Statewide Independent Wholesalers

Statewide Independent Wholesalers are a grocery wholesaler. They hold and deliver goods for 2 out of the 3 major supermarkets in Tasmania, Australia: Woolworths, Dan Murphys, and IGA. So when COVID-19 hit, they had to act at lightning speed.

We spoke to Courtney Newman, their Health, Safety and Environmental Manager about how they utilized SafetyCulture checklists to protect their 400 staff and thousands of customers.

Significant risks

Business couldn’t stop when COVID-19 hit, in fact, grocers were one of the retail sectors that heavily ramped up. So, SIW immediately started thinking about new hygiene measures and physical distancing, which posed quite a challenge. They had to make decisions incredibly quickly due to the risk, which was significantly high.

If just one staff contracted COVID-19, their whole operation would have to be paused for deep cleaning, which would bring a huge knock-on effect to grocery deliveries, and have an impact on every Tasmanian. It took staff one hour to identify what they had to change based on regulatory guidelines, and just 10 minutes to modify their regular SafetyCulture platform inspection templates to create processes that would keep them safe through the pandemic.

Switched gears to COVID-focused observations

SIW stayed completely focused on meeting COVID-19 hygiene and distancing requirements, as they do around 75 checks per week. SafetyCulture was pivotal in this shift towards hygiene and safety compliance. Courtney states, “SafetyCulture is a really valuable tool to do that. It’s made a huge difference to our data collection, and our behavior observation space, too.” They managed to minimize 6.5 hours of admin time, which was really useful when they needed that time to keep themselves informed on the latest news and guidance.

SafetyCulture platform as a key tool

“I took SafetyCulture and used it the way I wanted to. This means if any of our team are doing anything of risk, we work with them to make sure they adhere to the guidelines. (Using SafetyCulture platform) made it really clear to our members on the floor,” remarks Courtney.