Leicestershire Search & Rescue Case Study

Leicestershire Search and Rescue (LeicSAR) are a lowland search and rescue unit in England, United Kingdom. The primary role of the organisation is to provide specialist resources to Leicestershire's emergency services to assist in the search and rescue of vulnerable and missing people in the Leicestershire area, while also providing support to neighbouring teams in other counties. With 50 volunteers, LeicSAR provides an important service to the community and therefore requires a quick and easy way for volunteers and visitors to sign in and out of the unit, so they can swiftly continue with emergencies. We caught up with operations manager and trustee Nick, to find out how SwipedOn has transformed their people management process.

What were the challenges LeicSAR faced prior to implementing a digital sign in solution?

A manual paper sign in process presented a number of issues... Firstly paper based information had limited security around the data. Secondly reporting the hours our team provided to Leicestershire Police as volunteers was time consuming. The last and most important issue we had was around the time it took to sign in, with only one paper based document it delayed our team members signing in when arriving at incidents.

What were your company's highest priorities when you were looking for a visitor management solution?

The key priority when moving to a digital system was speed, accuracy and efficiency. Understanding who we have signed in at any one time is vital for search management.

Why did you choose SwipedOn?

I researched the market before choosing Swipedon. It was the constant development of the products that really swayed us.

And what are the three key features of SwipedOn which prove most beneficial for LeicSAR?

Email notifications, employee in-out and remember frequent visitors.

How has SwipedOn helped your organization remain operational under COVID-19 restrictions?

The solution has become part of our COVID-19 strategy, keeping our members safe at all times. The addition of SwipedOn Pocket has enabled an even more efficient sign in and out process.

What results have you seen since implementing SwipedOn?

Moving to Swipedon gave us the ability to manage our main asset - the team members - arriving to assist in a search for missing persons. It allows the search planning team to have immediate visibility of who we need to deploy, but also importantly it allows us to capture their personal information such as mobile number and car registration number, which provides speedy access to information in an emergency.

The recording of who attended a search and how long they were involved has proved essential. There are times when we need to provide this information as evidence to the police, or even the coroner, and the accuracy of recording is vital. Tracking the hours our volunteers contribute has become so easy, I didn't realise how many hours went into collating this information.

Thank you for providing this insight Nick! Is there anything else you would like to add?

Our organisation would highly recommend your solution to anyone considering moving to a digital solution. It soon becomes apparent how you managed without one! The support we have received from Swipedon has been First class, and the solution has proved to be super reliable, effective and is so simple to configure.

Thanks so much to Nick and the team at LeicSAR for sharing their experience using SwipedOn and providing this insight, we love hearing how SwipedOn is used in specific organisations and businesses across a variety of industries. It’s great to learn that the solution can help this specific team reach incidents and emergencies that much quicker, and easily provide reports to the police, since implementing SwipedOn.

Challenges

• Paper based methods were time consuming for signing in
• Calculating reports for the local police was a long and laborious process
• Limited security with data privacy using paper processes

Results

• Speedy sign in process, allowing team members to reach emergencies quicker
• Accurate records of who has attended specific incidents which can be provided to police
• Data is now stored securely in the cloud system and only admins can access