Driving safety forward across a diverse workforce: A North Star Ford story

About North Star Ford

North Star Ford Calgary is passionately committed to ensuring that their customers spend as many minutes as possible with the keys in their hands, allowing them to live their lives to the fullest. As a leading automotive dealership in Alberta, North Star Ford offers a comprehensive range of products and services tailored to meet the needs of their diverse customer base.

With five dealerships strategically located across the region, North Star Ford provides an extensive selection of high-quality new Ford vehicles and pre-owned cars. Their dedication to customer satisfaction extends beyond sales, encompassing trusted Ford repair and auto parts and flexible auto financing solutions designed to facilitate the purchase of the car of their customers' dreams.

In addition to their standard services, North Star Ford proudly offers 24/7 support to the oil sands operations in Northern Alberta, ensuring the continuous maintenance and reliability of the fleet vehicles used by operators in the area. Their unwavering commitment to excellence and reliability ensures that customers and their vehicles are always ready to tackle any challenge they may face.

The challenge

North Star Ford offers a diverse range of services, and as a result, the inherent and potential safety challenges they face are equally broad. Cherie administers the safety programs of the following teams, each with their own risks:

• Health and Safety staff regularly travel to remote sites to handle their job duties, indicating a need to get help in case anything goes awry. Additionally, there are rare occasions where they may deal with people who may be impaired by drugs or alcohol, resulting in combative behaviours.
• Facilities Maintenance can face inclement weather on all ends of the meteorological spectrum, such as snowstorms, wildfires, high and persistent temperatures, etc. Cherie mentioned her fear that a hatch gets frozen shut while workers are on the roof, and although unlikely, knows having multiple lines of communication to prepare for the worst is important. This team, though not uniquely, also deals with stress and general wellbeing concerns (including heart attacks, strokes, etc.)
• Remote locations staff/parts drivers manage Suncor’s fleet vehicles. This means that, in remote conditions, North Star Ford is available to deliver parts and provide service 24/7. In Northern Alberta, where no road is short and temperatures can reach -50° C, driving is the biggest risk. Cherie and her team have always known that accidents need to be responded to quickly, and manual phone calls to check-in is inefficient and distracting.
• Security personnel are more likely to face social risks incurred by unwanted individuals on site, inclusive of thieves or generally disorderly people. Security needs a way to quickly report and get an appropriate response in these scenarios. They also may encounter wild animals, such as bears, bobcats, and cougars at North Star Ford’s more remote locations.
• Mobile Technicians travel to the homes of clients to provide vehicle maintenance and repair. As a result, job responsibilities can occur in unpredictable environments with unpredictable people and their pets. Furthermore, though highly trained, mechanical incidents such as getting a hand crushed under a hood are a possibility that Cherie and her team need to plan for.
  
  

Why Aware360

In her quest to find the right safety solution for North Star Ford’s lone workers, Cherie reached out to six companies. Of the three that responded, met with her, and offered trials, Aware360 stood out as the only provider able to offer the right devices (a Bluetooth companion wearable), system functionality, and realistic pricing model Cherie was searching for. When speaking about the user experience of Aware360’s SafetyAware solution, Cherie said:

Additionally, when talking about Aware360’s partnership with STARS Vigilant, a 24/7 monitoring centre and air ambulance dispatcher, Cherie added:

The result

Safety certainty

For North Star Ford, implementing SafetyAware meant not only keeping people physically safe, but also providing a high level of psychological comfort to staff and supervisors alike.

Cherie also mentioned the excitement her facilities person feels knowing that, if he suffers a health emergency, somebody will be there for him. The peace of mind that comes from psychological safety lets their staff focus on what they do best–delivering world class service for their customers.
 

A flexible solution for a flexible company

Due to the variety in North Star Ford’s operations, safety complexities were present, including unique wants and needs for each of their at-risk teams. While the isolation and social risks faced by the security team don't necessarily resemble the mechanical hazards posed towards the mobile service or facilities teams, there is one thing all the teams had in common: the demand for rapid, personalized, and informed response. This is exactly what SafetyAware provides, and Aware360 worked with North Star Ford to design, test, and rollout specific response plans fit for each of the teams. On this flexibility, Cherie commented:

Improved efficiency

Prior to discovering SafetyAware, like many companies, North Star Ford’s employee check-in procedure was far more manual. This system relied on supervisors making phone calls and workers answering them to confirm their condition, then being logged by hand, every single time. While effective in ensuring safety, it took both worker and supervisor away from their duties regularly. With SafetyAware, these check-ins are done with the press of a button, without invasion or distraction. Additionally, it does not necessitate the availability of the supervisor, so while in meetings, driving, or on holidays, no action is required to receive the peace of mind that their people are connected and safe.

Easy scalability for future expansion

Cherie plans on expanding the use of SafetyAware to more of her staff, knowing that scalability will not be an issue, no matter who, where, or when she will need to provide enhanced safety. She also intends on exploring more functionality, such as satellite connectivity through the Bivy Stick, and forms, which would allow her to create efficiencies by automating and digitizing further processes such as hazard assessments and vehicle inspections.