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How the Scotsman Hospitality Group leveraged SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) to transform venue standards and free up time to focus on what’s most important to the business: their guests.
The Scotsman Hospitality Group is Scotland’s largest and most diversified hospitality group, with a collection of over 50 venues in Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Aberdeen and more.
Spanning fine dining restaurants and boutique hotels through to state of the art nightclubs and bijoux cinemas, their portfolio is hugely varied. Maintaining standards across that spectrum is a continuing business priority, as every venue works to ensure a great guest experience that reflects their brand.
“We can’t expect managers to do a good job if they don’t have the right tools at their disposal.”
Auditing of standards within venues was traditionally paper-based, with no real sense of traceability or accountability. With each venue taking ownership for their own audits, the result was inconsistent standards and gaps in the data being fed back to HQ. Like many in the sector, the Scotsman Hospitality Group was also grappling with time and resource challenges.
They needed a different approach.
After searching for a solution, SafetyCulture platform emerged as the front-runner. Thanks to the diversity of their portfolio, the Scotsman Hospitality team needed a tool that would be malleable and adaptable to the different parts of the business: as simple to use in a casino as it would be in a small pub.
Thanks to its agility and ease-of-use, SafetyCulture platform could be easily applied to all different venues within the Group.
Scotsman Hospitality Group has rolled out SafetyCulture platform for a range of venue operational checks: spanning bar, floor and manager open/close checks, to fire compliance, brand standards, and even mystery shopping.
The team knew they’d face challenges to adoption, operating in a fast-paced industry where time and resources restrictions are common. “Our chefs would tell me they had ‘no time to type’ or wouldn’t be able to use a new tool while continuing to turn around the number of covers they needed and manage a kitchen,” explains Amy.
“But as soon as our staff saw how easy it was, with everything they needed in one place, the objections fell away.
“Especially when we started using voice dictation so they could conduct checks easily on the go. We were concerned SafetyCulture (iAuditor) would struggle with accents – but it’s proven capable of handling even the strongest of Scottish dialects!”
Through standardising checks with SafetyCulture platform, the app has served as a training tool for all workers: making expectations completely clear.
“Everything is there in back and white: all our different processes and checks in one place. Staff know what’s expected of them and we have clear visibility of what’s happening in our venues. It’s a win-win,” says Amy.
“SafetyCulture platform gives our staff a sense of responsibility and ownership for their venues. It’s completely transparent and improves staff awareness of what’s going on: which, in turn, drives up standards.”
Regulatory guidelines throughout Scotland mean the hospitality sector has faced challenges and a need for hypervigilance to protect staff and guests. SafetyCulture has played a crucial role in helping Scotsman Hospitality Group venues stay compliant and operational during challenging times.
This includes using Scotland government operational checklists within SafetyCulture platform to ensure safe set up for social distancing, hourly cleaning checklists, and additional safety measures such as staff temperature checking.
With Licensing and Environmental Health Officers performing spot checks on venues, Scotsman Hospitality Group staff know they have all the necessary data to demonstrate their compliance: and keep staff and guests safe. During the pandemic, if the Group had incidences of having to flag and hand over information, this was made easier by having SafetyCulture platform in place to capture that information consistently.
SafetyCulture has seen standards raised throughout Scotsman Hospitality Group and a marked reduction in claims.
With both checks and actions within the app, all areas of each venue are being looked at consistently. The result is heightened awareness among staff, with potential issues being picked up – and resolved – quicker.
SafetyCulture platform will also be utilized to conduct bartending and stock checks. Ensuring staff regularly undertake pouring measure checks will not only ensure good practice, but save the Group money and reduce losses.
“I couldn’t have done it all without the SafetyCulture team,” says Amy.
“They see ways we can be more efficient or the different use cases for SafetyCulture platform in our business and let us know, helping us to deploy new templates and approaches to make the most of the tool. I’ve got some friends out of it and I’m never afraid to pick up the phone to ask for help.
“We’ve got plans to drive further improvements in standards and compliance on a bonus scoring structure, and to roll out more of SafetyCulture platform’s features across the Group.
“From a business perspective, we’ve not just seen an improvement in standards. It’s also given us our time back to actually focus on what’s important to Scotsman Hospitality: looking after our guests.”
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