Context
Norton Way Group are a car dealership group of companies based in London and Hertfordshire. As they expanded to over 40 units across the UK, it became apparent that there was a disparate approach to health and safety management across the individual dealer businesses. In one particular division, there was an evident low level of management awareness and sensitivity around health and safety that needed immediate attention.
Throughout the last 12 months, we’ve worked with Norton Way Group as their in-house health and safety resource. We’ve enabled them to put together a management framework for their health and safety practices, including periodic reviews, risk registers, working practice assessments and training.
Norton Way Group are a growing business, so the assets they acquire come into their portfolio with varied levels of health and safety performance and standards. Some businesses already have existing health and safety support incorporated into them, whereas others were lacking in this area.
Task
“We didn’t know what we didn’t know. So, we reprioritised health and safety in all ways. Physically, by making site improvements and enhancing health and safety measures, but more importantly with the management oversight that we’ve put in place”.
Jason Cranswick Managing Director
We needed to establish a new baseline standard for health and safety within the business. As a multi-location company with a variety of different businesses, skills, roles and maturity levels – they needed to set a unified standard across their estate. The first step was to get a very clear picture of the status of the business as a whole, which included strategy and policy evaluation, and health and safety and fire risk assessments.
The task was split into two main missions:
- Mission one was to bring up 50% of the business to match the performance and standards of the other 50%.
- Mission two was to establish an umbrella under which all of the businesses in Norton Way Group would operate.
- Setting a uniform standard across the business built a platform on which the whole company could grow and improve in unison. It was important to deliver support with impartiality and without bias or disenfranchising existing health and safety support in place in some of the businesses they had acquired.
“I didn’t need a blunt instrument, I needed a sophisticated thinker and collaborator, which is what you get from Vita Safety”.
Jason Cranswick Managing Director
Solution
As Norton Way Group navigated growth, we worked closely with them to strengthen and standardise their health and safety performance, accelerating any improvements through this period of change. After the assessment and audit of the business, we worked together to produce a framework that they could implement across every business in the group. We also provided competent person skills and training for managers and leaders.
One of our Senior Consultants, Gillian Wood, was embedded into the team at Norton Way Group to provide multi-faceted support for the business. This included drafting and implementing policy across the estate, attending review and committee meetings and delivering health and safety leadership training.
Results
Our collaboration with Norton Way Group has been a driving force behind an attitudinal shift across the company. There is now a greater sense of accountability for health and safety across the business, bringing benefits at every level:
- Jason, the Managing Director has the reassurance that health and safety is being prioritised for the good of the business and its people, which will play a vital role in strengthening the business’s future.
- For the company’s management teams, there’s a trusted advisor, able to support them in implementing policy and strategy. Our approach saw change being welcomed, rather than met with friction and resistance.
- For the business’ employees, not only has it made for safer, healthier working environments, but it also sent out a very clear message that their well-being is of the highest importance.
- For their clients, it’s all sat within a narrative of a company focus on quality, raising the bar when it comes to operating methods and standards.
Looking Ahead
As well as guiding the business through change and benchmarking health and safety standards across the company, we’ve added additional support in new areas. As the business grows and the challenges they face start to change, we’ve been able to offer services to Norton Way Group that facilitate this change and prepare them for the future..
For example, there are now far more electric vehicles being processed through their workshops than in previous years. Although manufacturers will provide functional training for working with electric vehicles, we want to take this further. It is our aim to review parallel industries where employees were required to work with high-voltage products then provide information and recommendations to improve the training that technicians would receive. Our objective is to drive the discussion not only at a company level, but also at an industry level to inform what safe electric vehicle working practices will look like for the future.
“If you’re in a setting where you don’t know what you don’t know, the approach taken by Vita Safety is a non-judgmental and entirely supportive way of working”.
Jason Cranswick Managing Director
