Incentive competitions, break room QR codes and well-suited development steps – Renta supports staff’s safety work with a positive approach

Renta Group Ltd is a young yet rapidly growing company which specialises in construction equipment rental. Safety is at the heart of the company’s business, and they have used the Rego HSEQ system systematically since the beginning of 2022. Renta’s HSEQ Manager Marko Sulasalmi says that Rego has helped them in many ways. The system has made it easier for them to obtain certificates and manage competences and qualifications – while also opening new business opportunities.

Young company with strong will

Since its founding in 2016, the Finland-based Renta Group Ltd has experienced a remarkable trajectory in the construction equipment rental industry. Today, it serves customers with around 1,800 employees and a network of 166 locations across Northern Europe. One of the secrets to Renta’s success is full service: in addition to rental machines, it offers services that not only make customers’ everyday life easier but also ensure a safe working environment on construction sites.

In Renta’s line of business, smooth and safe working plays a key role both on customer sites and internally. For this reason, the company decided to implement the Rego HSEQ system for supporting staff’s safety work as well as quality. Implementation has taken place gradually, starting with accident reports and safety notifications early in 2022, followed by safety walks. Today, Renta also uses Rego’s online training and quality management modules and is currently working on transferring all onboarding activities to the system.

“Our staff’s safety and well-being are at the heart of our business. No machine can be delivered to customers without employees who are fit for work. Our business has expanded rapidly, and we have a strong and clear ambition to improve health, safety, quality and environmental matters continuously,” says Marko Sulasalmi, HSEQ Manager at Renta.

Motivation from incentives, ease from QR codes

Renta started implementing the system from a typical situation for a young company: a clean slate. Since there was no previous system in place, prior to Rego, employees sent photos and brief explanatory texts to a WhatsApp group, from which they were collected and passed on manually.

“While WhatsApp messaging was convenient and fast for the users, their notifications were missing all background information. Rego has made our work more systematic, and the records now enable better tracing. We are also able to gather comprehensive data on our events overall,” Sulasalmi notes.

A new tool and related workflow changes cannot be introduced overnight, however – not with Renta, either. The company found that while some employees transitioned to Rego quite naturally, others needed more encouragement.

Since then, Renta has made successful efforts in coming up with incentives and lowering the threshold for system use. They have set site-specific minimum targets for the staff, organised incentive competitions and rewarded the sites with the best reporting and safety walks. Another significant factor has been making reporting as easy as possible for all users.

“Something important we did was to have QR stickers at our branches to lead users directly to Rego, to make reporting as easy as with WhatsApp messages. When an employee points their phone at one of these QR stickers, they can make a notification right then and there, without having to wonder which system to use and how to log in. We’ve attached these QR stickers in places where our employees usually are and where notifications are typically made: on workshop doors, in chemical cabinets, near coffee makers in break rooms, on warehouse doors, forklifts and service vans,” Sulasalmi lists.

“Our staff’s safety and well-being are at the heart of our business. No machine can be delivered to customers without employees who are fit for work.”

Marko Sulasalmi, HSEQ Manager at Renta

Systematic approach opens new business opportunities

Sulasalmi finds HSEQ matters to be an extensive area in Renta’s business. Managing them successfully has positive impacts all around: for staff, customers, financiers and other key stakeholders.

“Quality, for instance, is kind of a funny word in our industry. To customers, it refers perhaps mostly to the quality of our operations, which in turn is achieved through systematic management and good governance. We often come across these questions at the tendering stage already, where we need to be able to explain and prove how we handle these matters,” Sulasalmi explains.

In fact, certificates and good documentation have been clearly beneficial during the tendering phase. Some customers expect certain certificates and may also ask about Renta’s accident history for the last three years, for example. The HSEQ system is highly helpful in collecting and verifying this information. Rego has also helped Renta obtain certificates they were previously missing. Sulasalmi says that the certifier found it positive that they had a comprehensive system in place that met the requirements for certification.

The next step in Renta’s HSEQ system development is onboarding management, which has now reached the pilot phase. Renta’s onboarding form was previously filled on paper, but it has now been digitalised. In the coming months, onboarding will be fully migrated to the system.

“This is a big deal for us. In addition to new employees, we are also migrating existing employees’ information to the system. I stated at the system implementation phase already that it would take us several years to fully implement and utilise all the modules and functionalities of the system. There’s a limit to what an organisation can absorb in a year, for example. That’s why we are taking small steps and slowly expanding employees’ use, skills and retention of the system.”