SafetyCulture

Link Contracting

Learn how Link Contracting reduced insurance premiums and harnessed the power of data with SafetyCulture.

Link Contracting

Link Contracting, a family-owned maintenance and construction firm, first started using the SafetyCulture platform as a digital solution to raise their safety standards, reduce their risk profile, and provide assurance during a period of expansion. The business began using the platform in May 2018 and has continued to grow with the support of SafetyCulture ever since.

“We wanted a new way to speak with our clients. That’s exactly what SafetyCulture offers.”

Simon Jones
Director of People and Safety at Link Contracting Services Ltd

Proactive Premiums 

One of the driving forces for the wide-scale adoption of SafetyCulture platform within Link Contracting was its use as an evidential tool. Early on during their roll-out, Link recognized both the operational and commercial value it would offer. 

By capturing images, timestamps, issues, and incident reporting, Link can prove their safety-first culture to both clients and their insurer. This aids them in accident investigation and claim mitigation, as well as cultivating a culture of proactive risk management. 

Since introduction, the team has seen a positive correlation between an increase in the use of SafetyCulture platform, and a significant drop in lagging indicators such as accidents and incidents. Despite doubling their fleet to over 150 vans driving an average of 5,000 miles per month, their use of that platform has seen their risk profile reduce with incidents halving to 0.0044 per 1000 miles.

“We’ve used SafetyCulture to drive a culture of safety among our drivers, which has seen our risk profile go down and incidents halved. As a result, we were rated ‘excellent’ by our insurer and saw an 11% reduction in our premiums.”

Simon Jones
Director of People and Safety at Link Contracting Services Ltd

A company-wide safety culture

Link may have initially started using the SafetyCulture platform to provide assurance but it’s now a vehicle for much, much more, but their use cases have gone company-wide in the past 12 months. The digital tool is now used throughout their compliance and quality assurance teams for audits including fire safety, vehicle checks, CDM, maintenance, quality, customer progress, accident investigation, and near-miss reporting. 

“SafetyCulture is everywhere in this business: it’s the bedrock of our safety operations. It’s the best tool I’ve ever used for this kind of work. If we lost it, I don’t know what we’d do.” – Simon Jones

Not only does the platform enable Simon and his team to see what is happening on the frontline, the analytics dashboard allows them to pick up issues on site that would otherwise be missed. 

“Recently, I spotted on our dashboard a ‘near-miss’ for an employee working from height, which can be one of our biggest risks,” said Simon. “Thanks to the use of images in SafetyCulture I could see the issue.”

This visibility reduces risk, highlights areas for improvement, and helps identify training issues and areas for upskilling. These continuous feedback loops ensure they’re meeting best practices, across the entire workforce. 

Many businesses can face resistance when it comes to new ways of working, however, the team at Link Contracting love it. The team has successfully tackled the fear of ‘big brother’ and promotes positive transparency by promoting SafetyCulture as a tool that empowers and protects frontline employees.

Actions, Analytics and Adoption

Link Contracting gets maximum value from the features of SafetyCulture. Issues and actions enable front-line teams to flag ad-hoc issues for themselves and clients. With analytics, the team provides lead and lag reporting and sets employee KPIs based upon inspections. 

Many businesses can face resistance when it comes to new ways of working, however, the team at Link Contracting love it! The team has successfully tackled the fear of ‘big brother’ and promotes positive transparency by promoting SafetyCulture as a tool that empowers and protects frontline employees.

Simon and his team are most impressed with the reliability of SafetyCulture. It’s user-friendly interface “doesn’t glitch, doesn’t go wrong and always works…it’s always there.” The simplicity of the tools also made it easy to roll out across the business. 

Not only have Link Contracting experienced reliability from the technology, they’ve also benefited from great support from the SafetyCulture team. With access to free Bootcamps, the team has been able to expand its use of the different features and functionality, and has a vision to introduce SafetyCulture’s ‘Heads Up’ feature for leadership and management training, alongside site inductions.

“It’s easy to use, slick, modern; and there’s the commercial pull of using it to mitigate risk and for insurance purposes. You can see the value in the lack of incidents and the culture we’ve built. It’s a tool that pays for itself.”

Simon Jones
Director of People and Safety at Link Contracting Services Ltd

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