The Group culture is one of openness, honesty and accountability. Radio-Tech encourages its employees to act fairly in their dealings with fellow employees, customers, suppliers and business partners. We aim to have suppliers of high quality and operate to acceptable international standards. Radio-Tech operates a confidential "whistleblowing" policy, which enables all Group employees to raise any concerns they may have.
Continuous innovation is a critical ingredient for Radio-Tech's growth. Continually refreshing our intellectual property leads to new products and processes and helps us to maintain the strong market positions held. Innovation is not just the responsibility of our development departments but is integral to all commercial activities within the business. Innovative ideas can range from a novel way to enter a new or remote market to administration process improvements speeding the delivery of products to customers.
During 2005/06, Halma introduced Eureka!, a monthly prize for the most creative innovation idea submitted during any one month. The idea does not need to have been implemented or even have proven financial viability - we are simply looking for the actual birth of the idea, the creative spark, the Eureka! that heralds the start of an original thought process which upon germination will bring new benefit to a Group business.
The Group continued the successful Innovation Initiative, launched in 2004/05, which encourages the research and development teams at each Group company to re-examine their product designs with a view to being more efficient and effective using components which are more environmentally acceptable. The 2005/06 Gold Award of £20,000 was presented at the annual CEO Conference by Geoff Unwin to Ed Agar of Palintest for his work on the Cool Pool Tester, a hand-held electronic instrument for monitoring water quality of residential swimming pools and spas.
The Silver Award of £10,000 was awarded to Carol Cessford of Elfab for her Think Global, Act Local project, a global telecommunications network in 50 countries linked to a multilingual sales team. The Bronze Award of £5,000 was shared by two teams - Matt Carroll, Bill Benson and Gordon Denny of Mosebach for their H - Pin Resistor Retention System, a new design for Mosebach's off-highway dynamic braking resistors - and Brian Rogers and David Landis of Ocean Optics for their Custom Fiber Optic Assembly Quoting and CAD Drawing Creation Website, a website for the rapid creation of quotations and CAD drawings, incorporating a customer approval e-mail service.