Edinburgh Leisure

Edinburgh Leisure

Edinburgh Leisure is a charity that manages over 50 venues – including leisure centers, golf courses, swimming pools and schools. With over 5 million customer visits across the city, they passionately believe in the impact of physical activity on health and wellbeing. 

With so many facilities to manage, the complexities are clear. We spoke to Health, Safety and Compliance manager Gordon Forsyth to find out how the SafetyCulture platform has ticked all the boxes for Edinburgh Leisure.

Simplifying to get more done

Along with keeping on top of Edinburgh Leisure’s compliance, Gordon’s role also stretches across GDPR, DBS checks, fleet management and employee training. This led him to search for a tool to simplify the paperwork and empower his frontline.

After discovering the SafetyCulture platform on the App Store, Gordon dug deep into the tool, teaching himself how to build and edit templates from the public library. He quickly realized the potential of the platform – that it could be used across Edinburgh Leisure for more than just his own health and safety checklists. 

He then began trialing it at one of their smaller facilities. This allowed the site managers to take ownership of their auditing, following a standardized checklist that could be modified on a site-by-site basis. 

Driving exponential expansion 

Once the funding to have WIFI installed in all facilities was granted in 2015, every site manager “couldn’t wait to have SafetyCulture at their fingertips”. Gordon got all his sites using it for their checks, which quickly expanded Edinburgh Leisures SafetyCulture platform usage and empowering frontline workers with a culture of accountability. He was then able to hand over the audits to the sites for them to customize themselves. 

From one facility to over 50, their use cases have grown exponentially. 

They now use the SafetyCulture platform for:

• daily gym checks
• pre-opening checks
• fire alarm testing
• first aid checks
• pool equipment checks
• fire extinguisher checks
• and much more! 

Cashing in on digital dividends

Going digital had many bonuses for the business. In particular, Gordon values the ability to add evidence to checks in the form of photos or videos. The easy-to-use interface of the SafetyCulture app was also a huge plus – there was no complex training required for staff and they could simply pick it up and go. 

Analytics is also widely used across the business. Perfect for site management, Gordon reviews completion rates and inspections, raising the visibility for management teams on what has and hasn’t been done across their site. 

Without a doubt, the SafetyCulture platform has revolutionized Edinburgh Leisures’ once paper-based auditing system into a modern and accessible process that works for all.