What made you choose Arbtech?
I needed to move on from my old position, so I set about looking for companies that I wanted to work for whose values mirrored my own. Arbtech came out on top!
My first impression of Arbtech was of a company that wants the best out of its people. It looked to use the following methods to achieve this:
Rewards –
The focus/goal is for everyone to be happy in themselves and in their job. I believe that Arbtech wants its employees to stay and grow with the company and for the individuals and company to flourish together.
Support –
Arbtech is happy to help and support its employees towards the achievement of those goals as much as possible. There is an emphasis on the core of each employee and helping the individuals to achieve the ultimate fulfilment in life.
Training –
Some training is a requirement and therefore compulsory. However, Rob made it clear that, dependent on my future goals, Arbtech would be willing for me to book onto training courses of my choice and the company would pay the bill.
What do you love most about the company?
It feels good to work for a company that is interested in me as an individual – a company that helps to nurture the best version of me.
The people who I work with are a massive plus. Highly professional with a good work ethic who love to party and have fun.
Arbtech is great at making employees feel pampered when at company socials, as everything is taken care of, and I love the fact that they ask for each individual’s ideas for future socials and get-togethers to help ensure that everyone feels like a valued member of the team.
I have also attended training courses, and these have been very well organised. The accommodation, food and entertainment are all taken care of by Arbtech, and the courses have been useful, helped to improve my professional knowledge, and worked effectively in instilling more confidence in the relevant subject areas. There’s always someone on hand to help, and there’s a wealth of experience to tap into.
What do you do when you are not at Arbtech?
I am a family man – husband to my beautiful wife and father to two fantastic children.
My daughter Mia is 16 (going on 21) and currently in her first year of sixth form at grammar school, studying Environmental Science, Philosophy and Ethics, and Maths. My son Charlie is 13 (going on 13) and currently in year 9 at our local secondary school. Both children are very bright and sociable.
I also have a father who is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, currently in a home in Buckinghamshire. We have two old dogs, Ziggy – a border terrier aged 15-and-a-half, and Flash – a Staffordshire bull terrier aged 14-and-a-half.
We are just out of a traumatic/busy stage in our lives. I won’t elaborate on that, but we are just starting to regain some time for us. As such, the main priority now is to keep our focus on the positives and to dream a little each day.
Sadly, our children were on the back burner for over five years, so the focus is now on them – mum/dad taxi services, big support, events arranging, fun days out, and attempting to plan a family holiday.
We go on walks whenever we can, exploring the beautiful surrounding counties. We also play tennis, badminton, table tennis, and cook (where possible, even including the kids!).
What is your biggest tip to achieve the most in life?
Work hard but box clever; prioritise the people you love.
Of course, it takes a certain amount of hard work and effort to progress at anything, but it’s all too easy to get your head down and just keep slogging away. What’s needed at times is to clear your head and then start afresh with a new degree of clarity.
It’s something our great boss actually tells us to do! Take a break, have a nap, get outside, and walk the dog – something to separate your brain from the task at hand and reset.
This in turn makes you more productive and better able to draw the curtain between work and life outside of work. Still a work in progress for me, but time and patience are the best things you can give to the people that you love.
Mindset is key.
Blame is useless – what matters is what we do.
Failure helps you to become better. If you use failure as a lesson to learn – in my experience, failure is a blessing in disguise – you can analyse what happened, reflect on what you could have done differently, work out why it happened and what lessons you learned, and then start again.
Keeping the focus on what you can control, visualising what you wish for and keeping on the steady road to achieving your goal. Motivation is also key if you can keep yourself motivated with a strong mindset and belief in yourself.
It helps to surround yourself with like-minded people. Someone said success is only 20% talent; 80% is your attitude and focus. If you remember to do ‘the best you can where you are and with what you have’, you are on a positive road to success.
What is the best social you’ve been on at Arbtech?
I’ve only really been on Christmas socials at Arbtech, but they’ve been fantastic!
They are organised by people that really care about you, and from the moment you leave home to when you return, everything is taken care of and paid for.
Lovely food and drink along with lovely people, and our boss even paid for our partners to come last time!
Where do you want to travel to next?
I’d love to return to South America and see some more of the less-seen remnants of the Mayan civilisation.
Years ago, my wife and I went to Mexico and saw some of the more popular ruins, but it wasn’t until we went to Tulum and saw the quiet beauty of the ruins there that it really clicked. There’s something very humbling about those kinds of places – a reminder that modern ‘wisdom’ isn’t everything and that there’s so much that we will miss entirely if we don’t make the effort to see it.
Another place I love and haven’t been back to for a while is Granada in southern Spain. Last time I was there, it was a great city with one foot still resolutely in the past. The Alhambra and the Generalife were real places of wonder for me as a child and as a teenager. I don’t think I realised at the time, but the cooling, calming and almost soporific effect of the Moorish palace and gardens in the oven of an Andaluz summer is definitely good for the soul.
There are many places in Ireland that I’ve yet to see, and it’s the quiet, wild places that I have been to that have had a similar effect – or maybe it’s the Murphy’s and the Guinness…
My wife’s family come from the Caribbean, and there’s so much there that I’d love to see – some more of the Grenadines, for example. More than anything, the pull for me there is the people and the food!
Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?
To be a senior arboricultural consultant…and beyond!
I believe that I have settled into my role well. During my first year, I achieved 66% of my target, and this was with the odds stacked against me following the setback of COVID in our household on my first day of employment, which meant that I was housebound and unable to do the usual company induction with an Arbtech senior consultant to learn about the systems and processes.
I was lucky enough, however, to have a lot of help and support from Jon in these early stages with countless phone calls and online meetings. I also had help and support from Matt and the bonus of coming to the business with decades of knowledge about trees, pests, diseases etc., which has helped me to settle in and get up and running as quickly as possible. Although CAD and the new systems have been my main sticking points, I’ve seen improvement month on month.
My plan for this year is to get more experience in stage two reports and start building solid working relationships with consultants outside of the company to work alongside and have a larger span/coverage area, which would make more financial sense for the business.
I believe that I have the right attitude and skill set to move up within the company and feel that Arbtech want me to develop that.
What is a goal you have for the future, in or out of work?
I would love to be able to buy a bit of woodland and build an outdoor study centre. Me and my wife have a picture of this in our heads – creating an illusion of many spaces where you can take a lift up what would look like an actual tree. Each level would have open spaces full of vista views from each side of the surrounding woods, and woodland animals and birds to create the illusion of being a part of that natural space.
The main users for this would be schools and colleges, residential homes for the elderly and homeless children, and centres for mental health.
I would also want to have meeting rooms with a one side full vista view that could be used for a variety of functions such as counselling sessions (subsidised for free), companies that need their team to break out from city pressures and enjoy the beauty of nature, and retreats for yoga, self-development, spirituality, meditation and team building.
In an ideal world, I would win the lotto jackpot so I could use the money to create this space and give numerous people a place to be enjoyed and shared for decades – something for the people and something to offer for many generations of my family in the future.
Jim joined Arbtech in November 2021.
