Footasylum

Footasylum is a sports fashion retailer in the UK with 70 stores and over 2,700 employees nationwide. The team at Footasylum used SafetyCulture platform to keep their staff safe as the pandemic unfolded by providing a means to complete digital checklists for their staff and to better manage operations. We spoke to Footasylum’s senior leaders about how SafetyCulture supported their transition of processes through COVID-19.

‘Very unsettling’

Liz Edden, Head of Internet Operations at the Distribution Centre says: “It was unprecedented when COVID-19 hit…as for all businesses, the effects were unknown.” Footasylum knew it was inevitable that their retail stores had to close with no idea when they would be able to safely reopen.

COVID-19 taskforce

The team quickly got to work and set up a  ‘COVID-19 taskforce’ who kept up to date on Government guidance and translated it into their business best practices. The team consisted of the Human Resources and Health and Safety teams who firstly needed to determine ‘how many people can we safely have in this business?’ – that will dictate how much activity they could physically handle.

Coming out strong

Footasylum used the SafetyCulture platform to safely reopen stores by conducting an initial  ‘Preliminary COVID-19 Store Opening checklist’ which provided really quick insight on the current state of the stores and created actions for what needed to be done to make them COVID-safe.

Now that stores are open, the team uses SafetyCulture to monitor daily activity through their ‘Retail COVID-19 Daily Requirements checklist’, giving the leadership team confidence that they are doing everything that is reasonably practicable to ensure the safety of their staff and customers.

“It’s such an easy system to use on an iPhone, you can fill out checklists and submit it straight away,” says Jon Picken, the Retail Sales and Operations Manager. “Because SafetyCulture is a live system and evolving, everything gets updated automatically. If there is a government update, the template is updated automatically.”  This means that customers and staff ultimately feel safer, and less at risk.

“We have come out of this as a really strong team, and pride is really high,” says Jane Buck, Head of Human Resources and Health and Safety.

Want to see how SafetyCulture can play a role in your COVID-19 operations? Check out our COVID-19 Response Hub and access thousands of COVID-19 checklists, resources, and ebooks.