Reflecting on a successful 2022 for Flomatik

Authored by: Flomatik CEO, Dean Checkley

We’d be lying if we said this year had been plain sailing. For many organisations – in the telecoms sector and beyond – the backdrop of COVID-19, as well as the fluctuating economic climate, supply shortages, and more, made for apprehensive navigation in the earlier months.

However, despite these challenges, the Flomatik team maintained a refreshing sense of excitement and anticipation. And now, as we look back at the twelve months that have passed, we’re extremely proud of everything we’ve achieved as a collective.

Setting out four key themes for our organisation in 2022, we were hyper-focused on:

• Achieving real financial security, with one eye on the pipeline for 2023 onwards. We believed employees should understand how Flomatik is performing on an ongoing basis, so building financial awareness across the board was critical.
• Evolving our delivery capability, by encouraging everyone to reflect on processes with a fresh pair of eyes. It’s important not to take what we do for granted, and always look for alternative ways to augment our operations – to benefit not only our clients and partners, but the wider market too.
• Prioritise the wellbeing of our staff, to ensure we continued to create a safe, connected, and open environment for everyone to work in comfortably.
• To grow and diversify our portfolio and capability in what we do, and deliver it to our customers with the highest quality of service.

By embedding these themes into our daily activity, we started to see success early in Q1 – with maturing customer opportunities turning into six new wins in the altnet space. Despite the sector volatility, with both resource and materials shortages being experienced by our customers, our volume commitments in delivering quality and quantity in our design, survey and our core/access field engineering services have increased. And by the end of 2022, we’re pleased to have seen this trend continue – with additional workstreams from our strategic customer base and increased volume from our altnet customers, further demonstrating our focus on quality was the right focus.

With the introduction of our new operating model and onboarding of additional senior leaders within the business, we have witnessed the team grow significantly – both in terms of individual skills and capabilities, as well as in ownership and gaining a sense of value and purpose.

Our employee survey results in H1 demonstrated a positive swing in our leadership scores and wellbeing across the board – showing that we are addressing, and continue to address, the crucial areas our people felt needed closer attention. With the imminent release of our H2 survey results, it will tell us if we are on the right track.

With colleagues coming back into the office and adapting to a new way of hybrid working, we have enjoyed kinship with events such as the ‘Great Flomatik Bake Off’ and the ‘Queen’s Jubilee Quiz’ – all bringing a sense of fun and comradeship back into the office environment. Seeing people reconnect again and hearing laughter back in the office has been a true delight for me personally, and ‘fun and connectedness’ will be an area that will remain high on our agenda for 2023

Re-securing our existing ISO certifications and introducing new certifications of ISO ISO45001 and ISO14001, achieving EcoVadis Silver Status, plus joining forces with Ecologi to tackle climate change and embrace our social obligations, all lead to Flomatik being an organisation that is passionate about doing the right thing for its customers, employees, and the planet.

We know, as an employer, that the role we play in helping to close the telecoms gender gap is significant too. That’s why we’ve encouraged our female employees to join FibrePeople’s Women in Fibre Initiative (WiFI) network throughout the year – and will continue to do so in 2023. With a 30% female workforce, we’re proud that our commitment to developing skilled representation across the board is evidenced, but we recognise we still have a long journey ahead of us in this space.

It’s been a real pleasure to return to face-to-face events too. Not only did our chief strategy and innovation officer (CSIO), Matt Harrison, head to Vienna for the FTTH Conference, the team also attended Connected North earlier in the new year and subsequently hosted a joint stand with Teleste at Connected Britain – with me bolstering one of many thought-provoking panel discussions too. More recently, it was also a joy to catch up with our Teleste colleagues in Finland, face-to-face at the Sales Council for the first time.

Whilst 2022 has been challenging, it has been filled with a significant number of opportunities, and some remarkable successes too. Flomatik’s new ways of working, as well as our renewed focus on our customers and people, puts the company in a strong position as we head into the new year. Personally, it has been such a privilege to lead our organisation, seeing the sheer grit and determination of our people has been a humbling and sincere experience.

Of course, we couldn’t do it without the support from our customers, partners, and friends of the business. So, as we send our Season’s Greetings, we wanted to extend our greatest thanks, too. Here’s to a happy, healthy, and successful 2023.