MEET THE MEMBER | PPC113 November 2023

PPC spoke to Helen Dockrill and Albie Tyler from Essex-based 3Way Pest Control, about the company’s charitable ethos and the way they support Mind, the mental health charity.

PPC First, did you want to tell us a little bit about 3Way and what your roles are in the business? 

HD It was started in 1978 as a carpet cleaning business, by George Webb and his wife. George has now retired, so his son Anthony Webb is the Managing Director. It’s a family-run business. It originated as a cleaning company but we started the pest control venture in 2013, and it’s been a real success.

I’m the Customer Service and Sales Manager, and I’ve worked for 3Way for 21 years.

AT And I’m the Contract Manager and Pest Control Manager. I’ve worked here for 10 years, I believe.

PPC One of the reasons we’re talking today is because you found out our charity of the year is Mind, the mental health charity, and you do some work for them, is that right?

HD We do, yes. Mind has an office in Grays, here in Essex. It’s called a ‘wellbeing centre’ and they do great work in the community.

Starting in about 2008 we began cleaning for them, but then in 2015 they came to us with some bad news: they were going to have to cancel our cleaning contract due to a lack of funding.

AT That didn’t sit right with us. It’s a support network that’s quite close to all of our hearts, and that many of us have used. We’ve all at some point needed a bit of help. So when Anthony was told that Mind were going to have to cancel our services, he was quite happy to take it on as a free of charge service instead. Now we do their cleaning and they get pest control thrown in, and we don’t charge them anything for it.

I think by our latest calculation we’d provided something like 1,534 hours of free cleaning support to them, not counting the pest control.

PPC And I imagine they were really grateful! What does it mean to you, to be able to help Mind that way?

HD Like I said, it’s a vital service. I’ve used it. Some of my family members have used it and there’s other people at 3Way that have used that service too. Over the years we’ve all needed a bit of support and it was just a given that when they said that they couldn’t afford it because of budgeting that we’d do it.

It’s a service that is very much needed, especially now after Covid-19 affected people so much, I think it’s even more necessary than ever. Without the support that we get through charities like this, many of us would struggle.

Anthony is very big on giving back; 3Way is not just a business and it never has been. We obviously need to make money to survive, but there’s a lot more to it than just that.

PPC It sounds like you have a lot of respect for your MD?

HD Yeah, one of the reasons our staff retention is so high is because we’re not just numbers but we’re treated like people. I recently lost my dad, and he was being cared for by St Luke’s Hospice. I mentioned to Anthony in passing how good they are, and so he’s going to keep it on his radar to do something to support them.

And it’s not just charity support, he supports us personally, too. I won’t name names, but there’s a gentleman that’s worked for us for quite a long time and he lost his dad, who lived in Jamaica. It was very sudden, so he couldn’t get home because he hadn’t got the money and so Anthony paid for his flight.

“Without the support that we get through charities like this, many of us would struggle.”

PPC Other than Mind, do you do any other community or charity work?

AT We do quite a lot with other charities as well. Giving back to the community is quite important to the business, so we sponsor a local under-13s football team in Hatfield. They’ve recently just won their championship! And each year some of us do the London Winter Run, a 10K race for charity.

If any of our colleagues recommend a charity that they’re interested in, the management team will always listen and see whether they can help.

AT Obviously we love to give back. Anthony, Helen and all the other managers in the company have a great relationship with a lot of people in the community, so it’s just nice to show our support.

Historically at 3Way, we’ve had zero marketing; a lot of the customers that we do have have come through word of mouth, relationships in the community that we’ve fostered.

HD We’ve had some customers for like 30 years, which in this industry is quite difficult to do, it’s quite a cut throat industry in many respects when it comes to contracts. I think because we’ve got that personable side to us, it does keep customers with us. It’s the same with the staff retention as well.

So with the charitable stuff we do, there’s an element of like... our business has been built by the community, in some ways. And we’re just returning that support. It’s just nice to be in a position where we can do that.

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