The Organisation
Charterhouse and IKEA have been working together for over a year to make IKEA not only the most famous home furnishing stores in the world but one of the safest. Over the last sixty years, the IKEA Group has grown into a major world retail force. It has more than 231 stores in 24 countries and over 118,000 co-workers.
IKEA opened its first city centre store in Coventry in December 2008. The store has an annual turnover of £27m and is the biggest of its type in the country. IKEA has clear guidance for its workforce on the level of accreditation required for each member of staff with a responsibility for health and safety. With over 350 co-workers and between thirty and forty thousand customers each week, health and safety issues in store are of paramount importance.
The Challenge
IKEA has its own internal training from induction to specific co-worker job role programmes with little of its work being outsourced to external training providers. Charterhouse Training was selected to undertake its health and safety training by Paul Abbot, Health and Safety Specialist, due to a long established relationship he had built up throughout his career at different organisations for which he has been responsible for health and safety.
Paul said, “I have been working with Charterhouse for around fifteen years. They are local, flexible and efficient. I know that if I have a training need they will come out and I can talk through what it is we want, and they will tailor programmes to fit and ensure complete relevance for our staff.”
“A number of staff have responsibility for health and safety within the organisation and it has been important to ensure that they are all trained to the level required.
It is difficult to schedule this training to meet everyone’s rotas but by working together with IKEA colleagues and Charterhouse we have ensured that over 100 co-workers are now trained in a variety of areas related to health, safety and risk.”
The Outcome
Charterhouse Training have delivered First Aid, Fire Training and Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) Basic Health and Safety in the Workplace over the last eighteen months both on-site at the IKEA store in Coventry city centre and at Charterhouse Training in Coventry.
The training does not stop there. The partnership are currently devising training programmes in relation to disability awareness and evacuation of the IKEA store as well as training in using defibrillation equipment. With other city centre stores opening up in other parts of the country the opportunity for rolling out these programmes, tailored for the retail sector and specifically for the needs of IKEA is a real possibility. One thing is for sure, with their ardent attention to health and safety issues, you are unlikely to find a safer place to shop.
If you are interested in finding out more about health and safety training with Charterhouse Training please contact one of our Business Managers on 024 7679 1700.