SwimWay Team Health & Safety Training – Spring Term 2018

At the start of every term, we run pre-term health and safety and introductory meetings for our staff.  These meetings are essential for everyone in the employ of SwimWay. They are a platform to run through necessary team information and procedures. Most importantly, they ensure we deliver on our commitment to health and safety excellence.

Requirements

We believe that we should be going above and beyond the minimum health and safety requirements.  Your children deserve highly trained, experienced instructors who know how to react quickly and professionally to any and all situations. This is why we run health and safety training courses at the beginning of every term.

Training Setup

This term’s meeting was held on Sunday 7th January.  The team was split into two groups. One for the teachers’ training and information meeting held by Company Director Dan Pastor, and Head Coach Tamsin Watt. The other, the Health & Safety Training held by SwimWay’s Health & Safety Consultant Dave Perry.

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New Team Members

Dan opened the meeting with a quick introduction to the new team members Marta Barbara and Eduardo Munoz.  We are extremely excited to have these two top instructors joining our team this term.  Only two weeks in and both have proven to be extremely popular with the children and parents.  We are always confident of the instructors we bring on board as we have a rigorous selection process. New instructors go through a long and arduous shadowing and training programme prior to their start.

Procedures & Policies

Dan then spoke about procedures and policies, and specifically adding value to the services we are providing.  He talked about communication between our instructors and the parents of their students. This can help to create a bond and positive atmosphere, not only for the child but for the adult too.  The importance of this communication cannot be neglected.  It is essential for an effective and happy learning environment for everyone involved.  Our instructors then spoke, and an active discussion sparked some good ideas and helpful advice for all.  These meetings are an excellent opportunity for our staff to share and learn from each other.

Instructor Training

Tamsin then took over to introduce the team to our new instructor training manual and videos.  Tamsin has been working hard to produce a guide for our instructors to ensure they are using best teaching practices.  Then over the December break, she and the SwimWay Operations Manager met to film a series of short training videos.  These were edited into helpful snippets for our instructors to reference along with the manual.  Our goal is to develop these videos and manuals further over the course of this year. This will revamp our training system for all new starters and current instructors.

Client Videos

Dan then spoke about the plans to expand upon the use of videos for our clients too.  We are planning to put together a series of short videos of our parent and baby lessons.  We feel these videos will be an excellent keepsake for years to come.

Important Dates

Finally, Dan ended by running through all the important upcoming dates for our instructors and clients, including:

• Spring Term Holiday Crash Courses running in February and April (for more information, please see here)
• Our current clients’ priority rebooking period running 5th – 21st February (more information here)
• Summer Term general bookings opening date on Monday 26th February at 12pm (more information here)
• Students’ assessments running w/c 5th March
• The final day of the Spring Term – Thursday 29th March
• First day of the Summer Term – Monday 16th April
• The next SwimWay pre-term staff meeting – Sunday 22nd April

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Health & Safety

Talking to the second half of the team, Dave Perry was running the health & safety aspect of the team training.  Dave is an invaluable part of the SwimWay team. He also makes sure all our sites are up to code with full NOP and EAP amongst other things. He also takes the lead in these health and safety training sessions. Covering the basics of the most common minor injuries through to more serious incidents. Dave ran scenarios based specifically for SwimWay’s unique methodology, facilities and operation.

Dave started with a Q and A session about first aid topics including. This included:

• Respiratory disorders (asthma, hyperventilation, etc.)
• Choking (adults, children & infants)
• Bleeding and broken bones

He then moved onto cover responses to several specific incidents that may occur in the environments we use.  We ensure our staff are up to date and repeatedly informed of our normal and emergency procedures. This guarantees an effective response in all circumstances.  Lastly, Dave took the team through another CPR refresher, covering infants, children as well as adults.

We put so much effort into our staff 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