NexGen vans are always on the move
VICTORIA – NexGen Hearing listens to their customers, and help their customers listen better.
Glen Bye
The Industrial Hearing Testing Company has locations throughout British Columbia with five fixed locations on Vancouver Island alone. Glen Bye took over management of NexGen Hearing (MTS), the South Island Division of NexGen Hearing Industrial, in April. He joined the company in 2015 when it merged with Annette’s Mobile Service of Campbell River. Four years later, they acquired a Nanaimo-based industrial hearing testing company, which he owned. Last summer he opened an industrial hearing testing office in Kelowna, soon followed by their latest location in Sicamous.
Bye is excited about the change in South Island management, noting “we have brought back Barb Wright, a well-liked, seasoned professional Industrial Audiometric technician. She has 16 years’ experience in the field of hearing loss prevention and is really happy to be back in Victoria after a few years working up-Island in the North Island Division of NexGen Hearing Industrial.”
NexGen has grown steadily on the North Island each year since 2015, but the pandemic caused the firm to re-evaluate where it was going.
“During Covid, we were forced to stop, take a look around, what were we doing well, what was not working, and we had the time to bring our group closer together,” he notes. “The work we do is so independent of each other, as 90 percent of the time we are in the Mobile Hearing Unit, testing our clients with no interaction between Technicians. it gave us time to stop and ‘sharpen the saw’.”
NexGen Hearing vans take employees to their clients
Bye observes the company’s growth increased following the completion of Campbell River’s John Hart Dam, as that gave them the tools it needed to take on larger projects.
“We have been on site of the Site-C dam since 2018, and we made our first trip up to the LNG construction in Kitimat last fall and have returned this spring to help keep their employees up to date and protected,” he states. “We have just returned from Golden where the Kicking Horse Pass Extension is under way.
Bye is pleased with the quality of his staff.
“I feel we have a fantastic group of individuals that have the ability of working on their own as well as teaming up when doing big projects,” he states. “Our technicians have the power to make their own decisions when it comes time to answer our client’s question or have a request to adjust or change testing times or dates, there is no need for them to have to ‘check with the ffice’ when a situation arises.”
Bye envisions more growth on the South Island by implementing a new management style that has worked up-Island.
“We would not be here without our clients, and we ask them how and when can we help, not the other way around,” he says. “And we have a wonderful team that can answer that call.”
