Hindsight is 2020 - a review of the decade
iHASCO has seen a lot of growth in the last 10 years, not just internally in terms of staff numbers but we’ve also seen a lot of growth and change in the industry, various legislation changes, new regulations and new requirements for staff safety and wellbeing.
When I started (7 years ago), we had a room full of CD-ROMs, and occasionally sold online.
We had about 35 staff. Now we have nearly 80.
We had 8 courses. Now we have over 100.
No-one we got in touch with had heard of us, and very few had online training and now companies we speak to have regularly heard of us.
Our Growth
CD-ROM to Digital
This change is arguably one of the biggest changes that reflects the decade. At the start of it, we were still selling CD-ROM versions of our courses that needed to be posted to our clients. There was little demand for online training at this point although some people still wanted it. With the growth in technology usage, the need for online training at work became more and more popular and now iHASCO CD-ROMs are non-existent!
Website
It’s safe to say our website has come along leaps and bounds over the last 10 years, this is what our website looked like in 2010...
And our current website… well, you’re on it right now 😉
Our tagline ‘Training Made Simple’ is the inspiration and drive behind the website. We wanted the site to feel comfortable for our users so we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that the information is easy to understand, chucking out all the Health & Safety Jargon, and we’ve made sure that it’s easy to navigate.
Staff
Obviously, our staff numbers will have naturally grown in this time, but with an average of 6 new staff members being hired each year, it’s meant that we can produce more courses and deliver more fantastic customer support and service. We have even outgrown our office twice meaning that we had to move and expand into the offices next door too!
Courses
In 2010 we only had 5 courses, now we have over 100 courses in our course library - an average of 9 new courses per year! We started off our eLearning library just focusing on core Health & Safety but broadened into the HR Compliance sector when the demand for these courses became greater. Our first HR compliance course was Stress Awareness Training - and now we have over 40 HR-specific courses!
Exhibitions
We attended our first exhibition in 2017 at IOSH. We realised the need to start increasing our market presence and as a market-leading provider, our clients and prospective clients would expect to see us at the shows so we didn’t want to be missed! 2 years on and in 2019 we attended 10 exhibitions!
Name change
And to top it all off, our name has changed from the Interactive Health and Safety Company to iHasco and then iHASCO, along with our logo changes…
What we’ve learnt
The last decade has seen the eLearning landscape change so radically it’s hard to comprehend. Businesses large and small now consider eLearning the ‘standard’, foregoing the inflexible face to face workplace training methods which were so prolific through the 90’s and 00’s. In that time our offering has evolved almost beyond all recognition, delivering training on a silver spinning disc seems so distant it’s almost laughable. Our product and library has grown immeasurably over the last ten years and we’re not anywhere near done yet. Here’s to the next ten!
Over the last few years, we have learnt that shared values are really important, and our company values have allowed us to make sure we’re all working towards the same goals, with the same vision and beliefs. The value that our clients see in the personalised support we provide shows that the quality of customer service offered is as important as the quality of the training we provide!
Our Industry’s growth
Legislation changes
Legislation is frequently released and updated and it’s our job to make sure each of our courses is as up to date as possible. Some of the key pieces of legislation released over the last decade were…
- The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 which informs our Asbestos Awareness Training
- The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 which informs our CDM Regulations Training
- The Equality Act 2010 which informs various courses but mainly our Equality & Diversity Training
- The Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013 which informs our Food Safety & Hygiene Courses
- The GDPR which informs all 3 of our GDPR courses that can be found in our Information Security Training bundle.
More employers are understanding the benefits of having a good health and safety culture
It’s become apparent that more and more employers are understanding the link between strong health and safety culture and productivity/wellbeing. Much has been documented over the past decade on the correlation, particularly with topics such as mental health and wellbeing to highlight the connection but employers that prioritise health and safety not only create a much happier and productive workforce, but they also see a return on investment! Simply put, investing in health & safety makes good business sense!
Online training over face to face training
Over the years our team has found that people are turning to online training over face-to-face training to save both time and money. It can be hard to choose online training that suits your organisation but we are committed to you and your organisation's individual training journey with our simple and cost-effective training solution.
This being said, we try to ensure that our eLearning is as engaging and interesting as possible and has genuine meaning behind it. Not just tick-box exercises that other eLearning providers supply that puts learners through very boring training that doesn’t really work...
Some of the Health & Safety Industry Fines over the decade
Take a look at some of the biggest health and safety fines over the last decade…
- In 2015, a large bus company was fined £2.3 million for a bus crash case (read more)
- In 2016, a large infrastructure group was fined £2.6 after a man working in a trench was killed when it collapsed on him (read more)
- In 2018, a large retail store was fined £1 million for Health and safety breaches in 3 stores (read more)
- In 2015, 2 construction firms were fined £1.4 million after a worker had to have 3 toes amputated (read more)
- In 2019, one of the UK’s largest airlines was fined £183 million under the GDPR (read more)
What's next?
Well, much of the next decade is an uncertainty but we can give a few guarantees here at iHASCO:
- Our course library will continue to expand
- We’ll continue to make training as simple as possible
- We’ll continue to seek constant improvement in all areas of the business
- We’ll continue to provide unrivalled customer support and service
If you would like to join us this year and be part of our next decade at iHASCO, then why not get started with a free no-obligation trial today?
Head of Production