With 45 community locations and 9 permanent facilities across Calgary, YMCA Calgary is a trusted charity which truly gives back to the community, supporting over 300,000 people every month. Since 1902, this association offers health, fitness, and aquatic recreation programs to both children and adults. It also offers a variety of community and outdoor programs to keep the people of Calgary engaged and closely connected.

Callum Monteith, the General Manager of Health, Safety, and Risk, expressed how eCompliance, part of EcoOnline Global, helps keep those that visit the YMCA safe. This digital EHS solution has allowed greater visibility into the strengths and weaknesses of their safety program, more effective incident and emergency response procedures, and a proactive, data-driven approach to safety.

“We are committed to an incident and injury-free environment,” shared Callum. “We do everything we can to support the wellbeing of both our workforce and the general public, by proactively and preventatively looking at our environment”.

The Challenge

With a responsibility to keep people safe, YMCA Calgary completed several inspection and incident reports, as well as hazard assessments on paper. Documents were kept in binders, which eventually became several inches thick due to the sheer volume of paper. Managing, following up, and maintaining this level of information using a paper-based system was very challenging. This also resulted in a lack of visibility into their safety program and little insight into their areas of strength and patches of weakness.

Having a wide portfolio of programs from summer camps to swimming activities, made it increasingly difficult to manage hazard assessments using pen and paper. Controlling these assessments and updating them regularly was a challenging task as it was hard to keep track of them all, with no centralized location. Communicating all the necessary information to surrounding teams was also hard using this approach.

Properly supporting 800 members of YMCA Calgary staff was another massive hurdle, with only three dedicated health and safety members. With little insight into what was happening in each facility and minimal reporting capabilities, it made it hard to analyze data and follow up with team members in a timely manner. Employees were not receiving the feedback or resources required to do their jobs effectively, leading to a reduced sense of accountability. This ultimately resulted in a more reactive approach to safety rather than a proactive one.

“Visibility and accountability were very much reduced using paper, so it made it difficult to get all the information needed to support our teams. The ability for them to find the information they needed and track trends to develop a data-based approach to support the wider based association, was a lot lower than it is now.”

Callum Monteith, General Manager of Health, Safety, and Risk, YMCA Calgary

With no clear direction forward, Scott Williams, now YMCA Calgary’s Chief Risk Officer, knew that a paper-based approach would not be sustainable to properly protect their staff and the general public. That’s why he made the decision to prepare a business case for switching to a digital solution which could be applied across the association. With leadership’s buy-in, Scott then began searching for the right system. After seeing what eCompliance could offer, Scott knew this digital EHS solution could help fulfill all their requirements and more.

Why YMCA Calgary Chose eCompliance, part of EcoOnline Global

“Having eCompliance has made it so much easier to manage challenges because we have the right tools in place to do so. We wouldn’t be able to function as efficiently as we do now, without this system in place. eCompliance has been essential to our success.”

Callum Monteith, General Manager of Health, Safety, and Risk, YMCA Calgary

The Solution

With everything now centralized in one solution, Callum and his team are able to gain greater visibility into all their data and forms to build a more data-driven approach. eCompliance has been instrumental in simplifying the management process so all forms and reports are regularly viewed, analyzed, and updated.

Greater Employee Accountability

Having one platform where all information is now accessible to employees across the association has also helped to strengthen communication among the team and has allowed for a greater sense of accountability. Workflows and processes can be immediately updated to reflect new guidance or procedures and distributed instantly to all users. This has led to an increase in reporting and participation in safety activities. Safety is not just one person’s responsibility, but a team effort. With regular updates, notifications, and coaching sessions, employees became committed to keeping others safe.

Customization Options

eCompliance also offers a sense of flexibility, through its various customization options. Callum was able to customize forms to develop a more focused and diversified approach. The inspection of a swimming pool is not the same as that of a campground, for example, so Callum was able to include specific criteria for each. By creating different forms, the team was able to support and analyze different departments and areas for a more proactive approach.

“By building out separate forms we’ve been able to properly support, assess and evaluate different departments to look for what is needed,” shared Callum. “We’ve been able to go wide and deep instead of just broad and shallow.”