Kick Ass Hostels operate 2 award-winning hostels in Edinburgh; one in Grassmarket just below the Castle and another in Greyfriars.
Across the 2 sites, we have 395 beds in dormitories, as well as bar and beer garden, with live entertainment, a café serving fresh food and chill-out areas. We aim to provide a “Kick Ass” base for younger, back-packing travellers and groups visiting Edinburgh.
The nature of what we do means we have a high staff turnover, often because the people we employ are travelling themselves. So, a day-to-day challenge for us is bringing these employees up-to-speed with our working procedures, whether that’s our operational procedures or Health and Safety, and Food Safety.
The ability to deliver quick and easy-to-administer training is important to us.
We have been using Arch Risk Management Plus/BCarm E-Learning for a number of years and have also added additional courses to the 15 we get as part of the system for Food Safety for our Kitchen Staff.
Over the last 12 months, our team has completed over 400 courses. The courses include a short competency test and self-assessment at the end, so we can be alerted to any gaps in their learning or safety concerns before they turn into an issue. Our management team have complete visibility over this.
The ability to create different training plans for different jobs helps keep the training administration as easy as possible and means that our team only completes the courses relevant to them.
The new checklist builders and the app in the Health and Safety Management system are also of interest to us as we have to complete several checks on a daily basis and are looking at how we can streamline this process and reduce the amount of paper we have in the business.
