and a targeted occupational health programme – all designed to help them stay healthy and happy at work.

We provide all staff access to wellbeing medicals and ask all new joiners to complete pre-employment questionnaires. We run campaigns throughout the year on topics like heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol and cancer to improve awareness of key health issues and organise screening clinics for staff.

We have adopted the Mates in Mind ‘Start the Conversation’ programme which has reached our entire workforce and supply chain. Currently 5% of our workforce are mental health first aiders (MHFA). 

We understand that we will be judged in this area by our actions rather than words and we want to set meaningful and achievable goals. The following is a summary of the steps we are taking to make this objective a reality:

1) We have introduced Environment as one of our four core values to give it the profile it deserves in the business.

2) We have committed to a net zero CO2 target by 2030 with measurement and verification by an independent third party.

3) We will concentrate on net CO2 reductions including fleet electrification of fleet and equipment, renewal energy usage, behavioural change, supply chain alignment and better logistics planning. We will also consider forestation as part of this strategy.

4) A focus on reducing single use plastic throughout our business.

5) We will deliver 2 community based environmental enhancement projects per annum. Our first scheme is in partnership with Canals Trust and we are maintaining a section of the Lee Navigation in Enfield, London.

Our workplace

We are committed to providing a healthy working and physical environment for everyone who works for us. We believe our workforce reflects the diversity of the communities in which we operate and this helps us to deliver a better service. We pay our staff a fair living wage, monitor gender pay and ensure that everybody has the opportunity to develop their full potential.

These links include a number of charities and organisations we have partnerships with including our local environment partner, Canals Trust with whom we maintain a section of the Lee Navigation near our HQ in Enfield. This is carried out by volunteers from Browne and involves maintaining the canal for the benefit of the local community. We adopted Environment as a value in 2019 and we have plans to achieve Net CO2 emissions by 2030 which is a challenging but achievable target and the right thing to do.

We support a number of local charities including Haven Hospice in Woodford Green and North Enfield Foodbank. We have a partnership with Haven House so that we donate £1 to this charity for safety intervention on our sites generated by our staff. In November 2020 we generated 628 interventions therefore raising £628 for this wonderful charity and we are determined to exceed this going forward while at the same time improving safety standards on our sites.

We have close links to UK Prostate Cancer UK, and we have donated over £25,000 to this fantastic research charity over the last few years primarily linked to fund raising linked to their annual March for Men. In the absence of this event due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we made a direct donation of £7,500 this year to the charity. We have also instigated an annual programme of PSA prostate cancer tests and education campaign within our business to ensure that we educate and have measures in place to detect early signs of this illness.

We are significant local employers and we have over 300 full time employees and support a further 200 supply chain jobs primarily in London and the South East. We have links to local schools including the Oasis Academy in Enfield where we have taken part in a number of employment and STEM promotion events.