By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
KEYSBOROUGH tech company Advanced Technology Testing and Research is getting an international name for its innovation but it is also making a healthy investment in its workforce.
ATTAR was nominated at a 2014 Premier Regional Business Awards event last week for its successful inventiveness, such as developing a world-first method to test stress levels of heavy train wheels.
It has also found a novel way of keeping the stress levels of its 20 employees in check.
The business offers $600 after tax to all employees to spend on their own health and well-being.
Managing director David Lake said workers couldn’t spend it on their families but had to treat themselves to bikes, massages, yoga, training shoes and anything else good for their health.
He said “people are the most important part of the company – we have to look at their health and well-being.”
Employees have been invited to buy shares in the company founded in 1986 by Dr Gary Martin – a shrewd move given its 30 per cent growth in the past five years.
Mr Lake said its train wheel testing-method had been written off by its testing technology provider – which said it “couldn’t be done”.
“We were a little terrified by that.”
The method has been successfully used at BHP’s Port Hedland operation and is showing up deficiencies in brand-new $60,000 wheels.
Other nominees at the awards event staged by the Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce were Norden and the Foster Street Clinic.
Dandenong-based Norden is a 50-year business that started as a truck body-builder but made the jump to wheelchair-friendly conversions to vehicles for disability providers.
Manager Robert Anson said the company created a side-business in hydraulic connections, born out of frustrations about supplier quality for hoses and fittings.
Foster Street Clinic, which provides a 40,000-a-month needle and syringe exchange program, has branched into providing a breakfast club for clients.
The club has had health and social benefits – a chance for the clinic’s workers to sit down and chat through a client’s issues, manager Debra Alexander said.
David Mann, an automotive technology student at Chisholm TAFE, was nominated for the youth enterprise award.
Mr Mann, 19, is studying and learning his trade as an apprentice heavy duty diesel mechnaic at D&D Diesel, Dandenong South.
He plans to ply his skills at the burgeoning mines in Western Australia and Queensland.
“I’m happy to give anything a go.”
