Insights
Weetabix selected Alcumus SafeContractor as its health and safety partner in 2015, to assess and ensure legal compliance for contractors.
SafeContractor is regarded as one of the UK’s leading health and safety accreditation schemes, with over 33,000 contractors and more than 400 clients. Alcumus work directly with Weetabix’s contractors to provide training and guidance, as well as support through the accreditation process.
Gary Mobbs, Group Health & Safety Manager at Weetabix, said:
“We want to work well with our contract partners, we believe this is a benefit not just to Weetabix but to our contract partners as well. Weetabix has taken a zero-tolerance approach; we can’t have a two-tier system; it just wouldn’t send the right message out across our business or to any other business coming in. So fundamentally, we’ve agreed that no SafeContractor membership, no entry into Weetabix.”
“Implementing the SafeContractor system has enabled us to manage risk consistently but also have the confidence that when businesses come into our business, we have a full understanding of their risk management mitigation and we avoid generic risk assessment. By knowing our contractors have been checked by SafeContractor, we can be confident that there is an absolute competence within their business to manage risk in ours.”
“Our organisation has also benefit from cost savings made at Weetabix by joining the SafeContractor system in many, many ways; everybody needs to understand that risk needs to be managed consistently so that's freed up capacity within our core business resource to get on with focusing on what they're good at.” continued Gary.
“With SafeContractor we are confident across all four of our sites, should we have a visit from the HSE, we can actually display that we are really robust in our processes and systems. Rather than wavering and allowing certain businesses to opt out, we can display that we are absolutely adamant that we will manage our supply chain with robust consistency every time.”
Regarding the operational implementation of SafeContractor across all of Weetabix’s sites for their management team, Allan Ridout – Group Health and Safety of Capital at Weetabix commented that:
“SafeContractor gives our contractor managers, business unit engineering managers and our project managers the confidence that SafeContractor is there if we need to use them. If we have issues on the site, we ring up SafeContractor and the speed in which they respond is rapid. It’s raised our standards across the board and what's great about SafeContractor for me is the support. The SafeContractor Portal is undeniably the best resource we get from SafeContractor; it helps us to achieve a zero-tolerance with our contractors, it gives all of our contractor managers with the logons the visibility of the whole 17,000 contractors.”
“Our administration team are fully supportive, and they've been a massive help and it's an easy system to manage as SafeContractor just takes all the hard work out. We've also developed a client specification with SafeContractor that handles all the client specific issues that Weetabix have above and beyond what SafeContractor do.” continued Allan.
“Demonstrating competency at Weetabix is a huge issue, so bringing SafeContractor on board satisfies the HSE with ensuring the organisational capability and competency of our contractors through a UK-leading SSIP scheme. And for me, SafeContractor gives Weetabix a feeling of confidence that we we’re reaching the high standards required. SafeContractor are recognised across many industries and I believe they're setting the standard with contractor accreditation.”
Andy Cooper, Business Unit Engineering Manager at Weetabix is responsible for managing specific sites at Weetabix, and implementing SafeContractor has made his job easy by ensuring that all staff on site are working in the same way, understand what is required of them, and most importantly are confident that the contractors that are coming in now aren’t just doing it their way - they're doing it the SafeContractor way.
“Zero-tolerance is absolutely the right way to go, it benefits me as a business unit manager as it improves the time I've got out on the job in the shop floor. The improvements that I've seen through knowing and understanding that every single contractor that we use on site or that we get into our business unit are all going to be geared up to use the same safe method and same ways of working. Now we don't have to look after the whole job as we've got a central Safety Advisory team that are looking after the job for us, and that is being managed by SafeContractor.” commented Andy.
Gemma Archibald, Managing Director of Alcumus SafeContractor said:
"As the latest HSE statistics suggest, appropriate health and safety vetting of your supply chain is essential to minimise the risks to individuals and your business.”
“We’re to have Weetabix as one of our key client accounts and are proud to help them manage their supply chain to ensure complete compliance amongst all of their contractors. More than 400 organisations have selected SafeContractor to become safer, healthier and stronger.”
“SafeContractor plays a vital role in supporting our clients in meeting their compliance needs, and the need to leverage supplier capabilities in this manner is increasingly recognised as a key driver of competitive advantage.”
