SwimWay Team Health & Safety Training – Autumn Term 2017

Last week SwimWay had it’s Autumn pre-term health and safety training and introductory meeting.  We run these meetings at the start of every term. This helps us to run through team procedures as well as ensure we deliver on health and safety excellence.  We do not undervalue our responsibility to not only teach children a life-saving skill but to care for them too.

Legal H&S Training Requirements

The legal minimum for health and safety training is once every two years. We believe that we should be going above and beyond the minimum requirements.  Your children deserve highly trained, experienced instructors who know how to react quickly and professionally to any and all situations.

Guest Speaker

Sometimes we invite a guest speaker to these meetings to kick off with a chat about something a little different.  This is to keep things interesting and to help our team with small but important details with their professional lives.  Earlier this year it was a talk about first impressions and perceptions. Our instructors were advised on how this can help with communications and relationships with clients and students.  This term we invited accountant Alastair Taylor to take the team through a helpful basics introduction to self-employed taxation.

Following this, the team split into two groups. One to attend the general teachers’ procedures meeting held by Company Director Dan Pastor, and Head of Swimming Tamsin Watt. The second group headed to the Health & Safety Training held by SwimWay’s Consultant Dave Perry.

Procedural Meeting

Dan opened by introducing the new team members for the Autumn Term Lydia Baxter, Johann Brown and Andre Sandri.  At SwimWay we take our hiring process extremely seriously.  The rigorous selection process is only the beginning.  Any new instructors also go through a long and arduous shadowing and training programme prior to their first term.  Following the introduction, Dan and Tamsin went through the SwimWay standard practices and procedures. Questions and comments were taken from everyone in the team, old and new.  It is important for usour staff to share and learn from each other.

Dan ended his talk by highlighting the importance of our students and clients. He also spoke about keeping up communication between on-site and office teams.  Only with excellent teamwork and communication can our customers experience the quality service we strive to offer.  He also ran through the dates for our popular intensive holiday crash course swimming lessons. We have already opened the bookings for these courses. An announcement of which instructors are taking them will also be made in the next few days.

Dan then handed over to Tamsin who spoke about SwimWay’s methodology and teaching techniques.  We know that as a company we are reflected in the quality of our classes.  Each term Dan and Tamsin attend classes to review our instructors teaching methods.  Observations, practical experience, and feedback is used to improve our unique methodology to ensure we offer the best possible lessons.

Health & Safety Meeting

Downstairs in the other room, SwimWay’s consultant Dave Perry was running the health & safety aspect of the team training.  Dave is an invaluable part of the SwimWay team. He takes the lead in these health and safety training sessions. He also makes sure all our sites are up to code with full NOP and EAP amongst other things.

During training, Dave helped our instructors go through the basics of the most common minor injuries. He also took them through scenarios based specifically for SwimWay’s unique methodology, facilities and operation.

The two smaller groups of instructors allow Dave, Tamsin and Dan to focus on the members of each team. This certainly aids the learning process.  At the end of each meeting, the groups switched over, and everything was repeated. This time new situations and queries were brought to light.

We put so much effort into our training every term.  We have a firm belief that SwimWay has the best swimming classes in London. A large part of that is the quality of the training our team receive.  As a company, we are continually dedicated to providing safe, private swimming lessons for your children.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT OUR COMMITMENT TO HEALTH AND SAFETY