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Helen Jones, COO for Corporate /Enterprise clients at workplace risk management provider Alcumus, explains to Sara Bean how the latest digital solutions can help produce better employers and more sustainable organisations
In our regular readers polls and in consultations with the FMJ Editorial Steering Committee, compliance is usually the number one priority for FM professionals. While the pandemic has resulted in many more hurdles in achieving compliance, it has also accelerated the adoption of digital solutions that can help FMs and their suppliers automate the process and meet these ever more stringent targets.
As COO for Corporate/Enterprise clients at Alcumus, a leading provider of workplace risk management solutions aimed at anticipating, managing and reducing risks to organisations, Helen Jones has some useful insights into the key trends in compliance for businesses and the health & safety of their people in the months to come.
While her current role is within a technology-based business, Jones’ background is firmly rooted in FM. She worked her way through the ranks at Carillion before joining Alcumus three years ago after overseeing the mobilisation and demobilisation process within the FM provider after it went into liquidation.
“I was with Carillion for 15 years and what they were great at was moving people around the organisation to gain skills and knowledge,” she explains. “I landed in infrastructure and construction and then moved into FM, focusing on health, corporate then back to construction and doing very different things like sustainability, HR and then finally mobilisation and demobilisation across all the sectors. The liquidators were incredibly supportive and made it as painless as possible and the positive outcome was that most people retained their roles when we transferred contracts out.
“I decided to go to Alcumus as I wanted to do something very different and work at a smaller organisation. Software had a lot of interest for me and I was attracted to Alcumus because they work with construction and facilities managers so I’d still be close to the world I was used to, but in a supporting role.
“My broad experience means that when I’m looking after our 2,000 UK enterprise customers, I genuinely do understand the world that they’re working in, the problems they face and how our solutions can help them. You’ll find that health and safety challenges and the solutions linked to health, safety, sustainability, and supply chain compliance really do touch every facet of the management team, so while we generally start conversations with one stakeholder in an organisation, because of the integrated nature of what we do, we end up speaking to lots of different stakeholders.”
INTEGRATED APPROACH
Alcumus says Jones, is best described as a full integrated risk management business offering a wide range of products, but focused around three pillars:
- Health and Safety
- ESG / Sustainability
- Supply Chain Compliance
The firm takes an integrated approach to managing health, safety and ESG across industries, locations, contractor and supplier networks, and also has an in-house team of specialists to provide HR consultancy and workplace monitoring services, training and UKAS accredited certification and accreditation support.
Says Jones: “We work really hard to connect small businesses with larger businesses through our network. With for instance our Safe Contractor product, we tend to have large businesses that mandate to smaller suppliers that they have to use our accreditation standard in order to access sites.
“That then creates a huge network of smaller businesses who can integrate into our other products – so if you’re a smaller business you might take out health and safety and HR support and if you’re a larger business you may tend to move more into software where you’ll be buying solutions measuring accident incidents, e-permitting, asset management and all the facets you need for compliance across your supply chain.”
Jones believes that smaller businesses that go through the accreditation programme can see it as a real opportunity to raise the professionalism within their organisation. This is because the process covers such a huge range of topics in order for organisations to go through the accreditation. This in a smaller business means reappraising policies and making sure these are suitable and appropriate.
“Very often this moves those organisations on,” says Jones, “and that’s a key differentiator for Alcumus as we do believe we are supporting the smaller business as well, not just in winning more work, but in working knowledge and professionalism.”
Larger businesses she adds can benefit on a wider scale. “If I go back to my days as a facilities manager and the absolute requirement for social value and using local suppliers – I remember being on google maps looking at a local area and trying to find suppliers by checking post codes. Now the tool organisations get when they adopt our Safe Contractor product from a large business perspective is like the Expedia search of contractors and suppliers. You can put in a post code and say ‘I need somebody within a 15 miles radius’ and it will ping up and tell you, which is a valuable resource.
“This drives positive impacts within the wider supply chain because they’re using organisations that have the right policies, which raises the standards. They’re also using businesses within the local area and this includes checks on their financial standing so that larger organisations can ensure their supply chains are secure.”
