Customer Testimonials: Timothy Taylor’s

Timothy Taylor’s & Co are a family owned brewery. Established in 1858, the business has grown significantly over the years and required a training provider to help them achieve appropriate standards of training for all of their staff. Christopher Kirby talks to us about why the level of content we provided was just right for them.

Please introduce yourself and your organisation.
Christopher Kirby, Health & Safety Manager at Timothy Taylor’s & Co. Timothy Taylor’s & Co Limited are a family owned brewery established in Keighley, West Yorkshire in 1858. The business has grown significantly over the years with major financial investment to assist in its continued journey in providing award winning well known brands to the general public. Landlord, Boltmaker, and Knowle Spring Blonde are just some of the popular ales that the business prides itself upon. My role within the business is to facilitate and assist the organisation as a whole to meet their legal, moral, and financial obligations as a responsible employer.

Why did you choose our e-learning courses?
We run a very tight shift pattern. Flexibility of the e-learning allows the company to make sure that we can still achieve appropriate standards of training for all our employees. The everyday operations within a brewery comes with its own hazards given the nature of the business activities, it was essential that the hazards identified were made aware to the workforce by way of training. High Speed Training’s e-learning enabled the business to cover this aspect of health and safety compliance.

What specific problem or need were you trying to address by taking our training?
The company wanted to expand on the current level of training carried out in-house by applying additional awareness programmes such as Working at Height, Asbestos, Manual Handling, and COSHH to name as few.

How did our training stand out from other options you considered?
I reviewed a few training organisations before choosing High Speed Training. Although other organisations were suitable, I had previously used High Speed Training in the past and the level of content and range of courses available were in my opinion just right for what our business needed.

How was the learning process for you and your staff?
The learning process was very straightforward. Each training module would be distributed through line managers who usually first sampled a particular course and then explained the process to their respective teams during team briefings.

How did you find distributing the training and tracking the progress of your staff?
The use of the Management Suite was pretty straightforward with training packages issued to employees visible and easy to track in terms of progress and completion. I really like the function within the management suite that confirms when a user has completed training.

What issues did you face whilst using our training and/or systems and how were they resolved?
There were a few issues at the beginning of our working partnership with High Speed Training. These were users unable to log-in to their courses, had not received their training modules, or had part done them and when attempting to log back on the system to finish their module was not available. When contacting High Speed Training for assistance, their response was usually within thirty minutes and resolved pretty soon afterwards. The root cause in each event was the user who had unfortunately not logged on correctly. High Speed Training were very professional and made no issue to these mishaps.

What specific outcomes have you achieved as a result of using our training?
The collaboration with High Speed Training over the last 12 months, since establishment of their services, I would say has provided our employees with an additional layer of education with regards to health, safety, quality, and food awareness. The business feels that given the additional investment of our people through the variety of courses on offer, we have not only satisfied our ongoing commitment to the welfare of our employees, but have given those who have participated a better understanding of the workplace, its hazards, and when to challenge poor working behaviour and/or arrangements. Our near miss reporting system has clearly shown evidence of this through the uptake of employees who are now reporting issues previously uncaptured by many of the workforce.

Can you give an example of any awards, metrics or data to support your results?
Timothy Taylor’s brewery is BRC Global Standard Grade AA accredited. This was achieved in 2017 where until that date, the business was specified Grade A. The business takes the responsibility of maintaining this standard very seriously with ongoing training, internal / external audits, inspections, supplier evaluations, and other functions whereby continuous improvements can be measured and applied. The duties of health, safety, and welfare also play a major role in ensuring conformity to BRC accreditation, with the auditor onsite requesting regular evidence of compliance within this area of the business. We are also one step closer to aligning our health and safety management system to a place whereby should we need to implement ISO 45001 into the business, the uplift from gap analysis to accreditation should be pretty straight forward.

How effective and engaging have you and your employees found the training?
Feedback from discussing the training carried out to date has proved worthwhile with a much more positive engagement from operational teams when undertaking review and implementation of workplace procedures, risk assessments, and other working documents across the business.

Are there any specific features or aspects of the training that they particularly liked?
No feedback on specific features or aspects of training were received in detail. We do know however that training in respect to PPE, Banksman duties, Working at Height, and Manual Handling have certainly stood out in terms of employee awareness given the increase in reporting in these areas whereby shortfalls have been identified for various reasons.

Overall, would you recommend High Speed Training to others?
Since using High Speed Training for a little over 12 months to date, I would say that the number and level of training courses available is more than adequate for our organisation. The support when required from High Speed Training has been tremendous and very professional. I would highly recommend this training provider to any business that requires their organisation to undertake e-learning to achieve their goals.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
Thank you High Speed Training for your support over the last 12 months. Keep up the good work.