Benefits of the ODIA
Benefits for employers of diving personnel, signatory companies and their clients:
- Savings to management and systems costs from negotiating, testing and utilising separate but similar floor pay and allowances frameworks
- Standard disciplines and competences mean more efficient competence assurance
- Dealing with fewer individual complaints, reducing litigation costs
- Ongoing forum for discussing potential collective solutions to shared problems
- Greater flexibility over movement of personnel between contractors
- Company reputation from adopting the ‘charter-mark’ of the ODIA standard
- Gains in attracting skilled personnel
- Ability to focus reward variables on key company priorities
- Improving industry standards through benchmarking on training, safety and workforce involvement
Benefits for workers:
- Protection of minimum pay and core conditions (particularly important for ‘day-rate’, casual workers)
- Reassurance on personal health and wellbeing through ill-health and injury benefits
- Allows for greater ease of movement between companies because of guarantee on key pay and conditions
- Can identify a ‘good employer’ through its adoption of ODIA, and likelihood of high standards of training, safety and operational management
- Provides express recognition of importance of workforce information and consultation, and of workers’ rights in general
- Ongoing forum for discussing potential collective solutions to shared problems
- Opportunity to converse with the major diving employers on matters of general importance.
Promoting the profile of the ODIA
The ODIA signatories commend the adoption of ODIA terms to all diving services contractors operating in the UK North Sea. We would be interested in hearing from companies who are not currently signatory to the Agreement who might wish be part of our network.
The ODIA does not have the same industry profile as other North Sea collective agreements (such as the OCA or COTA) which are accepted as the industry standard and will work to promote awareness of the ODIA as the 'charter-mark' of good employment practice for diving personnel in the UK North Sea.