The Wickwar Pub Company is a privately owned pub chain based in the Southwest of England with 14 locations and 150 employees.
We have been working with BCarm for the last 4 years to help us develop our H&S Process and Culture.
H&S can be a challenge in our sector as it’s hugely dependent on the site managers, who in our business, wear many hats and are all things to all people. Their focus is often on the immediate issues they are dealing with daily rather than important, but less immediate tasks, which H&S can easily become.
This challenge gets amplified if you don’t have visibility over activity both in terms of creating operational prioritisation and spotting the gaps in what we should be doing and addressing them. We also have the additional challenge of staff turnover in our sector and making sure that we onboard new staff quickly and effectively in all our operational features.
The key areas in BCarm we use are Risk Assessments, Training and Incident Reporting. We also use it as a central repository for our compliance documentation, certificates, etc.
The E Learning certainly helps us deliver consistent training across our sites, particularly onboarding new team members.The Reporting Tools allow us to keep on top of activity in the centre to keep the Site Managers focussed on completing training.
Our Risk Assessments are more than a set of documents in a folder. BCarm has enabled us to set-up proactive monitoring of the Risk Assessments so we know that our Control Measures are in place and operating. This monitoring produces a performance score, so we now have the means to measure our compliance, which is a key safety element across our footprint.
As the Manager of multiple locations, I have instant visibility over which Risk Assessments have or haven’t been monitored and if there are shortfalls with any Control Measures. I can quickly run reports that I can incorporate into my Business Review Documents, ensuring safety is one of the criteria the Site Managers are measured on.
We report all Incidents and Accidents in BCarm and I get immediate notifications from the system that an incident has occurred, wherever I am. This allows me to liaise with the Site Manager to ensure we manage the incident properly.
We are currently in the middle of migrating our Food Safety Systems into BCarm and also looking to use the Checklist module to carry out our other Safety Checks, which we will be able to do in the App
The visibility that BCarm provides is a real benefit when managing multiple locations. As well as the instant availability of information and the real-time alerts, I am also able to review activity remotely rather than having to audit paper files on site, which is more effective use of time.
The system is easy to use and the BCarm Engagement Team is always on hand to provide support when we need it, whether it’s a day-to-day query or when we rolled out the system, providing 121 virtual training to our team.
BCarm have also been a great help in keeping us on track to develop our Safety Management System. At the early stages, they helped us develop a plan of action with an Audit and Gap Analysis and this then led to further support in developing our Risk Assessments and Controls.
In our regular review calls, they help us understand clearly what we need to be doing next, breaking the process down into simple bite-sized chunks and where we are veering off plan, they are always willing to “hold our feet to the flames”. It would be fair to say that we have transformed how we manage Safety in the business.
