DEE SET MAGAZINE EDITION 4 CHAT
This year seems to be flying by, and although we’ve been blessed in terms of the weather for a British Summer, unfortunately with everything that is going on in the world from the war in Ukraine, cost of living crisis, ongoing market and labour shortages and Covid-19 still far from over, there is constantly something that affects us at all individually, collectively and as a business.
Welcome
As you know, we are a business that continually strives to improve and in recent months we have been working on how we develop our communications across the business, increasing the benefits that colleagues can take advantage of and promoting the latest data and tech solutions that we can offer our customers.
Keep up the great work!
Dear Colleagues,
As we head now into the Golden Quarter, we are in a great position, but we must not lose our focus so that we can finish the year strongly.
Is it September already?
It’s an exciting time to be in the business, as you will see from the articles in this issue of CHAT, with lots more still to come later this year, which presents further opportunities for you all.
Looking more positively though, you all continue to do us proud with your hard work and efforts, helping us to provide the best possible service to our customers, day in and day out.
Message from Greg People Tech Merchandisingupdates & Partnerships Nutmeg & Chestnut Reapp Tactical Solutions White Hinge / Warehouse Learning & Development Awards In this Issue... 20181612854232627 03
We are working hard across the business to fully prepare and delight our customers during Q4 and I would like to thank you for your continued hard work, efforts and commitment.
You will have seen changes to Job Hub and Blink in recent months which has kicked off our communication development plan. There is plenty more to be done, but please continue to
Message from Greg
The launch of Reapp earlier this year has been received well. For any of you that are not aware of our new partnership with Energizer, you will find out more in this issue of CHAT, however we continue conversations with a number of brands and retailers to help them really get ahead of their competition through the use of our tech.
voice your opinions and give us your feedback. We grow together as a business and are committed to making this business the best possible place to work.
Dear Colleagues,
The Golden Quarter will soon be upon us and is always our busiest quarter, with seasonal campaigns in full swing. This festive period is set to be busier than ever with the World Cup taking place in the run-up to Christmas.
It’s been a busy Summer across the Dee Set Group, lots of changes have been happening and we are already building momentum to hit the ground running in 2023 and deliver on our ambitious three-year business plan.
GREG PHILLIPS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICE R
could help to change the way we think and speak about mental ill health, especially compared to more physical, visible conditions.
The first aider will be present to help guide you in times of distress and provide you with the relevant help that you need. They will also provide relevant knowledge and spot someone who is developing a mental health issue.
A Mental Health First Aider is your go-to person when going through some form of mental health issue.
don’t be shy. If there is anything we can do to support you, however big or small you make think it is, please get in touch.
It’steam.increasingly
We’ve now recruited another eight Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA) to our team and our colleagues will be completing their training in September. Look out on Blink for updated bios and photos of our new
Why is mental health important in the workplace?
People Team
Our MHFA Team is Growing
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Trained to provide support on behalf of employees struggling with mental health issues, the presence of a Mental Health First Aider in the workplace
Our Mental Health First Aiders are also trained to help prevent problems. They’re encouraged to raise awareness about mental health in the workplace and to help their colleagues to look after their mental Sowellbeing.please
evident that by having MHFA’s in the workplace, that colleagues are benefitting significantly by the help they’re being provided and the stigma around mental health support is diminishing.
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With Wagestream, you can:
Working at Dee Set just got better!
You’ll soon be sent a link to download Wagestream.
• Save money straight from your salary into savings pots.
We’re really excited to reveal our new partnership with Wagestream, your new employee benefit which will be coming very soon.
For more info visit the quick links section in Blink
• Track exactly how much you’re earning throughout the month, giving you complete visibility over your wages.
Wagestream gives you instant access to up to 50% of your pay, without needing to wait for payday! For every day and the unexpected, having instant access to the money you’ve earned, puts you in the driving seat.
• Stream up to 50% of the money you’ve already earned, straight into your bank account giving you the freedom to instantly access your money when you want it, for a flat rate of £1.75 per stream.
Sounds good! How do I enrol?
• Find a library of expert tools, tips and articles with Wagestream’s Coach tool
Exciting new employee benefit coming soon...
Eat, Next and TUI
Look out for more communication coming soon, but in the meantime, you can still access the Colleague Hub by clicking here 07
your
Whether you’re new to the business or practically part of the furniture, you’ll want to know about this We’ll shortly be introducing your newly relaunched employee benefit, which will replace our Colleague Hub portal.
discounts and rewards
take advantage
UK retailers including:
Save where you
It’ll now be easier than ever to of the latest at over of favourite Asda, Just to name but a few. love
John Lewis, Ikea, Halfords,
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update.
to shop! You may never have to pay full price for anything ever again. The platform also provides you with access to free well-being and financial support.
Future developments – There have been some fab suggestions – save posts, better search functionality, ticking the categories you want to see – all of these have been raised with Blink to explore!
In August you will have seen some changes within Blink. We’ve listened to all of your feedback and came together to improve communication on the app as much as possible. Making it easier for you to see the things that are most important to you.
Education – Look out for top tips on Blink functionality and best practice.
Alias use – We’ve increased the use of alias’ –so you can search better – e.g for Claire’s posts the post now come from the ‘Claire’s team’ rather than an individual.
So what have we done?
Blink gets a complete refresh
We’re constantly looking to develop Blink so it can be the best it can be so please continue to provide your feedback to us by angela.williams@deeset.co.uk
Tech Updates
Reduction and tailoring of the main teamsTeams are now aligned to our core retailers so you can see only what you need to.
Priority posts – You will have seen a reduction of priority posts that you need to acknowledge and the addition of a new ‘Feature Reel’ that displays important posts from teams you are in.
Better categories – You can now filter on these using the top bar so you can quickly see what you need/want to like job updates, new jobs and questions.
Governance – We’ll be keeping a close eye to ensure the correct teams are posted to and that the correct categories are selected so you see the correct information.
Thistoo.
available on Android and we’re working to get it onto the Apple App store soon.
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Our brand spanking new ‘Mobile Ordering’ App
We recently launched our NEW Mobile Ordering App (MOA). The MOA is a standalone Dee Set developed app which, in its simplest form, allows our merchandisers to order stock directly to store whilst at the shelf edge. In doing so, this makes the process paperless, convenient and efficient for our Thecustomers.appiscurrently
We’re continuously developing our tech solutions, and with the MOA we’re currently working on increasing its functionality to include gap, stock and date counts and report stock damages
an exciting addition to our technological capabilities that we can offer our customers as a Group, and we look forward to communicating more developments in this area in the coming months.
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• All links to Thrive are now working on android devices
V1.18V1.19
New Job Brief Design
Tech Updates
• Ability to filter Jobs more efficiently
What’s Next?
coming weeks we’ll be trialling the new templates and gathering further feedback with the hope of launching the final templates across the business soon.
• Removed the job rejection reason - speeding up the rejection process
Keep an eye out for further updates.
Job Hub - You Asked, We Delivered!
The new brief design aims to communicate campaign information to you as simply and quickly as possible. With an improved, mobile-friendly design, job briefs will be short, sweet and allow you to maximise your time and impact in Instore.the
• Jobs overdue now show the day after the scheduled visit date
We’re always listening to feedback from the field team and making improvements to our tech so that we can make your jobs as easy as possible. In the latest Job Hub update (v1.17), we have…
• The date on the job cards, in ‘My Jobs’, now displays the accepted visit date
Our job briefs were in need of a makeover, so we’ve done just that.
• Ability to breakdown jobs into a week by week basis
• Improved app performance on mobile devices
• New look and feel design
• Push notifications - get notified about jobs in your local stores as they go live!
• Energizer Phase 2 - Integrating image recognition into Job Hub - this means surveys will be shorter and quicker with the photo doing the hard work resulting in more time for you to make the extra bit of difference in store.
Look out for our future updates, coming very soon. We’ll be communicating to you within Blink regarding:
Have you got your Job Hub set up correctly? Check out our handy hints and tips below to help you do just that: SET DISTANCETRAVELYOURSET AVAILABILITYYOUR LEVEL UP YOUR SKILLS Earn an extra £250 ahead of Christmas Click here to read more on how to optimise your Job Hub for maximum return. Work just two extra store visits a week between September and December and you could earn £250 towards your celebrations!Christmas (for example, Sainsburys, Co-op or Tesco - 1 hour jobs at £10ph) 11
Merchandising & Partnerships
Stores90 Weeks4 4,950hours
Claire’s Accessories - An incredible team effort
The merchandising team have been involved in the latest roll out of Claire’s concessions within Asda stores, and what a brilliant job they’ve done. The standards of the work carried out has been fantastic across the board, so thank you to everyone involved!
We’ve got some fantastic opportunities coming up in Asda, Sainsbury, M&S, Matalan and Co-op to name just a few, with plenty of hours available. If you’re interested in picking up this extra work, especially with Christmas around the corner, then watch out on Blink, contact your Area Manager and make sure you keep your Job Hub up to date.
Did you know?
Dee Set takes control of Morrison’s ‘Vape Stop’
Tobacco companies had absolutely nothing to do with the invention of e-cigarettes. In fact, for years they ignored them or supported efforts to have them banned. Vapes were invented by people who wanted to *stop* smoking and the aim was to have *fewer* smokers buying
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If you see any oppotunities while you’re in store, please contact Greg Randle at Tactical Solutions
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Thecigarettes.firstelectronic
We recently won an exciting new piece of work which will see weekly ongoing merchandising support within Morrisons stores for their ‘Vape Stop’ gondola ends.
Starting early September in 178 stores and then rolling out into a total of 498 stores by mid-October, the Dee Set team will be merchandising a whopping 298 SKUs on the gondola end and increasing the standards of the fixture back up to customers’ expectations now that it falls into our very capable hands.
cigarette, developed in America in 1963 by Herbert A Gilbert (one for you pub quizzers!) was well ahead of its time both socially and technologically, and after Gilbert’s patent was granted in 1965 the concept sank into obscurity for almost 40 years.
A special shout out to Val Pattison in our field team for getting this lead!
“Pet is an important mission for Asda. Pet customers spend more, shop more frequently and are more loyal. It’s a customer mission that historically we haven’t maximised this. That is now changing!”
Merchandising & Partnerships
So how did it go?
At the start of Summer, Asda launched its brandnew pet event across six of it’s stores, which ran for 12 weeks.
Matt Harrison, Senior Director of Business Development & Partnerships, “We landed our Pet Partnership recently and the performance since launch has been fantastic!
What’s next?
In short, unbelievably well. Not only did we receive countless positive feedback from the new pet brands on how incredible their bays looked in store, but Asda saw such success in this event that they have been selling more of certain products in just the 12-week period than some Tesco stores sell in a year!
Merchandising & Partnerships
Dee Set are now in early talks with six new pet partners on the back of the success of the pet zone, with the retailer looking to expand into more stores very soon! Watch this space.
The launch of the fully dedicated pet aisle saw five new brands launch into Asda, including: Freshpet, Denzel, Bugalugs, Petface and Lily’s Kitchen. Dee Set were crucial in supporting the brands with the initial set up of the bays and the ongoing merchandising in stores.
Tails above the rest - Asda Pet Event
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P.S – We’re looking to provide you a treat in our next issue of CHAT we’re we’ll film the whole cycle from end to end to really bring to life how this becomes a true team effort to accomplish each cycle.
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Sweet Nectar success
A great team effort by all involved, and we’ve loved seeing the final work you produced in store, as have the brands too. Take a look at some of these cracking one-day activations, WOW bays and showcases in all their glory. On to the next cycle and keep up the great work!
Our Nectar POS partnership in Sainsbury’s goes from strength to strength with Cycle 7 and 8 producing the largest individual POS piece requirements to date. Between the two cycles our merchandising team implemented over 73,500 POS pieces in line with the plan across 972 stores. Put into perspective, that’s over 25 activations per store, per week!
Our focus on Supervisor training continues, with sessions focused this quarter on upskilling our people and taking them on the next stage of their Nutmeg journey. To help drive retention within our team, these developed skills by our supervisors will help improve the employee journey and focus on successfully onboarding our new starters.
People - the key to our success
You’ve always got to dress for the occasion and at Nutmeg we never miss an opportunity. This year, we’ve seen the launch in Morrisons spaces of seasonal lines for Valentines, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Baby Event and our first ever pride event, which was a huge success. Feedback from the team as well as our customers was great and we’re looking forward to building on the success in future events.
Our teams in store have demonstrated adaptability in managing the stock levels and supporting the business need to be reactive with markdown and promotional activity.
Nutmeg
first time since the pandemic began. AM’s were joined by a range of colleagues from across the Dee Set Group who presented the latest updates, progress and vision for the business to support them and their team’s in the field.
How do you make great people even greater?
It’s good to get together!
Recently, our Retail & Nutmeg Area Managers came together at our head office to reconnect and Thisrealign.wasthe
It was a packed agenda, but a great opportunity for feedback and collaboration, which is now enabling us to refine our processes, empower our people and deliver the best possible service to our customers.
Celebrating the Seasons
The focus for Q2 has certainly been around stock and space in store, managing the stock-flow from delivery, and ensuring we have the right stock out at the right time, all whilst maintaining shopfloor standards for that ‘kerb appeal’ for our customer to drive sales.
It’s that time again... Chestnut is back with a bang! 13Earn upto £800 in 1 Week! Monday 31st October - Sunday 6th November Hourly Rate £16 - Various Shifts Available (3,4,5 and 6 hours) We’re looking for confident individuals with great customer service skills to: • Manage the firework concession within Morrisons stores • Handle cash/card payments • Promote and drive sales within your store • Keep the firework cabinet stocked (paul.farrell@deeset.co.uk)PleaseInterested?contactPaulFarrellformoreinfo Did you know? We’ll be working in 393 morrisons stores across the country this year and with your support, completing 31,476 hours! This is the third year of our relationship with Chestnut and to support you better in store, we’ll be completing the same number of hours over a seven day period (instead of 10 days), allowing us to have more people working on the counters during peak trade. 17
“We are confident that this relationship will bring together the knowledge, skills and experience to work on a co-strategy and execute it with excellence.”
Reapp really does live up to the Dee Set motto of helping brands and retailers sell more!
• New lines added to fixture - 198
Providing a full service offering through the Tactical Solutions team, and with support of Reapp Analytics and Reapp Performance’s tech and data genius, we’re helping Energizer to really drive sales and efficiencies across its retailers, through better product availability and compliance, at scale and pace.
•included:Inventory
Cracking work Team! We’ve also recieved some brilliant feedback from the Energzer, showing just how happy they are with out service.
corrections – 2034
• Cases Ordered – 3309
Our newest customer though, landing just after our official launch, was Energizer. The world’s leading manufacturer of batteries partnership with Reapp see’s us covering eight retailers across three categories throughout the UK.
So what’s happened since we launched?
Well, we’ve already got a number of customers on board using the software including Innocent, Lindt and Kellogg’s, and our client teams are in conversation with a number of customers and prospects across the UK, and even across the pond, to acquire a few more.
Early in May we launched our in-house data and technology solution, Reapp, to the market. As a reminder, or for those of you that have joined the business since the last issue of CHAT, check out Greg’s video below to hear what Reapp’s all about.
• Displays built by the team – 759 (37.5% of all stores have a display in store on exit)
Denise Williams, Senior Business Account Manager at Energizer Holdings said: “Driving meaningful intervention is a real must for Energizer across all our categories. Tactical Solutions tailored and flexible approach, along with market leading data and tech, Reapp, is best placed to support us on our journey.
Within 4 weeks, we had visited 2746 stores and actioned over 26,559 interventions with 14,117 completed at this fixture. These interventions
The journey really is just in its early days. We’re continuously refining and improving Reapp’s capabilities and offerings through our in-house tech team. We’ve been working on (and planning ahead for) some pretty creative ways to get Reapp’s message out there in the media and right in front of the eyes of our key targets. Hopefully we’ll be able to share more on that with you in our next edition of CHAT.
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Not to leave you hanging in suspence, check out this sneak peek of our ‘Reapp Grocer Wrap Cover’ which we’ve customised to each target customer with their future brand success, from adopting Reapp, hitting the publication’s headlines...
What’s next?
Tactical Solutions
Around 12 months ago we launched a project plan for Lavazza Coffee in the Convenience Channel. After months of planning, this came to fruition earlier this year as we launched our Solus team for them. To do this in this channel is a real challenge! Premium ground coffee is not something we’d normally classify as an impulse purchase, needless to say, perfect planning and a fantastic sales team were key! Led by Natalie Poole (from a client perspective), Richard Angel, William Hughes, Christine Geoff and Neil Lacey in the field, the results have been outstanding!
After 18 weeks, phase 1 of the trial is complete - visiting Independent & Symbol stores trying to influence & sell up to three of Lavazza’s Core Ground Coffee SKUs from the rep’s cars.
The trial consisted of four reps and we managed a strike rate of 41% versus a target of 35% (great work team!). Lavazza is now the main ground coffee SKU in these retailers even against their main competitor Taylor’s.
Phase 2 is now underway revisiting stores we sold into to try and see how successful the coffee has been in the store. We’ll also be trying to include the SKU range in stores buy pushing a further SKU – Lavazza Crème E Gusto. Keep up the great work team!
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We’re always planning ahead for the future, and how we get around is one of things that is set to change forever as we look towards more sustainable alternatives.
So, we’ve decided to order non-electric vehicles for next year’s replacements, but we’ll be trialling some more fully electric cars as part of an ongoing need to understand the pros and cons of all-electric vehicles.
Driving into the future
We’ve been assessing and trialling electric vehicles with a desire to move fully electric as soon as we can - in order to improve our environmental impact. Sadly, what we’ve found is that the infrastructure and mileage capacity is not quite where we need them to be for us to go fully electric at this point, and the number of vehicles that are available is very limiting.
We remain committed to moving to electric as soon as it becomes a real alternative that allows people still to carry out their role and be a suitable car for personal use as well.
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White Hinge
effort. It’s not been easy, and there have been challenges along the way, but it’s great to see people stepping up, owning these problems and finding ways to solve them so that the way we operate is as efficient as possible.
Tech’ing over the warehouse
Coming up...
From stock receipt to tying in with couriers the previous WMS White Hinge operated on was very much a people-driven system. Now with the latest and brightest tech within the Dee Set Fulfilment department, the team are now led by a fully automated and linked system which provides real-time and cost savings on every order fulfilled. Now that it is totally paperless, it even helps with the environment too.
It’s been a busy few months in our world of eCommerce as the White Hinge team has implemented a new, bespoke Warehouse Management System (WMS) with our partners LaunchedOptima.
Richard Plant, Head of Fulfilment, commented “I’m really proud of what has been achieved through the demonstration of a true team
to the business in early June, it wasn’t all plain sailing at first, but the whole team (both in Bromborough and Stoke) have worked incredibly hard and come together to learn, develop and implement new processes and ways of working to maximise the potential of the Optima system.
“The new Optima system, along with the relocation of all the White Hinge stock into one dedicated location, will truly take our eCommerce business forward and allows us to create an even better service to the thousands of customers we have. Again, I want to thank everyone involved in this project for all their hard work.”
With one project reaching its conclusion, the team are already underway with the next. This time taking the 8,000sq ft of metal racking in the Warehouse and reimagining the space to support the growth in our Co-packing capabilities. The project is due to be completed later this quarter and we’ll be sure to show you the results in our next issue of CHAT.
What does your job entail?
I’d like to continue to learn more about the different departments of Dee Set and potentially try out a few different job roles in the future to see what I enjoy most. I’m also looking to progress within the company with the aim of buying my own house within the next couple of years.
In my role, I’m responsible for processing and sending orders, communicating with clients to make sure there are no issues with orders, collating and analysing data to put into reports to send to clients and monitoring stock levels to make sure orders can be met.
I like how it offers a good mix of different tasks and the flexibility of being able to work from home, and that the role involves a lot of problem-solving and tests your brain. There also looks to be a clear progression path within the role and company which is something that is really important to me.
Another issue of CHAT and another new face we’re welcoming into the business. This time, the spotlight falls to White Hinge’s, Alex Fern.
What are your plans for the future?
Tell us a bit more about you?
I’m cousins with Greg James from Radio 1 (yet to meet Greg during seasonal family gathering due to that famous person lifestyle, but Alex has promised us a pic once he does).
50 Cent – In Da Club
And the most important question, if you were coming out onto a stage, what would be your entrance theme song?
Alex Fern Supply Chain Co-ordinator
I recently got back from two and a half years travelling Australia, so I love to travel and have trips to Belgium and Croatia booked for later this year. I’m big into cricket and also unfortunately I’m a Stoke City fan. At the weekends I like to take my Labrador called Milo on big walks round national parks.
Lets dig a bit deeper, what are you hiding from us?
Meet the team
What do you enjoy about your role?
doggiesolutions.co.uk
Doggie Solutions is offering 10% off for all members of staff when you use code DEESET17 at checkout. 25
Calling All Dog Parents
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The Thrive Feedback Campaign
All of this feedback will help us develop in a way that meets the needs of colleagues across the business and ultimately helps you grow in your role and achieve continual success.
Coming
Learning and Development
feedback, we’ve found that the majority of learners prefer video content for their learning. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll be ensuring that learning going forward is video based and relatable to the role you’re in. We also ran a session at Head Office for further feedback and the outcome was that bite-sized content is more digestible (see what we did there?), and making it easier to log-in and complete learning in one sitting is what you really want.
We’re listening to feedback from managers and learners across the business to discover how they use our Thrive platform to learn, and this survey will continue to run until the end of ThroughSeptember.your
If you haven’t already been involved, there’s still time to provide your feedback by accessinglearninganddevelopment@deeset.co.ukemailingorbythefollowingsurveys…
Click here for the Learners Survey Click here for the Managers Survey
October to December’s training focus is on equality and diversity so look out for that in the coming months.
soon…
• Sales Campaign of the Year – Mars Wrigley
In all the categories we’re up against some big household names, but fingers crossed our team shine the brightest.
Over at Tactical Solutions we’re no stranger to the FMBE Awards, and we’ve just been shortlisted in all four of the categories we submitted entries into. Plus, we’ve been recognised for the ‘Field Marketing Agency of the Year Award’, which is awarded by judge nomination only.
Field Marketing Excellence
Going for Gold!
At the 2021 FMBE Awards (held earlier this year due to C-19 delays) the team brought back Gold awards for ‘Best Field Data’ and ‘Campaign of the Year’, alongside a Silver award for the ‘Most Effective Instore Marketing’. We’re hoping to do even better this time round, and desperately hoping to take the ‘Best Field Data’ award for the third year in a row! Untouchable!
We’ll make sure you’re the first to know when the results are announced on the night.
The summer award season has been in full swing again this year and the Dee Set Group has got lots to shout about – and a very busy calendar in November scheduled to hopefully collect lots of awards!
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• Field Data Award – Kellogg’s
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• Brand Ambassador of the Year – Chris Skelding x Innocent
A Great ExperienceCandidate
Let’s start off with our Recruitment team. After being shortlisted by other awarding bodies earlier in the year, they’ve been at it again and have yet another three awards to look forward to through the In-House Recruitment Awards (30th November) and Personnel Today Awards (15th November). In both awarding bodies we’ve been shortlisted for ‘Best Candidate Experience’, but also the ‘Innovation in Recruitment’ award at the Personnel Today Awards.
Good luck!
• Most Effective Tactical Campaign – Mars Petcare
A huge thank you and congratulations to all the teams involved for delivering the results they have which have created such strong submissions, clearly recognised by the judges.
Our shortlisted entries to the 2022 FMBE Awards, which the winners will be announced at Ascot Racecourse on 17th November are:
Please send us your stories or recognition of colleauges good work to CHAT@deeset.co.uk Thank you
