In the spotlight with Carla Crocombe

What made you start Safety Rocks?

I used to work for another organisation that delivered training and I found that we were really restricted. I wanted to be brilliant and I found that, in the company that I was working for, we simply couldn't do it in the way that I wanted to do and that there was always a scenario where we could have done a better job. We could have serviced people's requirements a little bit better, and actually made it much more specific for organisations. I just thought that we could do more with less restrictions and be more brilliant. 

How would you describe what you do and what makes you different?

We deliver truly tailored health and safety training. We focus on is that truly tailored aspect and our unique service is focused on really understanding an organisation and splitting its seams and really understanding their culture. We want to work with an organisation holistically all the way through – developing training needs, looking at how the organisation works in terms of its delivery and making sure that the courses really fit what the customers want – rather than just delivering off-the-shelf training, which you can get from anywhere. 

How can and why should health and safety be fun?

People remember what they laugh about. We want people to remember stuff and although the message that we've got is serious – we want to keep people happy and alive – we also want to get a message across. If we can get people to remember one thing, then we've done our job and the way we do that is to make it fun and engaging. 

If you're disconnected and there is no fun part to training, then people won't remember anything. We want people to remember things hence why I think it needs to be fun. And that's the message we've given to all our tutors – make it fun, make it engaging, make people remember.

How has the pandemic changed things for you and how do you see the business world now?

Before the pandemic, we were very much a face-to-face organisation and this has really changed and during Covid we had time to reflect on our business and implement changes. We now have more virtual solutions – we do a lot more work on Teams. We invested in a lot of technology, which has been incredibly beneficial to our partners and to ourselves. We introduced micro-learning – these three hour sessions give our customers a lot of value. We've also become much more public with our Safety Rocks YouTube channel and activity on social media.

Now we are back up and running, we still do face-to-face learning, but the business is much more diverse in the way we deliver. So the business has changed and adaptability has become the key word.

What's next for Safety Rocks?

For 2023 and beyond, we've got a lot planned. We're going to do more development of the videography and the content and working with that bespoke content. There will be an extension of the Agile On Demand Learning System, so more tailored, agile On Demand Learning. There's so many exciting developing pieces of technology out there in terms of the kind of looking at the virtual world and the virtual content, the capacity to be able to deliver in a much more of a remote way, but using that technological platform. 

We've also got a fantastic new system that we're developing internally, which is part of our customer relationship management system, which makes us more efficient in terms of looking as a business about the way we can deliver what we do. We have had a massive influx in the request for leadership training, so I'll focus on keynote speaking in this area.

We're also looking to move into larger premises early in the year, so we have a busy and exciting year ahead.

Can you tell me about your involvement with The Safety and Health Excellence Awards 23?

We are delighted to be sponsoring the host of the awards, which has been announced as Tess Daly.

For far too long, Health and Safety has been seen as ‘pale, stale and (dare I say it) male’ so having Tess Daly presenting the awards is a great step towards disrupting that image of the health and safety world. It’s time to break the mould and this is a great step in that direction. 

Safety Rocks has been on a mission to shake-up the world of health and safety training since 2015. Health and Safety isn’t dull and all about compliance – it is about a culture of caring and keeping everyone in an organisation safe and healthy. To be able to recognise the efforts of others who have gone above and beyond in the world of health and safety is great for us.

We ultimately working in an industry which is about looking after people's health, wellbeing and safety and we have the capacity to be able to give back to the industry and see how the industry has grown. It is wonderful to be in the room with lots of people who we've watched develop. I absolutely love seeing people grow from the moment that they come in as an entrance level safety professional go on to do their level two, and seeing them grow to the level six and then end up being the head of safety.

The awards are a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the success of individuals, companies, teams and the industry as a whole.

You can enter the Safety and Health Excellence Awards at www.she-awards.com

Carla Crocombe is managing director and founder of Safety Rocks. For more information, visit www.safetyrocks.co.uk