FEATURE
working day with all their fingers and toes attached – we care about people and this is how we live our values out in the community.”
Ethical values are clearly very important to Thomas Martin: “We’re a company with a conscience,” he commented. “We’re a fourth generation family business, we are very experienced at what we do and we run the company to take the best principles of family ownership and the best from PLC governance without having all the red tape hanging around our necks.”
“AS MARKET LEADER, WHERE I FEEL MORALLY OBLIGED TO ACT IS IF I SEE SOME DRAFT LEGISLATION THAT FUNDAMENTALLY PUTS PEOPLE’S LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS AT RISK.”
Rules and regulations are certainly on Thomas’ agenda at the moment. In recent months, he has been working with members of both the House of
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Commons and the House of Lords on the health and safety deregulation bill. He believes the draft legislation creates too many exemptions for people who are self-employed and worries this could give rise to unsafe working practices.
Thomas explained: “I have got a fundamental issue with anything which is about be enacted in law which could dilute the UK’s exemplary position in terms of health and safety. The fact that we are number one in the world is no accident. We take it very seriously and other countries model their own regulation on what we do in the UK.
“As market leader, where I feel morally obliged to act is if I see some draft legislation that fundamentally puts people’s lives and livelihoods at risk. Morally, I’ve got to put my hand up and say I don’t agree with it. I have got to represent the views of our 100,000 plus customers.”
He’s been most surprised to discover that no one else seems to be working
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with the government on the bill in this way: “Every person I’m speaking to [in the Lords and the Commons] is saying ‘no one else is doing this stuff’. Why aren’t people doing this stuff? We are joining the dots together in ways that have never been done before.”
Despite being the only safety company to make The Sunday Times Top Track 250 last year and reporting record profits in the first half of 2014, Arco remains a business with its feet firmly on the ground. Led by Thomas Martin and joint managing director Neil Jowsey, the company has kept its eyes on the ultimate prize: keeping people safe and well. It is clear that Thomas Martin lives and breathes this goal: “I’m not going to have standards compromised on my watch. I couldn’t live with myself.”
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