Workplace culture key to a successful business: Welsh

HAPPY employees who create positive end results and, in turn, yield contented clients are always at the top of mind for Complete Fire Design managing director, Richard Welsh.

Complete Fire Design is among the state's leading specialist fire safety engineering consultancies, providing its clients with world-class innovative fire safety solutions.

Despite the importance of his work, Mr Welsh believes it's the culture of his workplace and the attitude of his staff that makes the work fun; this, in turn, makes the company successful.

"It's about fun, and you spend a lot of your life working, so why turn up to work each morning and make it a chore; make it fun," Mr Welsh said.

A strong believer in maintaining an appropriate work-life balance, Mr Welsh instituted a company policy of not working after 6pm at night and not at all during weekends.

"As a result, I have built up a team of loyal, engaged and passionate professionals who enjoy coming to work and contributing to the business's growth," he said.

"My biggest achievement has been securing a professional and loyal workforce that treats CFD as if it were their own business."

While the building boom made it difficult to recruit skilled workers across all industries, including engineers, Mr Welsh saw this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

"What it did allow us to do was be very fussy about the jobs we take on and also about the people we work with, so our engineers could enjoy their job," Mr Welsh said.

"I heard a lot of a stories where people were leaving their jobs as they were snowed under with work and working with people who were really desperate to get building licenses and jobs finished, and we sort of stood back and said, 'we've got a great set of clients we really enjoy working with, let's just work for these people.'"

By focusing on this core group of clients, CFD was able to concentrate on achieving the goals of its clientele, resulting in significant repeat customers.

"We try and work on a repeat business of about 70-80 per cent and we monitor this as one of our key performance indicators," Mr Welsh said.

Providing a nurturing environment for his staff in terms of professional development is another key consideration.

"The guys working for me are really highly qualified engineers and we always need to test them and keep them developing, because if we don't they lose interest," he said.

"So we have to keep world's best practice up to them so they can deliver that to our clients."

Mr Welsh said his company was Perth's biggest and most expensive fire engineering consultancy, and for good reason.

"We pride ourselves on being the top end of the market and we charge for that," he said.

"[CFD] has gone really well which I suppose is a testament to the staff and the culture."