Specsavers

Specsavers is one of the world’s leading providers of optometry, audiology and other healthcare services, and has more than 900 stores across the UK and Ireland, as well as overseas in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.

While the company uses cutting-edge technology to provide customers with a high-quality experience, behind the scenes the UK and Ireland business was in need of support with modernising parts of its health and safety processes across its store estate and corporate offices.

Our Info Exchange solution has been supporting Specsavers UK and Ireland since 2018. The platform allows the organisation to combine live reporting of accidents with full, real-time visibility of the health and safety compliance status of every store and office within the company.

The challenge

Prior to partnering with us, the Specsavers UK and Ireland stores and their associated corporate offices were using paper diaries in a bid to ensure they were keeping up-to-date with routine health and safety compliance in areas such as fire alarm and emergency lighting testing, through to inspections of optometry and audiology equipment. This was a major disadvantage, as it did not provide the business with an accurate, central view of each store’s compliance levels - making it difficult to monitor and act on any health and safety compliance issues unless physically visiting a store. The company had already moved its accident reporting online at this point - creating a mismatch - and so there was a desire for health and safety compliance to follow suit.

During the last 12 months the Health and Safety Hub and Audiology Operations Portal was accessed more than 200,000 times by stores, partners and colleagues across the UK, ROI, Offices and M&D; underlining the integral role that our platform plays in helping large organisations to remain compliant.

Phil Sleet concluded:

“It is quick and easy to report an incident online, which gives me confidence that the number of accidents being reported in stores reflect the actual number of accidents that are happening, and has banished historical concerns of under-reporting due to bureaucracy.”