Onsite environmental health inspections carried out by enforcement officers have been in place for decades to ensure that businesses are legally compliant. Here at Shield Safety Group, we’ve been delivering onsite Audits for our varied client base since our beginnings. This method of inspection, and proactive approach to achieving compliance, goes above and beyond a LA inspection providing our clients with a clear score and action plan of areas that need improving from a combined auditing/coaching experience.
We’d like to take you on a walk down Shield Safety memory lane. To a time when our small but perfectly formed team of Auditors travelled up and down the country conducting Audits against industry best practice. The outcome of these visits was predominately the same, giving clients a clear risk-rated action plan based on negative scoring, highlighting necessary improvements in order to improve compliance. However, unknowingly for the client a manual process was in place involving complex, spreadsheets (and even before that a paper-based system was in place) – both meaning we were not operating at ultimate efficiency levels.
Fast forward to the year 2009, the same best practice, this time with more Auditors and the introduction of cloud-based SaaS solution Compliance Centre with the Audit module. This would revolutionise the way that our Auditors and our clients’ internal safety teams would conduct Audits – and today is used by more than 16,500 users to date.
SaaS risk and safety software, Compliance Centre, was born out of our heritage in environmental health with the goal of making safety simple. The system offers a holistic solution to managing compliance and was the driving force behind our success at The Grocer Gold Awards 2017 winning Technology Supplier of the Year.
The introduction of the Audit module, allowed our Auditors to streamline processes by conducting onsite assessments using mobile technology. This not only improved working conditions, it also reduced the time it took to complete the report, allowing them to spend more time onsite with our clients.
One of our Environmental Health Practitioners, Gillian Turner, worked with the previous spreadsheet system and explains ‘The introduction of Compliance Centre, especially the Audit Upload Tool, has made everything easier from an Auditor’s point of view. It ensures smoother delivery and reduced write up time. Not only that, the design of the software means we can use it as a teaching tool whilst onsite carrying out our Audits, enabling us to add that vital coaching element in to our visits.’
The Audit module also enables our clients to tailor their Audits to meet their business requirements. Bespoke Audit Sets allow for areas of priority to have more weighting, and increased risk-ratings in the event a non-conformance is found. Audit scores and non-conformances feed into real-time reporting giving access to vital compliance data at just the click of a button and enabling safety performance to be tracked. In addition to that, all Auditing data feeds into our algorithm which calculates a unique risk status, using Red, Amber or Green scoring and clear smiley face indicators.
The improvements that our Audit Team gave us the inspiration for sharing this easier approach to our clients who conduct their own internal audits, and so we introduced the Self-audit functionality next. Essentially offering our clients the same benefits our Audit Team had experienced.
Gillian has also worked client-side using Self-audit of the Audit module at a well-known multi-site retailer with multiple food serving concession. On the other side of the table(t) she found this invaluable too ‘Using Compliance Centre to conduct Audits from the client side was really useful, as it gave a view of the business of the whole, with the ability to trend data. The reporting was an effective tool for management briefs, and the ability to manipulate the data meant we could drill down into our own food serving outlets and concessions. The software also enabled us to plan successfully and encouraged performance – all General Managers wanted to be the best!’
If you’re considering a digital transformation when conducting Audits, consider this – Compliance Centre has changed Auditing for us and our clients for the better…
Change means that what was before wasn’t perfect. People want things to be better. – Esther Dyson
Is it time to revolutionise how your business conducts Audits? Contact one of our friendly advisors today on 020 3740 3744 or email sales@shieldsafety.co.uk for a demonstration of Compliance Centre.
The information contained in this blog article has been created for marketing purposes and is not official guidance and should not be used as a substitute for official Food Safety, Fire Safety and Health & Safety advice. Shield Safety take no responsibility if the information in the blog article is used to form part of a safety management system or used to form part of any legal or regulatory compliance for your business. For official guidance and to engage with Shield Safety services please do call our team on 020 3740 3744 or email hello@shieldsafety.co.uk.
